I started this post months ago, apparently on picture day September 2nd the fourth week of school. I think I waited so I could include pictures but since my new policy is "go ahead and post it and try to find the time and patience to insert pictures later" I'm cutting and pasting it to a new post. This gives a fair example of our life, except now that the school year is half over, we're even BUSIER. And now that picture day is over, I'm back to NOT choosing well matched outfits as one of the battles to pursue with the kids. Now that it's winter, I'm choosing the battle of coats and footwear. "Do you want to wear your coat or carry your coat?" there is NO option of not taking a coat, but I usually find Michael's coat left in the car anyway. (And Jacob is forever leaving his coats behind somewhere.) And someday, when my normally kind, compassionate, extremely brilliant oldest son actually has common sense and wears shoes (without being hunted down by a distraught mother, and a small army she enlists, to be FORCED to wear some protective foot covering), I'll share more true stories of woe, of a tortured teenaged son drug into shoe stores and a silly mother who thought that maybe this time, he would actually cooperate and try some on, find a good fit and ACTUALLY wear them (even in the snow!) on a regular basis. But I'll wait until it's one of those "things in the past," when I think it's funny and not sad, when I can laugh instead of cry about it. I wonder if Thomas Edison refused to wear shoes too, and if he also calmly gave his mother the same "facts" about how wearing shoes actually makes us sicker, and weaker, and slower...
So, on to Picture Day
September 2, 2008
Today is school picture day for my younger three and myself. My oldest already had his a couple weeks ago. For the last few years, I quit buying the packages and I just buy their class pictures and a year book and I have individual and family pictures done on our own. But I still want my kids to look clean and groomed and look like a non-color-blind person who has common sense picked out their outfits. It shows respect for the class and the teacher and shows that we can be civilized human beings at least on picture day. And so begins the tragedy.
Michael's hair grows the fastest and should be cut every couple weeks. I'm lucky to have the time and energy (to get him to cooperate and to agree to come out of hiding and to sit still for it) every couple months. Nathan can get away with waiting that long if I cut it real short each time. Jacob's hair is still so thin and hardly grows at all that I could probably cut his twice a year and it would still meet Missionary / Army standards. Last night, with the excuse of already having everything out and ready because I had just trimmed near Nathan's ears, I proceeded to hunt down and capture Michael. I'm sure he thought I was the meanest person on Earth to make him suffer again so soon, when he'd already had his haircut and picture day. After my several unsuccessful solo attempts, I enlisted Grandpa's assistance, and was finally able to complete another round of haircut torture. (Michael and Nathan don't want long hair, they just HATE getting haircuts and feeling those little hairs on their skin, which ALWAYS happens no matter how I try to prevent it. Jacob's hair is still baby soft, not as prickly, but he HATES how the razor tickles.)
Nathan wanted to wear "the Pooh Bear hat" for his picture, and make one of his weird "rubber face" faces. Being a reasonable (and worn out) mother who knows when to pick her battles (well, maybe just this once), I agreed to the hat if he promised not to do the face and to just smile pleasantly and not make the poor photographer's day any more difficult. This was at least verbally agreed to.
So, on to Picture Day
September 2, 2008
Today is school picture day for my younger three and myself. My oldest already had his a couple weeks ago. For the last few years, I quit buying the packages and I just buy their class pictures and a year book and I have individual and family pictures done on our own. But I still want my kids to look clean and groomed and look like a non-color-blind person who has common sense picked out their outfits. It shows respect for the class and the teacher and shows that we can be civilized human beings at least on picture day. And so begins the tragedy.
Michael's hair grows the fastest and should be cut every couple weeks. I'm lucky to have the time and energy (to get him to cooperate and to agree to come out of hiding and to sit still for it) every couple months. Nathan can get away with waiting that long if I cut it real short each time. Jacob's hair is still so thin and hardly grows at all that I could probably cut his twice a year and it would still meet Missionary / Army standards. Last night, with the excuse of already having everything out and ready because I had just trimmed near Nathan's ears, I proceeded to hunt down and capture Michael. I'm sure he thought I was the meanest person on Earth to make him suffer again so soon, when he'd already had his haircut and picture day. After my several unsuccessful solo attempts, I enlisted Grandpa's assistance, and was finally able to complete another round of haircut torture. (Michael and Nathan don't want long hair, they just HATE getting haircuts and feeling those little hairs on their skin, which ALWAYS happens no matter how I try to prevent it. Jacob's hair is still baby soft, not as prickly, but he HATES how the razor tickles.)
Nathan wanted to wear "the Pooh Bear hat" for his picture, and make one of his weird "rubber face" faces. Being a reasonable (and worn out) mother who knows when to pick her battles (well, maybe just this once), I agreed to the hat if he promised not to do the face and to just smile pleasantly and not make the poor photographer's day any more difficult. This was at least verbally agreed to.
