I want to be better at these things. I want to be the mom who whips out a cake and snaps her fingers and suddenly BAM, little flags with Fable's name! BAM, centerpiece made from recycled perfume bottles! BAM, beautiful theme party dripping in lanterns with a front lawn clean enough for a flock of four year old girls to dance barefoot in!
The reality? Me at Target trying to choose between Tiana and Rapunzel paper cups and dog shit all over the yard.
I feel guilt for being a terrible organizer. Guilt for not wanting to bake Fable a cake. Guilt for wishing I could hire someone to do the whole thing for me. All fancy like in the magazines. Guilt for thinking that those kinds of things matter in the first place. (Kids care zero about perfume bottle centerpieces. Mine don't anyway.)
I am coming close to mastering the art of being "present" with my kids but I fail miserably at the "planning" portion of the exam. I'm always late and out of gas. And every time I buy the ingredients to "make the cake" I freeze. I cannot follow the directions of a recipe. It's why there are no cookbooks in the house and everything I make is just "stuff in a pan". My moms recipes? Amazing. Have I ever followed any of them? Nope. I can't. I can't follow directions or stick to an outline or cook a fucking recipe. And when I do cook? I have no idea what I'm making. I never have any idea what I'm making or what I'm doing and when things go right, it's pure coincidence.
I am flying blind here. Which makes a hectic life a lot less so because what happens next week, let alone, tomorrow, is completely off my radar most of the time. I do what I can and tomorrow I'll do the same thing. Except tomorrow I have to have a certain number of cupcakes for Fable's school and pizza ordered by a certain time and suddenly I'm in the fetal position rocking back and forth in the corner of my bedroom.
Planning for the future has always paralyzed me. It's why I dropped out of college on my first day and why I got married in Vegas six months pregnant and why I was even pregnant in the first place. It's why I have no idea what to do with a bucket list, let alone a grocery list. It's why everything in my life has happened sort of on accident. All of the good things. All of the bad things. Whoops, there it is. All of it. Bam.
But part of being a human person, specifically a human mother, is learning how to plan and prepare and follow directions on the side of a cake mix box. I know this and yet... here I am writing this post when I should be not writing this post.
Which, I guess brings me to the end of whatever this is. A rant? A can't? Because the day is almost over and I'm still wearing last night's sleep shirt with dried toothpaste on my pimple. And although there have been plenty of times when I've felt like a badass in the mom department, today has not been one of them.
GGC
11 comments:
Don't be so hard on yourself! You are a great mum, even if you can't follow a cake recipe. You make up for that in so many other ways. You are amazing and your kids love you!
CAN'T is the real C word Rebecca! You can do it!! Believe in yourself woman. You can do anything. You're a fantastic mom and woman and one of my personal Heros! I love that you do things your own way and don't have to follow the cookie cutter mom stereotypes. Just celebrate her and that's what matters. Ps - could your mom bake her a cake? ;)
Ditto to megatron
You are a badass kickass mama to 4 beautiful kiddos. You don't have to stress. Just pick it all up tomorrow morning. It all works out!!! Happy birthday Fable!!!
One day soon the kids will be baking cakes for eachother...then you can focus on making centerpieces from recycled perfume bottles! I lookforeward to the photos. Don't worry, you rock as a mommy!
I have a coworker that starts planning her kids birthday six months before the actual date. Makes a fancy cake, homemade decorations, all the things we want to hate. But she has a kid that is bratty the whole party, complains about gifts and wants chocolate instead of white cake.
I prefer to wing it and hope that it all turns out ok. And my kids have never complained about the type of cake they have.
honey, there is a reason there are bakeries! ditch the guilt and party on!
You plan...just not cakes. So what. Look back on the nursery plan...the baby name plan. Etc, etc, etc...we can't all do it all even someone as badass as you!
Here's a question; how come Dads are not responsible for birthdays? Why do they escape Daddy guilt for doing nothing about birthdays? WHY???
You know all that time you "should" be spending planning or baking or shopping for crap party supplies that won't mean anything in the long run? You are spending being "present" and taking photos and writing and bonding as a family and making meaningful memories that will last so much longer and matter so much more! Wing it with a birthday party, you get the other 364 days a year so very right!
You dropped out of college on the first day?
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