As Mother’s Day is almost upon us… I think it’s time for a new idea in the way we celebrate this glorious holiday!  While the road to Mother’s Day in my house is paved with the very best of intentions, I usually end my Mother’s Day feeling like an utter Mom failure. By the end of the day, I am left thinking about running away to join the circus…. Well not really the circus with all the dirty stinky animals and carny people… but more like if Prada, partnered with a funnel cake company and did a “carnival” themed traveling fashion show in Paris… you get what I mean… But before I can explain what I am asking of you all here, let me explain where I am coming from… Please see the below “general life” examples.  The names, dates and places have been changes to protect the innocent.  Here is how I see it… In a roundabout generic way…

Fathers Day (how it goes down):

Husband wakes up- Kids greet him with breakfast in bed (Mom has helped cook, kitchen is in its normal state).  He is smothered with kisses from the kids and he gives wife the wink, wink, “Am I getting a “Back-Rub” later?” look.  Husband gets up and goes and golfs with other Dad friends.  Dad comes home from golf to a home cooked dinner prepared by Mom, kids tell him how great he is and give him a hand-made with love World’s Greatest Dad picture frame for his office.  Mom puts kids to bed.  Dad washes his golf balls in preparation for his “back massage”.  The End!

Mothers Day (how it goes down):

Mom is woken up to the sound of a metal refinement plant crushing metal in her house (though it might just be Dad and kids cooking in the kitchen).  Which is quickly followed with kids yelling “I want to carry in the coffee to her”;  “NO I want to carry it, because you are too clumsy!”;  “I CAN carry the coffee, you carry in the eggs” (did I mention I hate eggs).  “I don’t want to carry the eggs because you dropped them on the floor so you should have to carry them in to her.”   Mom does her best Folgers coffee commercial wake-up act, acting as if she is being woken up by the wonderful aroma of coffee and the aurora of love coming from her beautiful family, and not the fact that the coffee is being splashed all over her new white duvet.   Her sweet family stands there holding rancid eggs and a now half full cup of very cold coffee.  Seriously so stinking sweet!!!  Mom will choke down a bite of cold eggs and drink cold coffee, because they where made with love and really how sweet is the whole thing.  Did I mention how darn sweet this all is?

Then the gifts will begin…  But first a quick and violent shoving match between the kids about who gets to give their gift first.  Dad will step in, referee and say “Hey guys, It’s Mom’s special Day, Let’s all be nice”, which might as well be the ringing of the bells for the Opening Ceremony of a WWF Ultimate Showdown Cage Match! LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLE!  The youngest child if not selected or even if selected will yell out what their gift to Mom is before she can open it… it’s just too exciting to keep it a secret for two more seconds! Mom opens her gifts; inevitably it is something that one of her sweet children has made from their very own hands.  Perhaps it’s another Hanes Tee-Shirt that has a garden and flowers made from her babies’ darling handprints.  So super cute… until the sweet giving child expects Mom to put the shirt on right then… and wear it all day… actually every day… all day… forever.  This shirt should be worn and honored as if it is a crafted one-of-a-kind tweed jacket woven by the hands of Karl Lagerfeld himself.  Did I mention it is a Hanes Unisex tee-shirt, no shape at all. The most unflattering thing in Mom’s closet, it exaggerates every negative part of her upper body and actually even has a way of making her behind look bigger.  All kidding aside, these gifts really are the best.  Seeing the pride on a child’s face is worth a million boxy fitting men’s tee-shirt days… and Moms will wear these gifts because they really are like being wrapped in love.

SO going on with the FUN of Mother’s Day… Keeping in mind that it is about 6AM at this point, as the kids and husband have been up since 5AM because they are excited, just so excited, to start Mother’s Day.  YEAH!!!  So breakfast in bed happens… I personally flush the majority of the eggs down the toilet when no one is looking and I smile like the Cheshire Cat and rave about how amazing everything was… But really it was amazing in the effort and thoughtfulness <insert feelings of guilt for not being more appreciative here>.  Mom then gets out of bed and see the disaster that has become the kitchen/ house, knowing full well that at some point she will have to put everything back in order and figure out how to scrape the kiwi off the ceiling.

Moving forward…. Dad then works so hard to dress the kids for church.  This task is not for the weak hearted.  Dad finishes the task with the same look that Jon Snow had after he battled the White Walkers for the first time (if you are not watching Game of Throne… do so now).  My daughter will come down “dressed” like she just had a free-for-all in Honey Boo Boo and Ke$ha’s closets. Every color and season under the rainbow will be represented as well as all possible weather scenarios… And there will be lots of glitter and an adorable baby animal plastered on her with a goofy saying. It will look something like this, starting from the head down… A huge red and green Christmas bow in her hair; with a “Kitten Kisses are Best” sweatshirt (there will actually be a kitty covered in glitter and kisses on this shirt); swimming cover-up shorts under a Halloween tutu (also covered in glitter) all paired with rain-boots and a very tacky poodle shaped handbag. My son on the other hand will be dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt. His outfit would be perfect if he was 7 but since he is 9, it’s a problem. His pants are so short they are no even “high-waters” they are thigh-knockers. His shirtsleeves are so short it could pass for ¾ sleeve shirt. He will wrap up this GQ look with the most beat down shoes he owns. He looks like the Tiny Tim of CrewCuts. The odd part about this outfit choice is that I had laid out a beautiful new outfit that would have looked great, on his dresser the night before, but he chose to go digging in the box of outgrown clothes on the top shelf of his closet to find these fancy duds. So everyone is dressed and the family is ready to head out the door.

