Practically Perfect Pinterest Parenting
My baby girl turned four in January. Four! My baby! How did this happen? Wasn’t it just yesterday her fuzzy peach hair tickled under my chin as she snuggled in for a snooze after a long feeding?
Birthdays are hard; I’ll be honest, I kind of hate them. Don’t get me wrong, I do love celebrating my children and taking those moments to reflect on just how blessed I am to have them. As our family has grown however, and the amount of “stuff” we have accumulated has grown, I’ve spent more and more time looking at the presents with disdain and stressing over what we would give them. How can you encapsulate all those deep love feelings in a piece of Fisher Price or Mattel? How much Fisher Price or Mattel can you actually host in a playroom?
So, this January we decided to gift Violet an experience; TNB’s Beauty and the Beast with just her Dad and I followed by dinner out. We thought having one on one time with her parents would be a pretty treasured thing living in a big family, and live theatre is something special and out of the ordinary for us.
For two and a half months Violet and I planned and dreamed together of that Saturday afternoon in April. She would wear her Beauty and the Beast costume, her hair would be up in a half bun like Belle. She would wear her pretty gold shoes to match her ball gown and lipstick, oh there would be lipstick! We talked about going out for fancy dinner and having our picture taken together. It was a practically perfect Pinterest parenting moment… in our dreams.
Saturday morning dawned early. I wasn’t feeling great and had to go set up for a major event. I had a pretty big team lined up so I thought I’d be in and out by noon in lots of time to doll Violet up for our big excursion. But everything always takes longer than I think it will and at 1:20pm I was texting Chad to ask what time the show started.
The downtown flood plains had streets closed off to traffic as we flew to the 2pm showing. Violet was dressed in her Halloween glow in the dark tshirt and black leggings, stained and holes, and her fancy gold shoes. She was refusing the ball gown, refusing the hair, refusing the lipstick and there was no time to coerce her. As I tried one last time to convince her, Chad looked at me and said “Heidi, whose day is this anyway?”
The truth is, it was kind of mine. Would she even remember it? She would if there were pictures and it was perfect, wouldn’t she? Does she know at all how much we love her? I grumbled and muttered and took her hand as we headed into the Playhouse. I did notice most of the children weren’t dressed to the 9’s but it didn’t’ help my attitude one bit. The truth is, this wasn’t about her, this was about me, about my not so perfect parenting and all the Mommy guilt.
But as the lights dimmed and the show began, ball gown stuffed under the theatre seats, Violet crawled out of her very expensive seat and snuggled up in my very free lap. Her little fingers laced through mine and I watched her eyes widen in delight, her pretty pink lips open in wonder, and it all became clear again. This wasn’t about creating a practically perfect Pinterest parenting moment, this was about us, together. I struggled to hold back my Mommy tears as I watched more of her than the show.
We raced to see Belle and the Beast after the show so she could refuse a picture with them. The three of us struggled and took an unsuccessful selfie as she adamantly refused to look our way outside the theatre doors. We headed uptown for a fancy dinner at, you guessed it, McD’s loud and sticky playzone. Together.
Pinterest wouldn’t have been interested, but I wouldn’t have traded a moment of my imperfect afternoon with a soul.
