No, my dog Tiger didn't take this photo...I did. Let me explain. I have always wanted to read the book, "I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids". It rings so true to me. I had a vision of myself being so organized and put together and that is just not the case for me a lot of days. Valentines day for example...even just a few days ago I had a vision of what I wanted to get done. It is Elle's first Valentines Day that she is in school. I went to Michaels and bought a mold to make cookie suckers. Yep, heart shaped cookies on a stick! Elle and I could make them and frost them together, tie them in cute red bows and hand them out to her little friends and teacher at school. Yesterday at about 10:45 I was reading a note sent home from her teacher a WEEK ago. It said that they would be celebrating Valentines Day one day early because the teacher was going to be out of town. What??!! School started in just 20 minutes!!! I threw a pink shirt on Elle put her in the car with Gwen who was screaming as well. I grabbed a red pen, scissors and a roll of red ribbon and threw it all in the car. We drove to Albertsons, I put both crying girls in the shopping cart, rolled them straight to the cheesy valentine section. Elle took too long trying to choose her Valentines so I just chose the princess pack for her. I grabbed a bag of pink tootsie pops and hurried to the cashier. Out at the car I made Elle sign her name on them with the red pen (a red pen...how festive of me). She is only 3 and I was making her sign the cards on her lap in a grocery cart with a marker while I am saying, "hurry up Elle, an E an E now an L not a P!!!" We raced to school where I hastily wrapped the tootsie pops in the red ribbon for her to hand out. She jumped out of the car and I made her take a picture holding everything...because any "good" mom would have a picture of her daughters first school Valentines Day. Since I am in a photography class, my camera is set on the Manual Mode (ugh). The settings were set for pictures I had taken INSIDE the NIGHT before. So needless to say the picture is WAY over exposed. She looks like a blown out ghost...but I got the "money shot"...you can't tell her face from her shirt but I got it. We will make the cookies another day and I think it's time for me to surrender to the myth of "perfection" in this art of motherhood.
