Behind Every Cute Social Media Photo: 1000 Blurry Roller Skate Pictures and a Few Meltdowns

Another weekend of playful memories with my family got me thinking about the truth behind the photos that get shared on social media.

A friend of mine recently posted that she quit social media for a whole year because her mom friends always made her feel like a #badmom by posting these pictures of them out doing awesome things all the time.  And she felt like she couldn't live up to the hype. 

*BTW, she is an awesome mom and is running circles around me in her level of mom-awesomeness! 

She was the reason that I wrote the article about the truth about hiking with little kids.  Because I am 100% guilty of only sharing the happy, smiling (or silly) faces of my family on social media.  

This is mainly so that my own children don't grow up and read mean-spirited or nasty things about them from their own mother. And because being a mom of multiples truly zaps most of your brain cells and I can't remember anything unless there is a picture of it.  

But, as I thought about our weekend of playful activities, there's so much more than a collection of fun photos. 

What you see in this photo is a 4 and 5 year old rocking it out for the first time at the roller skating rink.  My 4 year old, in the front and my 5 year old way ahead of him in the blue!

What you don't see:

• Me racing back and forth across the rink trying to help each child as they fall down repeatedly in different areas.  
• My 5 year old falling on her knee and crying hysterically for about five minutes.
• Me (in skates) trying to take 2 four year olds (in skates and their skating walkers) to the bathroom.  One fell into the toilet and nearly cracked a rib. The other peed all over the outside of his shorts. 
• My kids arguing over who could use my phone to take a video of me skating and the resulting 1000s of blurry pictures of the floor and their feet. 

What you see in the photo is my kids having a blast dying coffee filters that we plan to turn into Valentine's flowers.  We tried the color with marker and spray with water method and also the dip in food coloring method. 

What you don't see: 

• Our hands, which were all completely colored and took tons of scrubbing to clean up
• My counter, which was totally blue from the markers bleeding through the coffee filters
• My kitchen floor, which was soaking wet because one of the kids knocked over a plate with orange food coloring and water
• The fight over who got to use which color, who got to go next, where they were going to leave the wet filters to dry and basically every other step of the process
• Me telling them 150 million times that the coffee filters WERE NOT DRY YET. 

I didn't get photos of this one, but just use your imagination: 

What you see is my 4 year old super excited to make brownies for the family.  He loves to cook and had been begging me to make brownies for days.

What you don't see:

• His brother crying because HE didn't get to make brownies
• My toe that got smashed as he was moving the stool closer to the counter
• The entire bowl of unmixed ingredients (oil, eggs  and mix) fall to the floor because he was trying to show his brother the egg that he successfully cracked into the bowl.
• The ENORMOUS meltdown that ensued because the brownies were totally ruined and there was no back up mix.  
• His brother eating brownie mix off the floor and saying that it still tasted good (gee whiz!). 

There's a mom that is barely holding it together.  

There's a mom with a full glass of wine posting cute, playful photos of her kids doing fun projects because it is those photos that keep her from drinking the whole bottle of wine. (Been there too...no judgment)

There's a mom documenting this crazy life so that the good moments are savored and the bad ones fade away. 

There's a mom that feels guilty about yelling too much, being impatient or harsh, or too "whatever" because life is more complicated than that tiny moment in time. 

The truth is that play time with the kids isn't always fun.  It's almost guaranteed to make a huge mess and to take way longer than expected.  There are usually some tears, some fights, and some arguments.

In fact, it was the second batch of brownies that we made that weekend that became my breakfast this morning. And they were delicious.

And I hear my kids tell the story of how they learned how to roller skate, that they have a special present to bring their teachers, and that they made yummy brownies.  

They leave out the messy details.  

And so do I.  

If people told us how incredibly messy and hard parenting was, no one would ever do it!  

So, don't believe the hype.  We are all a hot mess.  But whatever you do, I believe in pictures!  You can never have too many pictures.

Well, maybe you can have too many blurry roller skate pictures.  But, you know what I mean. 

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