Why I’ll never pass judgment again…

 

Before I was a mother, I would see women at the grocery store, or Wal-Mart completely disheveled, looking as if they hadn’t showered in a month with crumpled t-shirts and baggy sweat pants dragging a child behind them as they repeatedly took whatever item their toddler had swiped from the shelf and put it back where it belonged. I’ll admit it. I was judgmental. Why can’t these women take a shower? Why can’t they put on clean/properly fitting clothes? Would a little make-up hurt them? I’LL never look like that when I’m a mother! I’ll have perfectly styled hair. I’ll never leave the house without at least a little bit of mascara or lip gloss. And most importantly, my children will act like angels when we’re in public! Ahhhh…how blissfully ignorant I was.

Let’s take last Friday for example. Ray got called into work early, and since it was Parent/Teacher Conference at school that left me to take both my hoodlums angels with me. It will be fine I reassured myself. No need to worry. We’ll go in, talk about Blaine’s progress, get his report card and we’ll go. Ummmm…yeah. I’m not sure what kind of fantasy world I was living in Friday morning, but by Friday evening I fell back to the real world with a painful thud. Here’s what happened. Blaine did cart wheel’s around his class room. Ryder pulled all the books off the bookshelf. Blaine decided to stick his FINGER in the teacher’s cupcake she had sitting on her desk with her dinner because not only does this poor woman have to teach my child 5 days a week, she has to stay until 9 in the evening talking to parents like me who don’t have enough sense to leave their children with a baby sitter so they can have an adult discussion. There were many more things my children did before we left that classroom 20 minutes later, but I’ll spare myself the embarrassment  you the details. Suffice it to say, I left her room with my head hung in shame, feeling like the worst mother to ever grace that teacher’s presence.

As for that disheveled mother at the store?? Yeah, that’s me now. Because every time I  dare to take a shower and/or put on some make up/clean clothes/fix my hair I come down stairs to this…

Ryder Mario! What have you done now??

Why yes, that is his father standing there in the background. No, he had “no idea” how our little video game character found some chocolate. Or ate it. Or smeared it all over himself. And the bar. And the new bar stools. Swear! He was right there the whole time!! Oh, well come to think of it, yeah, he did have Sports Center on…

Guess who got to clean up the mess? It wasn’t the freshly showered parent :)

I have to admit though, in the scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter if Ryder got chocolate everywhere. Or that while at the grocery store Blaine said loudly “That woman has a big butt!” about the woman less than a foot away. (yeah, he may be lacking an internal filter) Because in 5 years, these stories will be funny. And they’ll be great memories that I’ll have when my babies are no longer 3 or 6 and are too cool the cuddle with me, or too busy to run errands with me. Come to think of it, I may even miss their mischief then. But for now, it’s still going to drive me batty. ;)

A hard lesson learned...

You see this shirt?

I know, I know, the toddler inside the shirt is distractingly cute, but we're focusing on the shirt here today folks. More importantly, what is ON the shirt. 

My family has jumped on the mustache lovin' train. I love them. My boys love them. Ray thinks they're hilarious and that it proves the point that this beard he's grown is totally justified, because facial hair is as cool as it gets.

 

Yes, I look like I'm married to a hippy. That's ok, I still love him.

Back to my original story though. Blaine wanted a t-shirt with a mustache on it. Well, as anyone who knows me should know, you don't have to ask me to make you something twice! I immediately pulled out the wunder under and some black fabric and got to work. Blaine was super excited to wear it to school so he did the very next day. Blaine's happy, Momma is happy, should be the end of the story right? Except it's not...

I go to pick Blaine up from school that day and he's wearing his heavy coat and it's zipped all the way up. So I'm like "Blaine, what's with the coat? It's 70 degrees outside."

