(Taylor's mermaid themed birthday party set-up)
Every few weeks or so a blog article makes its way around the internet and goes "viral" if you will. The last one I remember vividly was the
Don't Carpe Diem blog post, and most recently one titled
"Your Children Want You" has been making the circles. It's been posted in my Facebook timeline at least several times a day for the last 2 weeks. I finally read it this morning, although from the comments online I had pretty much already gathered the gist of it. You can read it for yourself, it's a lovely well written article, but the bottom line is, your kids want you to be there, to be present and stress free, and not be so focused and preoccupied with being the perfect homemaker. A beautiful and worthy message.
In reading it however, and more so reading people's comments and reactions to it, I can't help feeling like either way as a woman, you just can't win. If you aren't the perfect baker or decorator or hostess extraordinaire, you feel crappy. But if you do in fact excel in some of those areas and spend time making things pretty and lovely, well then your priorities are out of whack and you're missing the whole point of this motherhood thing. I just wish that either way, we would all just give each other a break and accept each other, and ourselves, for who we are.
Taylor's 7th birthday party was this weekend. Last year we had a small family party and kept it simple, and for Syd we celebrated in Yosemite. I tend to take every other year off for parties, and this year I felt good and rejuvenated to throw the birthday girl a fairly good sized party. She asked for a pool party with a mermaid theme. I searched Pinterest for a few minutes and got some inspiration, mainly
this party here. I mainly used a color story as the focus of the party, with a few doses of sea life thrown in. Sugar cookies cut out in the shape of sea stars or dolphins, mermaid stamped goodie bags, and, mermaid terrariums.
Instead of goodie bags, I sent each child home with a homemade sugar cookie, either in the shape of a dolphin or a starfish. We frosted the cookies together on Friday afternoon after school. I always bake a few extra for this tradition, and the kids really love sitting there with me creating their own works of art. Taylor also stamped each card herself.
The craft idea just sort of came to me the week before the party. With succulents mimicking seaweed and grasses for algae, the girls created little mermaid fantasy terrariums, filling their jars with sand, succulents, pretty rocks, stones and shells, and some mermaids of course.
I will admit the cake caused me some stress. Taylor saw it on the cover of Better Homes & Gardens and requested it. It's pink, it's ombre, it tastes like pink lemonade! Of course, what little girl wouldn't want it? Baking cakes from scratch always stresses me out, but she was pretty excited for this cake and so I obliged. It came out great and she loved it. And hey, it saved me some cash - have you seen how much bakery cakes are these days? Ridiculous!
Taylor had a great time at her party. She swam all day with her friends and cousins, got to eat all the pizza she wanted (the only thing I made was a salad - and just ordered pizzas), and got to beat the crap out of a fish shaped pinata. Every 7 year olds dream birthday, right?
Of course I didn't have to make the tissue pom poms or bake and frost 40 cookies from scratch. But the thing is I love doing that stuff. I love creating pretty things, and for the most part, it is fun for me and not stressful.
But there are other ways I fall short as a mother every day. I snap at them too much, I'm not patient enough, I wish I could let go more like Art does and play trains and Legos with Syd for hours on the floor. I read other blog articles, that don't contain pinnable pictures mind you, written by what seem like the most patient, loving and understanding of mothers and I think to myself, darn, I could be doing this better. But overall, I think it all balances out. Sure maybe someday the kids will say "Mom was so cranky sometimes." But hopefully they'll also say "Wow, mom sure was a good baker", or "Remember those cookies she used to make for every occasion?" It's sort of how I remember my Grandma Tita. She in all honesty, could be a bit harsh. She wasn't the most gentle of women, but she showed her love in other ways. For me I always felt her love through her cooking, and still do. I can't fault her for that and begrudge her for the type of person she was.
Scrape away the title of "mother", and we as people all excel at something. For some it's patience by the buckets full, for others it's creating things. I hope I can achieve a balance of all things admirable that a mother should posses, but for now I do the best I can and between the snips and snaps, I make sure to give my kids lots of hugs and kisses and tell them a thousand times a day how much I love them. That's all any of us really can do, and anything beyond that is just icing on the cake as far as I'm concerned.
