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Thursday, May 17, 2018

Good mom, bad mom

I probably don't have to tell you how crazy my month has been so far (largely because I have been telling you). Suffice it to say, I have only been home for six days this month. So. Hello.

I've been having trouble keeping up with laundry, let alone everything else. In fact, in between my Alberta trip and my North Carolina trip I just washed and dried the clothes and left them sitting in baskets, unfolded because I literally didn't have time to fold them before leaving again.

But they were folded and (largely) put away by the time we got home, thanks to my wonderfully helpful oldest daughters (and my mother-in-law, too).

Anyway, we didn't get home until after bedtime on Monday and so we first saw the children on Tuesday morning. Miriam flounced around in her cute little dress from Mexico and said, "Do you know why I'm dressed all fancy? It's because Ms. Dickson told us to because it's our performance today and we have to look nice!"

And I did my best to look like I was not panicking and said, "Oh, yeah. What time is that at again?"

"2:00!" Miriam chirped.

Phew! I could totally have my act together by 2:00. I was afraid she was going to say 9:00 and my brain was screaming, "You just stepped off a plane! You are exhausted and you need a shower ASAP!" But 2:00? 2:00 I could do.


The little ones and I arrived at the school at 1:45 and the gym was already packed but I found a few seats together and wrangled my little crew down the row to claim them.

After spending the majority of this month taking care of only the baby (or only the baby and my oldest girls), taking all three of the littlest kids to an hour long program felt utterly bonkers. They were wriggly and chatty and argumentative and clingy and whiney and...pretty much normal kiddos...but seriously I think it felt fifty times more exhausting than it normally does.

Anyway, Miriam did a fabulous job. She smiled, she sang animatedly with her mouth open and her eyes wide, she did all the actions energetically. It was like a 180 from her performance with the choir. (You might think that it's impossible to sing without opening your mouth, but...you didn't watch my girls perform with the choir. So. Yeah.)

Her special part in the program was waving an American flag to the song "What's More American" and she said she was actually glad she got to wave a flag because she could hold it in front of her face when she didn't want to sing the overtly patriotic words. I can't say I blame her because the song pays homage to flipping Robert E. Lee and was a little cringe-worthy. The words that particularly got her goat, so to speak, were "our heritage is second to none," which she feels isn't fair to the rest of the world. She's a sweetie and I love her.

I should mention that they also sang this song about "Washington, Lincoln, and King," which was nice, for a patriotic song.

The rest of the program was lovely and the slideshow at the end, though a little lengthy (15 minutes, folks), was also lovely. I didn't get many good pictures (did I say many? I meant any) good pictures, but perhaps I can drum some up tomorrow. That's not really the point of this post.

The point of this post is that I sent the girls off to their church activities this evening and then went to the park with the little kids (and Daddy and Grandpa and cousin Riley) and when we got home Miriam said, "Tonight was our mother/daughter thing."

"What mother/daughter thing?" I asked.

"The mother/daughter thing," she said.

"Like, at activity days?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"WHAT?!" I gasped. "Why didn't you come get me? I would have come. I had no idea!"

To be fair, she had also completely forgotten about it.

After much brain-picking, I finally remembered that Miriam had in fact given me an invitation for this activity on May 2nd (immediately after that week's activity, which was Rachel's mother/daughter night). I put it in my pocket and even pulled it out at the store later that evening (we'd gone to get Rachel some new shoes and some road trip snacks, prior to our departure to Canada the following morning).

But that was the last time I saw that invite. It didn't even make it onto the calendar and I've since travelled some six thousand miles and have missed the last three weeks of church (at our ward; I've gone to other wards) I could have used a reminder. Any sort of reminder would have been nice.

Rachel's group got both an email and a facebook message about their activity.

Miriam's group got nothing. So she was there, but I wasn't.

She said it was alright because there were like three other girls there without their mothers (which means half the girls who attended forgot to bring their mothers, which is why reminders for events get two thumbs up) and all they did was paint nails and stuff, so...blah. But I still feel terrible that I missed it (especially since we live thirty seconds away from the church and I totally could have gone)!

You win some, you lose some, I guess.

I suppose I could just, like, get better at calendaring. Or the world could assume that people's lives are insanely complicated so a reminder anything would be a huge help (because even when I do put things on my calendar I forget about them (that's how good I am at life (like her end-of-year performance? That was totally on the calendar and I completely forgot about it until she reminded me))). Like, the primary secretary here puts all the assignments for primary in a Facebook message on Saturday and tags all the parents and I love it because even though I know Benjamin is supposed to give a talk on Sunday, I will forget and remember this fact fifty times between right now and then.

What I'm saying is, nag me. Nag me gently, but nag me.

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