Mom-Fails

There is nothing like holidays to remind me of my mom-fails.

Since Halloween is today, let’s start there. The kids will tell you that we carved a pumpkin exactly once. I didn’t have any philosophical objections – just never got around to it (well, except that one time). Here’s the picture of them all with the famous pumpkin. Don’t they look thrilled? They might have gotten more excited if they had known it would be their one and only time to experience this momentous event. Costumes were always another opportunity to fail. I didn’t buy them, and I didn’t make them. Well, I take that back. I sewed a couple of costumes one year, for the younger two, not from a pattern and it wasn’t exactly the best experience in my life. I did sew little costume thingies for their dress-up box, periodically, and so I always told them to make their own costume or get something from the dress-up box. They had a few hand-me-down costumes that friends or cousins gave us, and all of them cycled through those fancy things; otherwise, they were on their own. If you look at the pictures, you can tell.

You can’t really fail at Thanksgiving if you never host the holiday, but I don’t think I can get any points back there, either. I have made maybe one turkey in my entire life and zero mashed potatoes. I do make a mean pumpkin dessert, but if that’s all a person had on Thanksgiving, I believe they would go home disappointed.

Maybe I did OK at Christmas, but a large part of that was because of my mother-in-law. She sewed the kids an Advent calendar that was always a high point of the season. She made them their own little nativity scene that they could play with and chew on. She also made them fancy Christmas stockings to hang “by the chimney with care.” And don’t forget the Christmas outfits she made for them each year. I coasted through Christmas, with all the hard jobs done.

Easter was another fail. The kids will tell you that they never dyed Easter eggs. I blame Emily’s fifth birthday, which was stressful from the beginning as she had just been diagnosed with celiac disease and was not in the best health. I made our first gluten-free chocolate cake, and it was a crumbly mess. Her birthday was around Easter, so I decided to do egg decoration as a craft at the party. Disaster occurred because I accidentally soft boiled the eggs instead of hard boiling them. The memory of that trauma kept me from attempting boiled eggs of any variety for a good number of years. With much counseling and reading of online advice, I finally began the process of healing that scar in the past few years.

Em with her first GF birthday cake. No pictures of the egg-disaster.

Did I mention that my mother-in-law also made Easter outfits for the kids?

So, Emily, Joseph, Laura, and David – I recognize the shortfalls you have had to deal with as adults: no fond memories of carving pumpkins or dying Easter eggs, among many others. (Oh yeah, and no sports either. Piano lessons were enough for me to handle scheduling. I should probably save that for another blog....) I apologize and really do wish I could go back and redo a few holidays with all of you little again. I’m not sure I’d carve out the time to carve out a pumpkin or really do anything differently, but you were amazing kids and I’d just like to spend time with you at those precious ages again. Mom-fails are a part of my life, as are wife-fails and friend-fails. I’m eternally grateful that perfection is not required in this life of ours, and that forgiveness is also a (big) part of my life.

They were adorable, right? Who wouldn't want to hang out with them.