The Daily Shirt

Everyone's familiar with the classic Mom cliché of used Kleenex in the pocket, enough crumbs in the minivan that a family of four could survive for a week on, or the mom who licks her thumb then wipes her kid's face. But an even more wonderful thing is the shirt worn my a mom at the end of the day. The collection of spots, stains, snot streaks and sneaker marks around the hips truly depicts Her life. The Daily Shirt as we call it in our house.

As babies, two of my three boys spit up after every single feeding (for us that was at least a dozen times a day). Now as toddlers and preschoolers they are sticky and play in the dirt and there's always someone with a runny nose: I think I would go nuts worrying about keeping myself totally clean. It's sort of sweet that by the end of the day we all match in our level of clothing grubbiness. 

We mothers become washable: those Dry Clean Only clothes get pushed back to the back of the closet and only come out when we're literally walking out the door for our monthly date night with our spouse. Every item of clothing I regularly wear is somehow faulty: there are hidden holes, stains, it's permanently stretched in a funny way.... All the pictures of the kids' birthdays or outings we take I'm in the same nine outfits it seems. Although I spend hours on Pinterest pinning lovely trendy clothing and hairstyles, I know that the ease of my cotton t-shirts and jeans and flip flops works for me.

I admire those Mothers who have the fashion part of their life together and it's not my intent at all to make their efforts to keep that part of their pre-child identity alive. I suppose I never really had my own style down before I had kids, then I was (and am again) in maternity clothes. If you want to be truly stylish in maternity clothes be prepared to fork over some serious cash. I hear from those moms who spent the $200 on maternity jeans that it was totally worth it. I just can't justify that especially since those $200 jeans on me would be stained within a week!

I sometimes even go so far as to match our shirt colors to what I know I'll be eating or doing that day. When we go berry picking in the summer you'll see my whole family in navy blue shirts. We have a lot of brown pants to match all the dirt we collect. The only white my kids have ever really worn was their baptismal gown and it was put on at the last possible moment then covered with a huge bib until we had to hand them over to the Reverend. I do wear black often but I do it knowing that the day will be mapped out in the form of nose wipes on my shoulder and crusty fingerprints in various "designs."

And tonight, as I sorted the last 48 hours of laundry to be washed I found myself smiling: "Oh yeah, we had watermelon outside on Friday with lunch" and thinking about how my youngest always pulls my shirt collar when he's on my hip so that all my shirts are lopsided on the left. Those are the little stories from my days with my boys that make me smile.  

So, on behalf of those parents who end up as marked as their kid(s) by the end of the day, please admire us for our smiles and laughter and just go by the old saying, "Never judge a book by it's cover."