I am occasionally lucky enough to have a day that is nearly perfect. On these days I may take the kids to the playground or the library in the morning, or a museum if I'm feeling extra ambitious. The babies will take their naps with nary a peep, and through the course of a relatively quiet afternoon I can play a game or two with the big kids and build block towers for the little ones to knock down, while still finding time to make a nice dinner, clean the bathroom, write something brilliant, vacuum the entire downstairs and even spend a little time with book, just for me.  After the kids go to bed, I can relax with something from Netflix that my husband and I actually agreed on. 

Then there are days that are not so perfect, days when the fact that I haven’t slept through the night in about a year seems to be the only thing I can think about.  On these days, both babies want to be carried around, they cry when I leave the room for even a second and can’t believe I’m going to make them take a nap.  The bigger kids fight over whose turn it is to ride on Mommy’s back, even though I haven’t offered any rides, and think anything I suggest they do is the worst idea anyone has ever had.  For dinner, I open a can of whichever vegetable is at the front of the cupboard to go with our fish sticks, and by the time I get to eat mine, they are cold and I have dried baby food on my elbow.  I don’t get around to cleaning up the kitchen until after the kids are in bed and when it’s my turn to climb under the covers, I remember that the load of laundry I started first thing in the morning still hasn’t made it into the dryer.

This week we had our picture taken and I had to decide which family should show up.  Last year I’m afraid we looked a bit like a family having a cold fish stick day.  I was hugely pregnant with the twins and didn’t have any particularly nice clothes that fit me.  Nor was I in the mood to help the rest of the family show me up.  There were several other families in the waiting room with us and the contrast was striking.  It wasn’t just that the other families were less casual, it was that they had clearly gone out of their way to impress the camera.  There were girls in frilly dresses, boys wearing ties and sweater vests, and naked infants waiting to have their clothes applied at the last second.  And they all matched.  Three brothers in tricolor sweaters, each with a different color collar poking out, while Daddy’s tie was the exact shade as the hem on daughter’s dress and Mommy’s string of pearls matched the buttons on baby’s romper. 

Now don’t get me wrong, these families looked very nice, they were simply taking a different approach.  I’m not the sort of person who buys six coordinating outfits for a portrait.  The pictures cost enough already and I prefer a picture of my family that looks like my family, not the “family” that came with the frame.  Still, I do believe in presenting the best version of our family, unlike last year.  I knew I could do better, but I had my work cut out for me this time.  On the morning of picture day, I couldn’t find the pants I was going to put on baby G and had to veto the green sequined shirt that J wanted to wear with her bright pink pants.  Oh yeah, and four out of the six of us were suffering (and I do mean suffering) from colds.  While I like a picture that captures the reality of my family, snot crusties and a face frozen in mid-cough would constitute a little too much reality. 

All in all, things went pretty well.  Baby G didn’t start crying until the very last picture, I managed to avoid bonking my head on any of the equipment in the tiny room, and J didn’t go postal when the photographer kept calling her “baby.”  (She is a big girl, you know.)  We ended up with one little girl who’s on cue smile looks a bit like she has a tummy ache and two babies flaunting that deer in the headlights look.  Fortunately, they are all so darn cute that it’s still a good picture.  There was nary a cold fish stick in sight.

Mandy usually appears weekends on TriangleMom2Mom.