Recently I had a fabulous chat on Huffington Post Live with a bunch of cool moms. Led by the equally intelligent and adorable Nancy Redd, we all talked about whether we thought small “holidays” are too amped up these days (i.e.: Do we really need to commemorate Pi Day, etc?). Does recognizing every teeny weeny silly modern “holiday” create unruly and unnecessary expectations for our kids? One HuffPo writer says yes, for which I am absolutely in love with her for. Yes, I thought Easter was seemingly on-crack this year (with incessant #EasterFun hashtags taking over Twitter), I get exhausted at the thought of the next approaching “event” I will need to buy flowers, send cards and create activities for (is it Earth Day? Mother’s Day?), and merely thinking about all the parental send-treats demands once my girls hit preschool (for “holidays” like this new Pi Day) just makes me cranky. Sheesh.
I’ve always been one for campy fun activities, but I like doing them on MY terms. I don’t want to be told to when to serve pie for Pi Day. (Wow Pi Day is really bothering me.)
If you watch our chat (just above), we all had variated opinions, tales and experiences. But Tara Ziegmont, Erin Cox and Carinn Jade: Know that you all had me thinking the day after.
You reminded me to shelve my inner pooped-out mommy once in a while and remember to celebrate LITTLE THINGS with LITTLE PEOPLE. Because t’s important. Our days of having little ones are fleeting, and sometimes we all need to be reminded to not be so casual about it. Drink some coffee, call on your inner-energizer-bunny and just do something fun. (Tara, your family story resonated with me in a very real way.)
So I decided to take charge and CELEBRATE some newly-replaced windows in our house (trust me, this was BIG… something we’ve wanted to do for a while now and finally have). We BBQ’d turkey burgers. I made french fries. I even said to hell with fat-calories (for myself) and whipped up some full-fat good old-fashioned onion dip. (I also busted out a Mike’s Hard Lemonade I found stuck in the back of our fridge leftover from some party months ago.) We dragged the highchair onto the patio and ate outside. And our little family-of-4 “cheers’d” to our home improvement. My toddler (LadyP) couldn’t stop jabbering about “our new windows!” while my 1-year old just kept shoveling bits of burger into her mouth.
So screw Pi Day. I will always remember The Day We Got New Windows. That’s even more fabulous.
DO YOU CELEBRATE LITTLE THINGS WITH YOUR LITTLE PEOPLE?