It's My First Valentine's Day - I'm Excited, Can't You Tell?
There are certain times my attempts to be Type B fly out the window and Type A mom appears in full force. A variety of events and circumstances can send me into crazy Type A mode. First memories/events that you can never recreate are one. Another one is having appropriate interaction with people I only casually know (this will make more sense in a second).
This year Valentine's Day combined in a perfect storm of both of those above events sending me into a frenzy that likley made my poor husband insane. In addition to it being Baby Girl's first Valentine's Day, baby girl takes a music class once a week and the class fell on V-day. Capturing the first Valentine's Day was easy as pie. I did a 45 minute photo shoot with baby girl that included multiple backgrounds, outfits, and props. (This is what every person does right?) This just left me wondering what if anything I was supposed to do for her classmates.
The class is for babies 0-12 months so clearly the other 4 babies in the class were dying to see how many Valentine's they would receive. So the real question is what are the other moms thinking - are we going to do cute cards (this would be my vote) or are we going to pretend it isn't a holiday. We have been taking this class since December with the same moms yet I still have no real read on them at all. This started my most recent trip to crazytown.
I really wanted to celebrate - it is a first holiday and thus every attempt to capture the perfect moment needs to happen. At the same time you really don't want to come off as a crazy person around people you don't know that well. I mean no one wants to be that annoyingly over the top mom. I am also pretty sure they already think I am the crazy over the top mom since Baby Girl is always dressed in themes with matching hair bows. (This is true even, if like me, you are the crazy over the top mom. Embrace you are crazy, acknowledge it and keep that crazy in girlfriend until you are with your friends who have known you too long to foresake you for your crazy).
Aside: I am not ashamed of my crazy or I wouldn't be writing this but sometimes it is just easier to hold your crazy back. This is one of those times where pure laziness makes me want to hold back the crazy.
Doing what any self respecting crazy does, I sent a frantic email to two of my girlfriends who are mommies and spewed out all of the insanity running through my mind. Being good girlfriends they helped me sift through what was insane and what was rational and come up with a plan. The plan was a good simple reasonable plan. I was going to go to Target and buy a package of simple school kid Valentine's Day cards. I was going to fill them out, put them in my diaper bag, and go to class. If it seemed appropriate I would pull them out, hand them out and be fine. If not I kept them in my bag and didn't seem crazy -a simple, easy, and straight forward plan.
But we all know what they said about the road to hell, it is paved with good intentions. In my attempt to not be crazy, I ended up being even crazier than normal. It all started when Target had nothing that really excited me. This lack of excitment was compounded by Pinterest. I decided that there are only 4 kids in the class and I have Publisher and card stock I am just going to print cards I like to take to class. With this in mind, I made this:
Now you look at this and think - well this doesn't seem too over the top or crazy. And you are right, this is not too over the top or crazy. That is why I was unable to stop myself at this point. And the cards became this:
Of course that is for the boys. The girls I had to do a girlier one for the only other girl in the class.
Mrs. Beth our teacher couldn't be left out either so I found a pair of women's socks. All together this is what I ended up:
I got done with these cards and realized that my attempts to hide the crazy had failed miserably. So by attempting to be normal and not over the top I actually ended up more over the top than I had planned. This left me worried about just how everyone else in the class was going to react. Many times I talked myself out of taking the cards. The worry was way out of proportion to the importance of this decision. Just when I thought the worry was over - Baby Girl's music teacher was sick and class was cancelled.
So now these cards have been on my dining room table for a week and we are taking them to class this week. Here is to hoping that my crazy doesn't scare away any future friends of Baby Girl.
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