As it turns out, his friends laughed at his shirt. :( Oh my poor aching heart! It took everything I had in me not to march up to that school the next day and give those punk little 1st graders a good what for! But I had to stop and rethink the situation. I can't protect him from everything. And if I were to try to do so I would just be doing him a disservice. He needs to learn that life is not always sunshine and rainbows. People do mean things sometimes. But you have to learn how to rise above it and not care what others think of you. I need to teach him that as long as HE loves himself, other's opinions don't matter.  And I need to teach  myself that sometimes, I need to sit back and let him make the best of the situation life has handed him. Because if I were to try to handle every situation for him, he'll never learn how to do it for himself.  Not that it makes it any easier for me to do, but I know in the end, he will be a well adjusted young man. And the next time he sees someone being laughed at, my hope is instead of joining in, he'll do the right thing. 

In the meantime, Blaine has decided that he still loves his shirt and while he may not wear it to school again, he will be wearing it at home :) because Momma would never laugh at him, in fact she has plans to make her own matching shirt.

So all you mean 1st graders can put that in your juice box and suck it!

day 4,698 of the ruffle foot project

Have you ever started a project that slowly sucks the life out of you? This is how I'm feeling today. I'm working on an anthro inspiried shower curtain... this one to be exact (hence the ruffler foot).

My plan was, take a couple of days, make the shower curtain, post it on my blog, feel proud of myself.

This is how it's worked out....

Take two hours to fold, iron, then hem one 140" x 7 1/2" strip. Ruffle the strip, attach the strip to the shower curtain. Stare at the only half finished shower curtain in apathy. Watch the shower curtain suck out my soul through each little perfectly pleated ruffle. Contemplate just paying the $118.00 for the shower curtain just to make this madness stop.

Needless to say, it's taking about 9,000 years longer than expected. I did finish one of my other larger projects though, and several small projects that I am making for baby gifts. Those I could post right now if I wanted, but since the shower curtain hanging in my bedroom has stolen my soul/will to live/sew all I can manage to do is PLAN to take photos of them and post about them. I might possibly be the worst blogger known to man...

miss me yet?

I've been ignoring my poor little blog all week. But I have a good excuse. I've been sewing on two HUGE projects that have been taking up a lot of time. I plan to have them finished this weekend and then I'll show them off. One of them is involving this. :) 

That's a ruffler foot and not an instrument of torture in case you were thinking what I thought when I first saw it. 

And of course there's another project that is using a little of this...

Oh yeah...I'm gonna be wearing that! It's FAB-U-LOUS! 

I'm going fabric shopping with my awesome Mom tomorrow for some post-birthday bonding. I'll post my finds later. 

I have a confession....

I am quite the blog stalker.:) I find awesome blogs that I love and I read their posts religiously, but am often too shy/lazy to comment. So I've decided to feature one of my faves. Want to read the funniest thing ever?? Go see Lesley over at Five Seconds From Crazy. I love this chick! Her posts make me smile daily and she is an absolute riot! I totally relate to her "Fawk You Friday" post and wish soo many times that I could tell people what I think when they are obnoxious and/or rude. And not only is she hysterically funny she is crafty! I loves me some funny, crafty, down to earth Momma's! So go check Lesley out,even if only for a chuckle or two! 

hmmm...

Do the 3 slices of pizza I just shoveled in my mouth negate the hour and a half of playing Just Dance I did 10 minutes prior to inhaling it?? Sigh.

got boys?

 

So, I just happen to see that Dana over at Made and Rae at Made by Rae are having a Celebrate the Boy month. I can not even begin to express how happy I am about this! As the mother of two boys I am always wanting to make them things but completely lack the ideas to do it. So far I’ve made them some pajama pants (boring mom!) and a couple of pillows (what are we? girls?). So a whole month dedicated to ideas for boy crafting has me tickled pink! There also going to be some great boy giveaway’s so be sure to check it out!

Apparently, I’m way out of the loop because this isn’t the first time they’ve had this. All of their archives can be found here. I’m off to read about lovely awesome things to make my boys.