Tuesday, August 26, 2008

First, let me say that I am ashamed to admit this BUT I used to be so stinkin judgmental. I would see frazzled moms rushing through the aisles of the store in clothing that resembled their pajamas and with children that had mismatched clothes, missing shoes, and the WORST offense of all...SNOTTY FACES!!! There I stood with my 16 year old self, knowledge and wisdom just emanating from me and would think, "What a mess. Is she lazy or what??? I would never NO never let myself or more importantly my children out of the house like that..." Well as the saying goes," What comes around goes around," and I all too often have to eat those words. I am that mom. I don't have girls so I don't know about them, but I know boys and it is a scientific certainty that within 2 minutes of a bath and clean clothes they will find mud, they are wired to lose shoes, genetically predisposed to mis-match their clothes and literal GRIME magnets.

The other day I looked though all the pictures on the computer and had a sad realization, I have no good pictures of them. I mean there is the occasional clean and smiling face, the token photo that you send to grandparents, but overall I have files upon files of stinky, mis-matched, slightly grimy boys and as much as I love those grimy boys...as much as I adore their stink... that judgmental 16 year old resurfaced and she cringed. She took charge, scrubbing the grime and stink away. She dressed them in clothes they HATED and made them sit WAY TOO LONG...and listened to them whine and moan and SHE LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT! Deep under those layers of grime she found these sweet faces.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

those are definitely sweet faces. i have a girl AND a boy, and i'll tell ya, they are equal in the dirt department.
liz

Emily said...

How dare you dress them up...and clean them! Those are the cutest grimy boys I've seen!

KMitchell said...

What cute brothers!!!

Shawn said...

I was the same 16 year old girl, and I'm a big disappoint to myself. With girls it isn't so much the dirt as the snarly hair in their face and the princes getup they won't take off for anything. And I'm sooo guilty of taking my daughter out like this, even when I swore I never would.

Kelly said...

i feel like i miss so much of their lives even with reading your blog. i miss my cousins!!!
kelly

Rachel Holloway said...

SUCH sweet faces. Now ya have it...ready to frame! :)

Brooke said...

Love it, love it, love it! Cute boys even when you post pictures of grime and dirt. Makes me feel like an okay mom because we've been to Wal-mart in the early afternoon with PJs on-mom included- and I felt like such a slacker because I was NEVER going to do that :) Thanks for the great post and way to get through first day of school

Kelly said...

You have such cute boys...and looking on your blog, I don't see one bad picture of them. I can't believe how grown up Ethan looks. I was going through old pictures the other day and found one from one of the intramural volleyball games. Ethan and Grant look so young and so little. Now here they are in kindergarten! Time FLIES! It is hard to keep boys clean, but my little princess Kenzie LOVES to play in the dirt. I always love her dirt mustache. So fitting with her little dresses! Oh well. Love these moments, even if they're dirty!