Officially Over The Edge

I've done it. I've become "That Woman." You know. You've seen her. Sometimes she's at the mall, sometimes the park, but you know her when you see her. The insane one. The one who dresses her children in not just complimentary outfits, but matching outfits. With matching hair. Her kids looking just "so". And you have to wonder about that woman. You feel a little sorry for her children. Is it fun to be her child walking around dressed just so? Is she trying to live vicariously through her children? Doesn't she have anything better to do with her time? Maybe that woman needs a hobby. Or some sedatives.

It's not that I have so much time on my hands, I do have four children. And its not that I don't have a hobby. Between the yarn, and the ribbon, and the fabric, and the beads, believe me, I've got hobbies. I've contemplated taking up scrap booking, but rejected the idea for fear The Greatest would consider it grounds for divorce. Whether or not I need sedatives or other heavy medication is a judgement call, and not really the issue at hand today.

My problem all started out so innocently. I swear. I had the best of intentions.

It all started with these skirts.

I like to buy my girls special dresses for Christmas and Easter. Just fancy pretty things to mark the special occasion. Nothing in the store really spoke to me this year. I found a tutorial online for these skirts and thought they would just be the cutest thing to do for Christmas. Less formal that poufy dresses, but infinitely more fun with the twirl factor. I happened to have yards and yards and yards of red plaid in my fabric stash. How perfect are red plaid skirts for the yule time? I was going to go for complimentary skirts. I was going to have different fabrics for the hem band. I sewed a skirt for Bird with a cream band, but a cream fabric washed the skirt out. I ran to the fabric store thinking I could sew one with a red band, and two with a green band (Pork Chop and the baby perhaps, like matching bookends if I lined the children up by age) But alas, the red was too hard to match, so green hems for everyone it was.

So then I was going to have them wear different colored shirts. But the red was still hard to match, and a green shirt proved impossible to find. Rather than torture myself driving all around the valley hunting down just the right shade of red, and any green shirt I could find, I decided white shirts all around would be just fine. In my defense they were three different style long sleeve white t-shirts, but that's just something I say to comfort myself. At the end of the day they were all long sleeve white t-shirts.

And the hair. I swear. As I got them ready for the Christmas party I wasn't trying to do their hair all the same. I did the baby's hair first, in pigtails. I'm so happy we can finally do pigtails that's all she sports. Poor baby isn't even a year old and she's already in a hair rut. Then I did Bird's hair in my favorite style for her right now. I added tiny green bows in her hair (for some reason it was easy to find an exact match for the green in ribbon, but still no match for the red, how odd). And oh how cute was she? Wanting to look equally cute Pork Chop insisted her hair be the same as Birds. So more elastic and tiny green ribbons.

And that's when I lost it.

Three girls in identical plaid dresses, in white shirts. Two in bows. I sailed right over the edge of sanity. I couldn't let two out of three have green ribbons. Why I couldn't let that happen I still can't articulate. I just knew with every cell of my body that allowing the third to remain ribbonless was a crime. A crime against what I can not say. Nature? Fashion? Sisterhood? I'm still not sure, but I was not about to commit such a crime. I had to put ribbons in the baby's hair. HAD TO!

The first ribbon tied right onto the base of her pigtail. It was like she was meant to have ribbons in her hair. The universe wanted my daughter to have tiny green bows at the base of her pigtails! The next ribbon took fifteen minutes to tie. It kept slipping out. It didn't want to go into a bow. I should have given up. I was torturing the baby for no particular reason (I generally don't mind torturing the baby, I just like to have a reason) But I am not a quitter. I was a woman in the throes of a psychotic break. I would not be a criminal. I was going to show that ribbon who was boss. And when it was all said and done, could the baby have been any cuter?

And there they were. Three little girls looking so alike the younger two could be clones of the first. In matching outfits, with their hair just so. I was over the edge and swimming in the deep end.

And did I take a picture?

Of course not.

What makes you think I would have taken a picture?

It's not like I have some new really fancy fun camera to take pictures with.

It's not like I'd taken so many pictures earlier that day that The Greatest had resorted to this

to get me to stop.

No. I officially suck. The closest I got to a picture of all the children together was this.

This was after dinner and the children had consumed their own weight in fruit punch with the resulting tell-tale "smile". Observant readers might notice I'm missing a child in this picture. As if being tortured and in a hair rut were not enough, Sweet Pea was also feeling under the weather and at the party she looked like this.

(Notice you can not even SEE her bows) Observant readers might also notice that after two trips to the fabric store (I needed green thread), and three days spent sewing, the skirts are no where to be seen in either photo.

As a craft blogger I really suck. But I do think the lack of photographic evidence is proof that this was all a fluke, and I'm not really becoming "that woman." That woman would have gotten perfectly posed pictures.

We did get pictures with Santa.

(see the skirts? aren't they cute?)

In the end, it was all worth it. Or atleast that's what I'm telling myself.