I’ll be the first to admit that I use my daughter as a shield. Part of her job is to deflect attention from me to her. This means that the cuter she is the less I have to worry about me, most of the time people don’t even notice that I’m out in public in my pajamas – I just hold her in front of me so that no one bothers to look and see whose got her.

I’m not sure that I even recognized that I was doing this until Christmas came. Christmas eve we had plans to go over to my sister’s to spend the evening with her family, knowing it was a prime picture taking event, I went out shopping specifically for really cute christmas outfits for my little girl. In no time I had found a super cute, one piece knitted ensemble – but I am no fool, one outfit wasn’t going to cut it. So, I also bought a back up – you know just in case…

Christmas eve morning we got up and put on our super cute Christmas outfit and low and behold before lunchtime it was downstairs in the washtub, pooped scrubbed out of it so she could wear it again (she never did).

I waited until she was up from her afternoon nap to put her into her back up outfit – I played with her hair until it had just the right curl and we were packing up the diaper bag when she threw up all down the front of her. i tried wiping it off but it was no use, back into her room to get changed again. This time I just stuck her in the first thing I could find. I figured at this point, the less special the outfit the less likely she would be to ruin it. And it worked – we got all the way to my sisters house while remaining clean and dry.

Inside, everyone ohhs and ahhs over her, snapping pictures in front of the Christmas tree, until at one point my sister looks up at me, realizes I’m in my sweatpants and says “Oh my god – have you even brushed your hair?”

I just know if she had been in her first outfit – no one would have looked at my hair…