Don't Come Looking Around my Door for Mother's Day Gift Inspiration and Messy Moments Mama Photography Challenge :)

spoiler alert: if you're a mama in our family, DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING POST...yet!!! This post contains images of your mother's day gifts...which may or may not make it to you on time depending on whether I can corral these jumping beans into the post office by tomorrow. :)

Since having children (especially since #2), I've become notorious for missing birthdays, special occasions, mailing cards three months late.  It's bad.  And in a gift-giving, going-all-out-birthday-celebrating family like mine, such tendencies are a NO NO NO.

I don't know what it is, though, I just can't seem to make my mind hold onto dates anymore - even if there are reminders all over my house.

Mama brain is so much worse than Pregnancy brain, let me tell you.

SO.  I was bound and determined to do a little something to celebrate the mamas in our family this year, and on time.  I had a little idea and a little plan and we even made a little time this weekend to get supplies.

I envisioned cute flower pots (which I'm going to accentuate with a curly ribbon), mother's day calligraphy scrawl, and beautiful, careful, picture-perfect M and AV hand prints for our mamas to remember the littlest ones in 2012.  I was going to tuck a special bulb into each pot with a card that read something like: "we are blooming under the showers of your love" or "your special love makes us bloom."

Something simple.  Something age appropriate that our nuggets could take control of and pride in.

It was going to be perfect.  A way to make up for all of my memory lapses over the last few years.

But.  My carefully drawn out plans went South in a matter of four short minutes and a little something like this:

So far, so good.  Miss Meggie was so excited to stick her fingers in some paint.

not exactly the hand print we'd hoped for, but we'll go with it...

getting each one just like she wanted

AV's turn

UH OH...where did that huge spot of paint come from?

parents officially losing control of the situation now...gone from finger painting pots to finger painting forearms...

oh dear oh dear oh dear - she's eating it, she's eating it, she's eating it...

and believe it or not - these tears are because we took her paints AWAY! :)

Oh, well.  At least we all laughed.  A lot.

And learned our lesson:  for father's day we're stripping them down to their diapers! :)