Hallmark Holidays and Social Media

Mother's Day is rapidly approaching this week, and with it, my due date for my second child by blood, the fifth child in our combined family.

This year the holiday seems slightly bittersweet to me. While I am utterly excited to add another personality to our varied combination of lovable characters, I am slightly saddened as well. Just yesterday we were discussing what kind of dessert would we like to bring to the Mother's Day dinner that I always share with my mom, a once a year surf and turf flavor fest of lobster, flank steak, and the best twice-baked potatoes you have ever tasted. Since I do not consider myself an imaginative culinary master (nor does anyone else for that matter), I decided to do the next best thing and look online for a recipe for dessert. 

I have been a member of Facebook since it began, to keep up with friends in out of state colleges, and those at home, since I was one of the ones out of state. It is only recently that I have been coerced (ok I admit, the arm didn't really need to be twisted) into joining Pinterest so I thought that those two places might be a good place to start. Have I mentioned these are great resources for finding things like recipes? The sheer wealth of information being shared on these two websites is extraordinary. I almost can't comprehend it!

What I can comprehend, is apparently how badly I have been doing at this whole "mom" thing. I don't have a color blocked house with strategically placed lighting and art pieces being shown on built-in shelves. I don't have hand-tied flower arrangements gracing my dinner table every night (or any night in recent memory....) I don't dress my kids' snacks for school in multi-colored cellophane and twisted pipe cleaners with googly eyes and they are most definitely not made with organic gluten-free flour and less than 100 calories.

What I do have though, is an endless pile of socks for kids to sort, "art projects" of multi-colored balloon people on my fridge, piles and cases of books of varying reading levels, baby paraphernalia awaiting use, and crumbs under the table no matter how often I pull out the vacuum cleaner.

I don't expect a spa day for Mother's Day, or flowers or anything that requires wrapping paper or gift bags. I expect pretty much what I am sure to get, a card that the kids made in school, fifteen minutes of cuddles and snuggles, and kids who want to play outside at Grammy's house all afternoon, since she has a trampoline and squirt guns.

I probably won't be bringing espresso chocolate mousse cups care of Alton Brown either. I don't have time to hand decorate 13 cake pops (since I would have to make 24 of them in order to make 13 of them - silly pans) and I don't feel like driving to find the perfect 72% dark cocoa bar instead of chancing ruining my recipe.

I will turn off the computer though, and happily pull out the double chocolate chunk cookie dough from the last school fundraiser, and be thrilled to put them on the same tin platter that goes to all family holidays with regular old store brand saran wrap. I will be ecstatic if the grass stains come out of the jeans that will be worn outside to play that day and remember that the Social Media Mother's Day is just a "Hallmark Holiday" and I don't need to be perfect for it. That night, unless  she has made an appearance before-hand, I will be welcoming our last baby into our hearts and arms and that will be enough for me.