When the family finally gets to church the kids will put their whining-pouter machines in full gear… because church is…. too long, too boring, too cold, too hot, too quite, too loud, too thirsty, too hungry, too crowded…. And since religion is such a personal thing to everyone, And I really try to not hold judgment of any regards to anyone else’s religion or lack there of,  I can only speak to what happens with me on Mother’s Day at church… And I can say I spend a large amount of the prayer time thanking the good Lord for my amazing life and family and the other part of the time I am appealing to the Virgin Mary herself to intercede and keep me from going all Joan Crawford on my kids.  All while my amazing husband is trying his darnedest to make the kids behave by saying things like “It’s Mother’s Day, Come on guys behave!”  He might as well be saying “It Groundhog Day, Come on guys!”. Actually that might work better, my kids know Groundhog day has serious potential to be a day where someone might get their face bit by a giant rodent (side note: You go Jimmy the Groundhog, I would have bit that mayor for waking me up too!)!  So staying with my family on the rest of this… whatever “this” is… We are not yet to lunch and already my husband’s management of our children is about as spot on as Michael Lohan’s parenting (Lindsay and my kids are doing whatever they feel like with no filter).  The drive to lunch is met with more tears than the original screening of The Notebook… “I don’t want to eat Mexican food”,  “I hate tacos!”, “Can’t we just eat at home!”, “I need my iPad”…  We eventually get to my favorite restaurant, Joe T Garcia’s, and after a sip of my margarita, my clouds of parenting doubt start to part. I see the love, kindness and overall family unit that is really what being a Mom it is all about.  I thank the good Lord for my wonderful family just as my delectable, steaming cheese enchiladas are delivered; which is also the EXACT second that my daughter will need me to take her to the “potty” for a good 10-15 minute sit-in (at this point I call again on the Virgin Mary).  As my food congeals, we sit (well actually she sits I stand) and we will discuss in great detail the ultra-rare glitter dog-collar Petkins Shopkins that she needs me to try to find and buy her the very second we get home, all this while my nostrils are being assaulted in ways that I’m sure you can imagine.  Let’s just say I will have to implore Jedi mind tricks to block this period of time from my memory so I can go back to the table and still have the ability to eat.  Not that I will want to eat the cold cheese stick wrapped in a soggy tortilla that is now my meal.  I’ll still eat it though… I’ll still choke it down because darn it THIS IS MY MOTHERS DAY MEAL and it should be AWESOME… At this point someone will start crying that they are BORED.  SOOOOOOOO SOOOOOOO BORED.  We will leave in a hurry and I will quietly spend the entire ride home wondering where I went wrong…  I’ll have visions of Aretha and I singing R-E-S-P-E-C-T as a duet with my kids front and center in the audience.  And it’s only 2PM!

So this year in preparation and after much thought and years of a similar scenarios, I have decided where I think I have gone wrong all along was I should have been celebrated Mothers’ Day like fathers celebrate Father’s Day.  #18HolesOfSpaDay!  But in reality, I wouldn’t give up the Mother’s Day madness for anything.  The sincere effort that my family puts into trying their hardest to make my Mother’s DAY special is better than a thousand hours at the best spa in the world.  But the key word there is DAY… I want to be with my family during Mother’s DAY… but not Mother’s Evening. It’s called Mother’s DAY because once the sun goes down, Mother’s should be OUT! So I am proposing that Mother’s Day has an end time. And I am proposing a new Mommie Dearest Night.  It’s like Mother’s Day only later and without having to tell anyone to “Stop that” or “keep your hands to yourself”.  By night time of Mother’s Day everyone and everything has started to slow down so really it is the perfect time for Mommie Dear to sneak out and have a bit of Mommie fun (wire hangers optional).  It Sunday, It’s a school night, so tell Daddy to put the little angels to bed and meet up with other Mommie friends and blow off some steam. Even Hillary knows “It takes a village” (and she was not talking about just to help delete an email server), it takes a village to keep a Mom sane.  The best village a Mom can have are other supportive Mom friends. So round up your Mom friends, pick a fun place to meet and hold a contest to see who had the best Mother’s Day drama, the winner gets a much needed free drink. Plus as a huge bonus, you can most likely rest assured that not one of you will be called upon to assist anyone in the bathroom during this meal!  So next year I’m going to host a Mommie Dearest’s Night for my friends… Who’s hosting for theirs?!