Several weeks back, I took part in the What I Wore Sunday link up at Fine Linen and Purple.
After that debacle I was even more determined the next week to "get it right."

I bathed everyone the night before and selected outfits in advance.  Woke up early and got everyone dressed and fed.

Do you know what happens in this house when I try to make plans in advance?

I'll tell you what happens in this house when I try to make plans in advance.

A child who has been fully potty trained for, you know, like, ever, and infinity...
A child who never has potty accidents because she has been fully potty trained that long...
A child who was given a bath the evening before...
A child who has been dressed in clothing that was carefully selected the evening before that totally goes with the whole Advent liturgical purple theme.

That child.  That very child.

Will pee right in the middle of the floor, all over her carefully selected clothing.


This will necessitate a last minute bath, selection of new clothing, cleaning of carpet, loss of time in which to take pictures of all outfits and manage to get to church on time.

And will result in a very distraught mother.  A mother who must then conclude that all those WIWS participants must in fact be perfect, superhuman mothers.  Even more likely, she will suspect all those mothers are, in fact, totally normal and the defect lies in her.  At which point, she will declare life was much easier before she got this crazy idea to participate in the WIWS linkup.

And so I swore off WIWS and moved happily on with my life.

Then Cari had to go and write this.

And made me reassess my attitude.

You see, when I first started following the WIWS linkup, I was excited.  "This will be fun," I thought.

Then I started reading all the linked posts.  One week I went through and read every last post.  I kept thinking, "surely I will find another mother out there like me, with no fashion sense at all."

Not a blessed one.

The were all gorgeous!  And trendy.  With all the right pieces going together in all the right ways.  So cute!

Putting moms like me to shame.

Moms like me who find themselves wondering,

"What is this "boot sock" you speak of and what is its purpose anyway?"

No, really.  I mean I wear socks with my boots.  Now, you are telling me I need to add additional fake sock tops to peek out the top of my boots?

For why?!

Seriously, fashion police people, you have to admit sometimes this fashion stuff makes absolutely no sense!  Though, I do have to admit the green is super cute peeking out the top of the boots...  You know what would look really good in that color green?  A turtleneck! ;)

And then I started an internet search for a turtleneck that beautiful bright green color...   Because, yes.  I would totally wear a lime green turtleneck.

Of course, a simple snapshot of a mom striking a pose in a pretty dress with a cute scarf or belt or earrings or whatever "pulls it all together" is clear evidence of that mom's perfection.

A picture is worth a thousand words and those pictures speak volumes.

Clearly, any mom who can manage to get dressed on a Sunday, complete with accessories, hairstyle and even, would you believe it, makeup, must have it all together.

That kind of mom would never be caught off guard by a small child peeing on the floor.

She would not only have everything planned out in advance but would have contingency plans.

She would never be behind on laundry so she wouldn't have to worry about having nothing clean to wear or her clothes being wrinkled.

 Plus, she would have trained her children to mimic the perfection she herself models and so would never have to contend with an "oopsie."

And clearly all pairs of shoes would be contained in their appropriate positions because none of the kids would ever dream of wearing one shoe around the house and dropping it at various, unlikely to be found, locations.

Of course the truth is, all those trendy moms are probably looking at other moms, who have some other amazing talent they are lacking, and wishing they could be "perfect" like that mom.  (At least, I sure hope that's the case.)

And if all of the less fashionable moms refuse to link up, then of course none of us, fashionably challenged folk, are ever going to feel comfortable linking up.

So, yet again I find myself being the perfect example of an imperfect mother.  Finally something I excel at!

But in order to do that I really needed to adjust my attitude about the whole thing.

Because all those gorgeous, trendy, supermoms out there are not linking up just to show off their superiority in the trendiness department.  And they are not linking up to make moms like me melt down into a wallowing despair pit of self depreciation.  Really.  I know that isn't their intention at all.

So why do they do it?

Because it's FUN!

And I had ruined all the fun by making it into something it wasn't.

Because, I wasn't dressing everyone for Sunday and then snapping a pic.  I was dressing (or at least attempting to dress) everyone for a Sunday, in which I would be linking up with WIWS, and sharing the pictures with my "vast" reading audience. (Over-exaggeration is also one of my talents.)

Sunday, when I read Cari's post, we were already dressed for church.  So, it was my perfect chance to simply snap a picture of what we were already wearing.

The Peanut was still on Christmas/New Year break from CCD classes so we had been spending a lazy Sunday morning, sleeping in, watching tv, eating an entire loaf of bread that my amazing husband made into cinnamon toast.  Then we got a text from my sister in law inviting us to eat lunch with her, granny and the cousins at our favorite pizza place.

So, mad scramble to get dressed, in whatever we could quickly throw on, and meet them, before they wasted away of starvation, waiting for us.

I put the kids in church appropriate attire, figuring that pizza isn't super messy and it would be easier to change a shirt or pair of pants or whatever got food on it, than it would be to wait until after lunch to get everyone dressed in time for evening mass.

I then snapped a couple of pics and we ran out the door.

It seems I have not cleaned that mirror since the last time I linked up.  Oops!

The Most Awesome Socks Ever Made: Hot Topic

The Princess

Hello Kitty shirt: Christmas gift from Grandma
Sparkly Silver Skirt: Hand me down that finally fits without falling off even though it is now technically a size too small according to the tag
Pink Shoes:  Payless at the beginning of last summer bought a size too big and worn because it's Texas where we can do that on a warm day in January

Peanut

Polo: Target
Brown Cargo Pants: Target
R2D2 "Dogtag:" Target via Christmas stocking present that was the gift responsible for the "Best Christmas Ever" declaration  (Seriously.  They got a Wii U from Pop Pop/us and the dog tag was the best present?)

"Bow Ties are Cool"

Peanut did end up changing for church because the bow tie looked better with this shirt.
Shirt: Online thrift store purchase
Pants: Hand me down suit pants that belonged to my brother back in the day
Bow Tie: Hot Topic
Belt: Right, should really buy that boy a belt... (Ok, he actually does own one but I can not find it anywhere.)
Shoes: I promise he does own a pair...

Oh, and despite being all dressed in advance we still managed to be 2 minutes late for church.  Sigh.


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