Picture Day!!

Remember school picture day?  Everyone gets all fancy.  I always had to wear a nice Sunday dress and lights and cool slippery shoes that make neat clip clop noises in the hallways.  Except for maybe fifth grade when I must have begged and begged because I am wearing a pastel blue sweatshirt with an embroidered duck or goose or something.  I bet I fought hard, but now twenty five years later I wish I had lost that fight. I have no shame. If it wasn’t in storage somewhere in DC I’d post it for you.  It’s awesome. Sorry.

 

Yesterday was picture day for Maddie Mae and she woke up on the wrong side of the bed.  This girl is froo froo to the max and loves fluffy dresses and fancy everything.   But not yesterday.  Brian pulled about every dress in the closet out for her and we have a TON thanks to having five girl cousins supplying us with hand me downs. In the end she was finally persuaded to wear something that wasn’t my favorite but certainly acceptable.

 

Then her hair. She almost never lets me fix her hair.  Brushing it out is mandatory and beyond that she can choose what she wants.  Nineteen times out of twenty it’s, “Nothing today mom.  Just down.”  That can look just fine, but right now she is growing out her bangs.  She asked for braids.  Wincing I replied that I would do my best.  I ended up with a half pony tail then braided as best I could approximately three quarters of an inch and threw another elastic in her hair at the back of her head hoping nothing would actually show.

 

Next we sat down to do her morning reading on the couch.  She is every bit of five years old this kid.  She wriggled and twisted, twitched and wormed her way around on the couch as she read me the story.  In the end she succeeded in rubbing all the nicely secured hair on the sides into a nice mess.  Realizing I could fix it now but in two hours she’d look exactly the same…I just let it go.

 

In the end she revealed to me that her entire goal was to make herself “look like someone not in our family.”  How am I supposed to take that?  She reassured me that it was okay though because her teacher Ms. Kiran would be able to find her on the playground because she has glasses and she’s the only kid with glasses so she could be tricky and everything would still be fine if no one else knew who she was because of the braid in her hair.

 

Ben’s picture day is today.  Or not. Or yes.  Wait. Let me check the email from his teacher.  Yep.  Today. Nope. The other one says sorry for the mistake it’s Thursday.  Hey, the next email says the first one was wrong.  And this one says the other two emails were in error.  Hey, there is another email sent today after most his students are on the bus already – it says yes it IS today.  Then after my kid left on his scooter for school the new email says on Thursday.  School has begun.  One last email.  Oops again. It is TODAY…but only half the kids sitting in the classroom are dressed for it….hold on…he’ll talk to the administration and see if the whole class can be redone on the Friday makeup day.  Poor, poor man.  He’s just trying to do his job but what a mess. Frankly I’m glad I have a boy.  No fancy shoes, tights to get runs on the playground and nice dresses to prepare and making the hair just right.  Just slap a collared shirt on the kid and his hair should mostly stay put since he has a fresh new haircut.  Heaven help the moms of the girls. And bless the poor teacher. I think he needs a weekend break. At least in the teacher stuff that matters, Ben thinks he is doing a pretty great job and that is way more important than picture day.