Tonight the 5 yr old had a Christmas program at school, so being a good mom, I made him change out of holey jeans and a hand-me-down cartoon tee into nicer jeans (from the dirty pile, let's be honest) and polo shirt. I had asked big brother to pick out clothes for him while I was trying to finish another task, and bro chose a button down and a sweater vest. Seriously! Is it Easter already? The shirt and vest were purchased for kid #1, and they're practically brand new still because neither he nor #3 enjoy dressing up. I'm thinking Big thought he could torture Little by making him wear fancy duds. Yeah, he wasn't having it, and that was definitely not a battle I felt prepared to fight. Enter the polo compromise.
When I was satisfied with his appearance-we had him wearing presentable clothes, smoothed his hair and wiped the crumbs off his chin- we loaded up with just enough time to run one errand, drop #2 off at gymnastics, and hunt for a seat in the crowded school cafetorium. Now is a good time to include that I had just come in from work where we had pajama day (think preschool teacher. It's funnier if I was an investment banker, but to the other parents picking up at the grade school, any mom in her jammies at 3:30 is entertaining) and changed into jeans and actual shoes v. slippers. For some reason, this was the first time I had seen myself in a mirror all day, and I realized the messy bun I'd thrown my hair into before my 7 am shower was still right where I'd put it! We are THAT family! The mom dresses up by getting out of her pajamas, but since it's not Easter, she doesn't bother brushing her hair, and the kid is wearing pants fresh from the hamper. If my husband is reading this, he's A) completely mortified and deleting me as a Facebook friend B) printing this out to take to a marriage therapist.
So now that I've framed it out, back to the school program. The kid performing in his "clean" duds goes to car, lays on the garage floor and crawls under the car to get to his side. I lost it. Compared to some of the idiotic things I've witnessed in my raising of boys for the last decade, this is certainly small, but come on! Who DOES that?! I mean, if you're just going to belly crawl through filth, can't you do it before you get spiffed up? There's no time to change now, and since we had already scrounged in the dirty pile for nice clothes, it's not like we had a lot of options to fall back on anyway.
God is good though. When I dropped the boy off in his class, the teacher was handing out cardboard Christmas trees for all the kids to wear. It covered his garage grime perfectly! But then I had the thought, it also would have covered cartoon screen print and holes in the knees. Oh well, I guess he can pull those out of the hamper and wear them tomorrow.
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