I'm a bad mom

It's okay. I'm starting to accept it and run with it. After all, if you keep the expectations low, then you don't disappoint anyone, right?

For example, I didn't love Max enough this morning to brush his hair. (And I let him stand on the table while I was taking a picture of his bad hair day so that I could post it on my blog for everyone to see.)

Then there's Ian's hair post-nap, which is giving Max a run for his money in the crazy hair day competition.

And then tonight, after dinner, we sent them all outside with an ice cream cone so they wouldn't bug Dad while he was doing the dishes. I didn't even notice that Max was wearing no pants until a neighbor came by with her matching outfit, and her perfectly styled hair, and her child that was still clean despite the fact that it was 6:30 at night.

"Um, is Max in his....underwear?" she asked, incredulous.

"Yup." I answered. "He took them off upstairs and hid them, and refused to go get them," I lamely explained, "and I didn't have it in me to fight him."

She nodded at me, pretending to understand how I could be so neglectful, and hurried home to her own house of order, probably promising herself that she would never let her son out in public wearing merely a t-shirt and a pair of black underoos. Just then, Ian fell off the chair he was climbing on and broke his ice cream cone. While he started screaming his trademark ear-piercing shriek, he wasn't hurt. The true reason for the tears was that I took his shattered ice cream cone and threw it in the trash. Didn't keep him from trying to pick the little pieces up off the sidewalk while my back was turned.

(And is it bad that I regret not having a camera out to take a picture of Max in his cute little black briefs while Ian attempted to eat ice cream off the sidewalk way more than I regret letting him play outside in his underwear?)

All is not lost. I did manage to get my kids dressed up in cute new fancy Easter clothes. Then we took pictures of them with Tom's iPhone. Because we're awesome like that.