Pictures

Being a parent of the Pinterest generation is tough. The 3% of overachieving moms ruin it for the rest of us. They really do. One of thousands of areas in which I come up short is taking pictures. I mean. I have my iphone. And it's loaded with random pictures of my kids that I snap just as they stop doing the cute thing they were just doing. So I try. But I always have grandiose ideas of holiday memories that will be forever immortalized in a frame on the wall or a scrapbook on the coffee table. Christmas outfits holding sweetly smiling children, who are peanut butter and booger -free, whose arms rest lightly around their darling siblings. Everyone is looking at the camera at the same time. Easter pictures with eggs and bunnies and pastel. Valentine's Day cards in the mail, displaying red and pink-clad offspring asking their Auntie to be their Valentine.

Quick! Take a picture! I'm going to need to remember this someday!


It just doesn't happen like that. Evelyn barfed on her little leprechaun-cute green on St. Patty's Day and I forgot to put the glittery green headband on her androgynously bald head, since green isn't exactly gender-specific. So I didn't take pictures. Even though I freakin' love St. Patty's Day and geek out on all my friends and stuff corned beef and cabbage down their throats and sing Irish drinking songs to my kids. They cheers with milk. Cow and breast. We've got all kinds.

The point is, my pinterest-dreams rarely solidify into the perfect pictures. And it is one of many things I hold over my head to force me to be a better mother.

By the way, it doesn't work. Holding things over my own head, I mean.

So I suggest this: let's give ourselves a break. Let's quit living in the "not-good-enough" mentality that makes us forget the good stuff. Let's take pictures when we can (it IS important) and then let's enjoy being with our kids instead of forcing them to pose for one more for facebook.  I'll check my phone while my kid shovels sand at the playground and you can show up to our playdate in yoga pants. I'll break out the pre-cooked, sliced chicken every now and then and you can buy art for your baby's nursery instead of making it out of marshmallows and salvaged wood. I'll frame iPhone photos and we'll cheers over the convenience of disposable diapers. And we won't judge each other.

Deal? Deal.

Quick! Take a picture of me not freaking out! I'm going to need to remember this someday!