Mother of the Year

Now there's an award I won't be winning any time soon. Mother of the Year. Yup. Not even in contention on that one. The most recent reason for why is Casey's Holdiday Program at school. Somehow everyone else in the class got the message that they were supposed to pick up their children early yesterday and change them into appropriate, dressy attire for the program. Not us. I'm thinking the note went out on Friday, when pick-up wasn't in the classroom, so we didn't get the papers from Casey's file. Boy did I feel stupid. Take a look:




I blurred the photo to try and cover the other kids' faces, so hopefully they aren't recognizable bu tyou can still see what they are wearing. Notice Casey in the middle, in his sweatshirt and jeans. And notice all the other kids around him-- the girls in fancy dresses and the boy in a suit and tie. Yup. I blew it.


The sad thing is, I could have picked up Casey and taken him home to get all dressed up yesterday. I had the beginnings of a migraine headache, though, so when I left work early and found myself passing the preschool at 5pm, instead of picking up Casey and taking him home to change, I went home and laid down for 20 minutes, then went to get Marcie. Our original plan was not to pick up Casey early anyhow (because we didn't realize we should change him). Even more sad is that I could have easily brought him a change of clothes to wear-- I mean, I made cookies over the weekend and I took them to work with me so I'd have them. It wouldn't have been more work to bring his adorable snowman Christmas sweater with the matching courdoroy pants his grandmother picked out. She even hemmed the pants and took in the waist so the outfit would fit him correctly. Again, I blame myself for not knowing I was supposed to dress him up . . .


Though, my guess is that everyone who knows Casey just figured, "Oh, he refused to dress up so they just brought him in what he wanted to wear. That's SO Casey." That's what I'm hoping anyway. . .


Another reason I won't be winning mother of the year? I forgot to put the media card in the digital camera before I grabbed it. I remembered to charge it up, but I didn't check to make sure there was memory! What an idiot! Fortunately, I was able to take four photos, and I did bring the video camera, so we have the whole show on video.


Speaking of the video, this brings me to the final reason (in this episode) for why I won't be winning Mother of the Year any time soon. In the video, you can see (and hear) all the children in Casey's class singing the words to the song beautifully. Now, there's no question that Casey knows all the words to the songs. He and I sang them before bed together on Sunday night. We've been practicing for a couple weeks. But did Casey sing them for an audience? Of course not. Instead, he stood in the very center of all the children half-singing, half-shouting, "WHO WHO WHO, WHO WHO WHO!" Jason was laughing so hard at this, I think the video camera might have been shaking. And those of you who know Casey probably think this is totally amusing, and very Casey-like behavior.


So why would Casey do this when he knows all the words? Well, first because it got him quite a lot of attention. But also because I didn't feed him dinner before the show. I didn't even give him a snack. Casey always gets a snack on his way home from school before dinner because it helps keep him focused. But not last night because his lunch bag was in the classroom, behind some tables. And I forgot to go locate it to feed the poor kid. Now he still had dinner before 7pm, so it's not like it was the end of the world. But I am confident that if I were a better mother and had picked him up early, gotten him dressed appropriately, and fed him a snack, I would have saved the teachers a boatload of anxiety during the show. Not to mention eliminating my own embarrassment.


Someone commented to me, when I explained how mortified I felt, "Well, you can't do it all-- give yourself a break-- you are in school and working, too." Even if this is true, it is just not good enough. That's just no excuse for dropping the ball (particularly because I took my last final last week and haven't really worked on my paper since then-- but even if I were still in the middle of finals, it wouldn't be good enough). I chose to be a mother. I knew it would be hard to balance with school and work, but it's what I wanted more than anything in the world. To shirk these small responsibilities is totally unfair to Casey. . . Thankfully he won't likely remember this Holiday program and my sub-par parenting skills. And I am pretty sure it will never happen again. Of course, we do have it on video now, for all time. . . what a whacky period of our lives. . .