(Scarlette likes to help water the garden but she does NOT like to get her hands dirty. Nor does she like to wear tennis shoes.)
On blogs motherhood is reflected in artfully arranged Bento Boxes and hand crafted forts strung up with vibrant vintage sheets and Amy Butler fabric. Motherhood takes on a bit of a halo-effect in blogland because it’s easier to talk about the hour you spent doing baby sign language than it is about the extra hour you let your baby watch Elmo because she didn’t sleep last night and you’re exhausted and OHMYGOSHYOUJUSTCAN’TGETANYTHINGDONEAROUNDHERE.
And while I always strive to be authentic here I confess to sometimes tiptoeing to the edge of mommyblogging, fingers poised to type how I’m really feeling about motherhood that day. Like about how I hate toddler meal time with an intense, firey passion and if my very underweight baby keeps throwing all of her food down to the dog instead of putting it in her mouth I’m going to hurl myself off the back porch. But then I look over the edge and imagine my post free falling into a canyon of judgement echoed back to me by the internet and instead hit publish on some cute pictures of my baby.
In my defense she is really cute.
So here are some of my confessions about motherhood and the cute photos you see on my blog:
My baby does not always look put together. In the mornings we get dressed and she looks super cute. This is when I take pictures, both because the light is good and because she happens to still be wearing all of her clothing. Also because I just have the one child so three cups of coffee is still enough for me to muster the energy for a photo session.
By mid afternoon she’s most likely running around in a dirty top, a diaper and one shoe. And the only reason you don’t see evidence of that is because of our family rules about “what KA is allowed to put on the internet” and diaper photos are not among those things. And also because it’s hot outside so that means we have to play inside.
And when we play inside that means that we have to take pictures inside. And when we take pictures inside, the background of them is littered with the clutter that seems to have multiplied itself times a million since having a baby. I am insanely jealous of those of you who manage to keep a clean house AND have children. No one would pin photos of my living room on Pinterest unless they were pinning them to a board entitled “SOMEONE GET THIS GIRL A MAID.”
Seriously, we went to my sister-in-laws with last minute notice this weekend and her home was totally company ready. And I was all “What is that like for you? TEACH ME YOUR WAYS!”
I bet she secretly has a Monica Closet.
I, however, snap a picture to post on instagram and I’m scrutinizing it carefully to see if that is indeed my bra in the background, hanging over the edge of the excersaucer. Thank goodness for cropping, that’s what I always like to say.
Once I took my baby to Target wearing nothing but a diaper. In my defense she had just thrown up all over herself and I had no spare clothes with me (which seems to only happen on the days that motherhood blows up in my face, like this one) but I still really had to go in Target because we were out of milk. I felt really self conscious about her only wearing a diaper so I wrapped her hairbow around her chest in an attempt at toddler modesty. But Jeff said that made her look like a tiny little stripper so in the end she just rode nekkid in the buggy because I had also forgotten to pack my sling.
So sometimes motherhood looks like that and I’m so deep in it that I don’t think to snap a picture. I think “EVERYONE IS STARING AT ME FOR DOING IT WRONG!”
A photo might be worth a thousand words but on the internet it never tells the whole story.
And you don’t even want to see pictures of our fort.
