The Ballard Bunch

Happy 8th Birthday

to my sweet Tatum!

What great things you have ahead of you!

Just for the record:  I am not bored.  

I am constantly doing laundry and washing dishes, mopping floors and wiping butts.  

I clean mirrors and windows more than should be legally allowed.  I sit with each of my children after school and help with homework, we eat dinner together every night (almost always a meal that I have prepared at home) and we read at least 20 minutes before bed.  

I make lunches, volunteer in classrooms, take the car for repairs, hold church callings, and run a part time business.  

I do all the grocery shopping, birthday shopping, Christmas shopping.  

I pay the bills and balance the checkbook.

I don’t always get a shower or a sit-down lunch.

I can’t remember the last time I went shopping for me.

I pick up, drop off, call ahead and plan. 

I am not bored, anything but.

Exhausted?  Sure, but I will continue to celebrate ‘silly’ traditions

with my family, because that’s what we do.  And we all love it.

I don’t mind a late night here and there to place green food coloring in the toilet and milk jug and leaving a small bag or ‘better luck next time’ treats after spending the evening with my children making a leprechaun trap that they are convinced will work this year (it never does).  I love waiting for the quiet sounds of slumber downstairs every night in December so my husband and I can think of another fun (and free!) way our elf can surprise the kids in the mornings leading up to Christmas.  And even more, I love hearing them remind each other to make good choices because their elf Kit Kat is watching.  I am as anxious for birthdays as my kids are and secretly love the sounds of early morning voices unable to wait any longer.  The magic that they see reminds me, even if it’s just for a short amount of time, that there is good in this crazy, scary, chaotic world we live in - good that they can always find in our home.

Is our world overly materialistic?  Absolutely.  I think we go way overboard with lavish gifts and money spent on children who will outgrow/break/tear/loose items in a shorter amount of time than I could have ever imagined pre-motherhood.  But giving your children a little something to look forward to, giving them traditions and memories that last much longer than their childhood will, seems alright to me.  And if you don’t maintain the same traditions in your family, that seems alright to me, too.

What I do mind, however, is the judgment from other moms.  How about instead of being upset that other parents do it differently than we do (don’t even get me started on how much people pay for teeth or jeans these days), we teach our kids that traditions are family specific.  How about we all teach our kids to quit asking each other ’what did you get for Christmas?’ and instead work on being kinder to each other.  How about we stop with the mom-bashing and start showing our kids how to value their own traditions and quit worrying about what others do.

I will not apologize for being fun.

Someday my house will be quiet, clean and leprechaun-free.

That’s when I think the boredom will set in.