I like to think I’m a pretty good mom.

I know there’re things the children would like to see me do differently. For example, Emma wishes (several times a week) that I’d relax a little on the family dress code (there’s one rule: she’s 10, she should dress like she’s 10, not like she’s 23 and short on drink money. Is that asking too much?) And Thomas hates my belief that every family member should know how to clean every room in the home. But overall, my kids are generally clean, fairly well-behaved in public and don’t have any really serious hang-ups yet.

Of course occasionally even the best mom can mess up extraordinarily and I’m only claiming to be average.

So Emma and Liz are participating in PIPs again. (I know, I know. It just has so much potential for good and they beg for so long and so loudly.) Anyway, their first public performance was scheduled for the second week in December. Now I’m not making excuses here, but busiest-week-all-year! We had obligations every night that week, and so,

we missed it. Drove into the gym parking lot just as the performance ended.

Emma was distraught. Obviously we don’t love her and if we do happen to actually love her, we certainly don’t care enough about her to show up at her one event ever, a belief she made clear with much crying and heavy sighs and pointed looks and sniffling ad nauseam. We apologized; we apologized several times- we felt bad. And then I stopped feeling bad and had to be horrible again and explain that I was done apologizing. That a mistake had been made, but it was time to move on.

It was a fun night altogether.

Which is why we were determined to be at the next and hopefully last PIP performance night before last. We were there. We were there early. We took photos, we cheered and we supported whole-heartedly the wonder that is Emma and Liz and PIP.

Let balance be restored to the universe.

PLEASE