Ha! Well, with that metric, I am a great mother (my lack of CEO status notwithstanding)! Last week today we had my kid's fourth birthday party with a butterfly theme and a great time was had by all—even me, although it left me kind of exhausted. In fact, I keep thinking today is going to be such a great and relaxing Saturday compared to last week, in which I was kind of running around shopping, cleaning (inside the house and out), preparing food and activities (starting a day or two before, actually.) Since I am a scrappy bohemian type with (mostly) down-to-earth friends, I took the "I did it myself, therefore it is quaint and lovely regardless of the quality or perfection" route. This always works for me. If other people think poorly of me or my productions for it, they certainly don't show it. And, I guess this is a real-life illustration of what I am already finding problematic about The Mommy Myth book I quote from above—one can be a hands on, in-the-trenches, seemingly Martha Stewarty, crafty mom, but not really be, because I am, but I'm not. I do the stuff, but I do it to my own ability, patience level and financial capacity and to me, it's the doing (alongside your child) not necessarily the perfection of the result that counts. The Mommy Myth authors, though, seem to have too big a chip on their shoulder to just give it a try (or not and just own that they don't want to)—but more on that in another post. First, about the party...
My daughter and I made our own invitations for the party. We (I) made our own food and cake and games. Some highlights: pin the body on the butterfly, butterfly shaped grilled cheese sandwiches, make your own goodie bags where we laid out art supplies with which the girls could stuff treats from a butterfly piñata, and a pretty butterfly cake. For the parents, I had a spinach, gorgonzola, walnut and cranberry salad and some baguette, fresh mozzarella, tomato and basil stacks. We kept the invitees to girls in her preschool class and a couple other girls. With a few that couldn't make it, we ended up with the perfect number, 5 girls, including mine. Very manageable. But, they are four years old after all, and some girls are noisier and pushier than others.
It ended up with 2 noisy, pushy ones and 2 mellow ones, then mine, who is decidedly on the mellow side. For some reason the noisy, pushy ones really wore me out. They ventured into the kitchen and asked for food that just happened to be in my house and was not set out or designated for the party. They asked for food before it's ready when there was already plenty of food out. They inserted themselves into my adult conversations with other parents, loudly and relentlessly. They had to be held back from getting the first grab at the piñata ribbon or blowing out the candles on the cake (I mean, we are gracious and polite to our guests, but it is my kids's birthday celebration after all.) I was totally nice, though and smiled through it all, gave them the food they wanted and all that. Anyway, it all left me feeling super tired and wondering if it was worth it.
For a day or two before and the morning of, I had to tell my kid, no, I can't do A, B or C with you right now because I am doing X, Y or Z, for your birthday party...you know, with all your friends. As the lovely, good-natured child she is, she accepted it, but I still felt a little bad. A little. The morning I was decorating (hanging 24 little cardboard butterflies from the deck gazebo thingy for a game, that also served as decoration) she watched and said "Thank you for all your hard work for my party, mommy! The decorations looks great!" She really said this. LOVE. So, I guess it was worth it.
It's funny that I should come across the quote I opened my post with on this very day that I set out to read The Mommy Myth, a book I'd previously heard of, but which I now became interested in again after it was mentioned in one of the Motherlode comments in a recent online discussion. I've just made it through the introduction and it's already exhausting—but interesting! So, there'll be a future post on that soon.
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