Mom Envy

At our pediatrician office this season I spied a mom who was very put together. She wore a shawl and dark slim jeans with squiggly lines on the pockets. Pointy toes stuck out from beneath their hems. She had impeccably applied makeup and her hair said, "Somebody took time on me this morning." Her posture gave off a very cool and collected handle on things. Her kids were ADORABLE. I was sure that they had only ever been to the office in the name of well baby visits.

Her daughter was blonde and her tresses had been combed and worked into fancy braids all along the top, then pulled into a ponytail. It was very stylish and cute and I was amazed by the fact that she wasn't tugging at the rubberband. That girl, who could not have been younger than three, actually let her hair remain in the artistically crafted hairdo the whole time she was there, and I'm sure, beyond.

In great contrast, there was us. First of all, no shawls are in my closet, no pointy toes prevail. I WISH they did, but alas, I tend to reach for the same thing each time I shop-a new t-shirt and then some kind of cute button down shirt to go over the top. I'm pretty sure that on this particular day I hadn't showered and had instead done a ponytail/hat job up top, with my look being rounded out by a fleece and my ever-so-faithful and easy to slip on Danskos.

My children matched hers in the adorability factor. But in terms of hair, we were on a completely different page. Jooge has a head covered in hair. It has these supercurls at her neckline hiding sleepily under her top layer of straight hair. I have trimmed her bangs and added long layers when the top layer was weighing down the curls. Basically though, I have let it grow, and can pin her down to comb or brush it most days, but at times it looks quite disheveled. The idea of taming it into an actual style, well, no way. Rubberbands and ponytails stay in for about a full minute, then are yanked out. We do"beauty" in front of the mirror and seconds later "the beast"is in the house.

So, mom envy hit hard in the midst of this woman. I began to assume, based on her visual impression, all sorts of unrealistic things about her. Like that she was....PERFECT. There are lots of moms and varying degrees of having it together, but no such thing as perfection. There will ALWAYS be moms that have a better handle on getting her kids pretty for the pediatrician visit. But, (you know where this is going) there will always be moms like me too. I can take my kids on a quick jaunt around the neighborhood in the clothes we wear. We are our own kind of beautiful, quirky, with more interest. My kids aren't being raised thinking they have to be perfect because they don't see me even trying to be. My kids are raised to be who they are, in all their untamed richness. Jooge's hair is the very embodiment of such freedom, flying at times cowlicky and full of personality all around her angelic face.

Still, my posture could definitely use some work.

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