The Mother of All Alphabets, for Mothers, by Mothers, about….Mothers

Tonight I got my first upfront lesson in competitive parenting 101. I know the teacher at the Gaffer’s preschool has nothing but the purest intentions at heart, but as she went through the calendar of activities and seasonal celebrations for the school year, the death knell growing between my ears clanged louder and louder.  The school chooses to celebrate everything, rather than a politically correct and sanitized nothing, but they hope to do it in a more traditional manner in order to avoid commercialism and economic competition. I whole heartedly support this in theory and if I had the slightest inkling towards crafts or anything creative, I would also support it in practice.

I have no problem with store-bought costumes, valentines, birthday cards, etc. The less onus on me, the better. But now I’ve gone and enrolled the Gaffer in a pre-school that requires homemade costumes, homemade cupcakes for birthday celebrations and hand-crafted valentines for each of the students. I’m not entirely sure how my little is adjusting to school, but I know my stress levels have just soared.

I’ve decided that the best way to deal with this, is to ignore it for the moment, so I am focusing on other projects. I realize I am stealing an already well established and successful idea, but I’ve already admitted to being low on the creativity scale and I haven’t seen the ubiquitous alphabet books deal with parenting yet. I’m not trying to write a book, just put together an alphabet, with your help.

For the next twenty-six weeks, every Thursday I will post all the ups, downs, ins, outs, frustrations and joys of parenting, a to z, letter by letter. I have had a lot of fun keeping a list since I conceived of this project, but I know that my scope is limited to just my experiences and I want to make this as comprehensive as possible so please feel free to contribute ideas each week.

Perhaps somewhere along the way, I will come up with appropriate costume ideas and learn a little about cutting out paper hearts and doilies.