When he was little, he absolutely insisted that "Ernie" be in his yearly picture with him. (Ernie from Sesame Street) I found him at a thrift store for him when he was a baby and he was an almost constant companion for a few years. I even had to find another Ernie once when original Ernie disappeared for a little while. Ernie now resides in Nathan's room along with about 200 other animals and friends collected over the years.
To explain "the Pooh Bear hat" - almost 5 years ago, when Dad and Mom took the kids and I to Disneyland for Christmas, we got Jessica and Jacob each a soft polar fleece hat that covers their ears and Velcros under their chins. The hats are bright yellow and red and have Pooh Bear's face on the front and his cute little ears on top. They were on clearance at WalMart and were obviously a great deal with how often they've been worn and washed and stretched and they're still in good shape. Michael and Nathan have worn them to be silly, or because they wanted to play in the snow and it was the first hat they found. This past winter though, I could not find where I'd stored all the snow accessories - hats, scarves, gloves - but the Pooh Bear hats were still with Jacob's clothes, and Nathan started wearing one of them everywhere, even at school. He wore it to PEEC and on Scout campouts. Nathan has one of those faces and personalities and the confidence that he can do something silly and it's cool. Anyway, since he'll have it on half the year when it's cold, his school/yearbook/ID/class picture better show the hat or no one will recognize him.
The issue of the boys' hair (and hats) done, and their clothes done (their pick of any clean non ragged shirt and jeans), that just left Jessica and I. Here's where the real tragedy begins. The younger kids' class pictures show them all standing on the bleachers with their teachers. Therefore, unlike other days when it doesn't matter and I don't care so much, for their school pictures they must wear something on the bottom half that blends decently with what they choose to wear on the top half. I am not very good at picking outfits. I like shirts and pants that you buy in sets so I don't have to figure it out, or just wearing jeans - they go with almost everything. I do know when something is a really bad color combination though, I can't explain why it is, and I don't know how to choose something that works better, but I know when it DOESN'T work together. This morning, Jessica, who usually has a great natural fashion sense, kept picking bizarre combinations which I kept turning down, which led to me sinking from my status of just the regular title of "Mean Mom" accompanied by some stamping of feet, to her full wailing, "you HATE me!!! No one likes me, everyone HATES me!" accompanied by MUCHO tears and storming off and flinging herself into dark corners where apparently only the dust bunnies understand her, and on and on and on. Nothing went right for her this morning, and it was ALL VERY TERRIBLE. I'm sure you can all completely agree and feel her pain. At one point, she glimpsed her face in the mirror, all red and splotchy from crying, and got all upset AGAIN because her face was all red and splotchy. Somehow, we got clothes on (her "well then I just won't wear anything then" strike defeated) and hair combed and drove to school (she missed the bus) and into class.
Update - After I washed the Pooh Bear hat and had it laying out for Nathan and had agreed he could wear it and even signed a little note on his picture package envelope giving my permission that he could wear it for his picture, Nathan forgot to take it. He wanted to do retakes but since all I purchase is the class picture, and they don't retake that, he has to suffer with an ID with a Pooh-Bear-hat-less picture, same thing for the yearbook and for the class picture. There will probably be plenty of candid yearbook pictures of Nathan wearing it.
The issue of the boys' hair (and hats) done, and their clothes done (their pick of any clean non ragged shirt and jeans), that just left Jessica and I. Here's where the real tragedy begins. The younger kids' class pictures show them all standing on the bleachers with their teachers. Therefore, unlike other days when it doesn't matter and I don't care so much, for their school pictures they must wear something on the bottom half that blends decently with what they choose to wear on the top half. I am not very good at picking outfits. I like shirts and pants that you buy in sets so I don't have to figure it out, or just wearing jeans - they go with almost everything. I do know when something is a really bad color combination though, I can't explain why it is, and I don't know how to choose something that works better, but I know when it DOESN'T work together. This morning, Jessica, who usually has a great natural fashion sense, kept picking bizarre combinations which I kept turning down, which led to me sinking from my status of just the regular title of "Mean Mom" accompanied by some stamping of feet, to her full wailing, "you HATE me!!! No one likes me, everyone HATES me!" accompanied by MUCHO tears and storming off and flinging herself into dark corners where apparently only the dust bunnies understand her, and on and on and on. Nothing went right for her this morning, and it was ALL VERY TERRIBLE. I'm sure you can all completely agree and feel her pain. At one point, she glimpsed her face in the mirror, all red and splotchy from crying, and got all upset AGAIN because her face was all red and splotchy. Somehow, we got clothes on (her "well then I just won't wear anything then" strike defeated) and hair combed and drove to school (she missed the bus) and into class.
Update - After I washed the Pooh Bear hat and had it laying out for Nathan and had agreed he could wear it and even signed a little note on his picture package envelope giving my permission that he could wear it for his picture, Nathan forgot to take it. He wanted to do retakes but since all I purchase is the class picture, and they don't retake that, he has to suffer with an ID with a Pooh-Bear-hat-less picture, same thing for the yearbook and for the class picture. There will probably be plenty of candid yearbook pictures of Nathan wearing it.
