Thursday, September 15, 2011

Kids + Dirt = Good Mommy?


   Last night, I was trying to find an old photo of our little house that I knew I had somewhere.  My organizational skills are not the best.  Never have been.  My guess is, they never will be.  I have old pictures stacked everywhere in the cabinets in my study.  I have one giant tubby full of photos, in absolutely no order.  It's not sorted by date, not by kid, by sport....nothing.  Just piled in there. I have at least ten photo albums on another shelf.  Most of those are of  Tucker's younger years.  I must have had a little better skills when I only had one kid.  Then there is the shelf of envelopes of pictures. It's a shelf in the cabinet completely set aside for envelopes of pictures. These are the ones that were developed, but then never removed from their original package.  I also have some photo boxes of really old pictures.  Those boxes are full of the photos of me and Bradley before kids came along.  And then the worst photo collection is the one that is still on CD's.  Not labeled.  I have no idea what is on them.  To make it worse, I have tried to look at what is on them, and my computer wont read the disk.  I fear that the CD collection may be a total loss. Sometimes, I get frustrated at my incompetence as an organizer, but then other times, it just leads to pure joy.  Like last night. 

   When I was looking for the photo, which I found, by the way,  I was forced to dig through the tubby. You know, the tubby that has just random photos in no particular order?  I had this feeling it was in there.  During my careful excavation of layers of photographs, I came across some fabulous memories.  I sat there in front of that tubby for a couple of hours looking at old memories.  I should have been tackling my pile of laundry, but I didn't.  I looked.  I dug.  I loved it.

   One odd trend that I noticed, though, was the number of times I came across photos of the boys dirty.  Not once or twice, but it seemed that photo after photo was a muddy memory.  It got me wondering.  Have I always encouraged my kids to get totally trashed?  Or maybe I am just quick to grab the camera when the are filthy?  Most Moms probably grab the soap and water.  Apparently, I grab the camera.  Perhaps I am weird for thinking muddy kids are cute, but I think it rocks when kids get down and dirty with nature.  Either way, I have ended up with an endless collection of dirty kid photos.  These are just a teensy portion of the ones I found in the tubby.


Not sure how a child can even get that dirty.

    But apparently it can happen.  Twice.


This is a little slice of heaven for boys.


It's a good thing he had that umbrella or he might have gotten wet.

In case you are wondering......the answer is yes.  He is eating the dirt from the flower pot.




This one is of Tucker...which proves that my obsession with mud photos has been around for a while.


What's more fun than a mud dance?  Maybe the laundry it will require afterward?



The best part of this picture is not the mud, but the fact that it shows he was well overdue a diaper change.  He had the sag going on.  Who has time for diaper changes when you have mud to play in?

Ok.... that's just adorable.

Maybe my passion for letting my kids get dirty will one day propel them into exploring and preserving nature as adults.  Or maybe not.

Either way.  I think we all had fun.

No comments: