MANDATORY MAKE-UP MOMENT

A friend of mine recently uploaded some new photos of her kid’s third birthday party to facebook. I went through about 10 photos and then came to a shot of her. She looked freaking phenomenal… like a TV version of a 30-something mom. She looked 10 years younger than I am, and I know that she is actually a few years old. It was salt in an open wound.

This whole thing got me to thinking. Perhaps I was a bit hasty with my sweatpants are the new black post. I should have made an exception for the mandatory make-up moment.

There is only one mandatory make-up moment and that is your kid’s birthday party. Now you might be wondering why I would make only one exception and not exempt all holidays. Here are my reasons:

Birthday prep is exhausting

Have you ever stopped to look closely at the birthday kid’s mom? If you shine a light on her you’ll see deep, dark circles under eyes and some cake icing in her hair. Mommy was likely up until all hours baking the cake, wrapping presents, cleaning the house and doing everything except sitting down and breathing. To make matters worse, the birthday kid is bright eyed and bushy tailed at 6am…if you are lucky. No wonder she looks a little rough around the edges.

People take lots of photos

The doorbell rings and the first guest arrives…and two seconds later the first of a million photos is being taken. If you put that many kids in a room with that many camera phones, you can bet that someone there is documenting pretty much every minute of the party. Even if you don’t stop for the photos, between chasing down the birthday kid, handing out cake and picking up scraps of paper, you’ll be in at least half of the photos whether you like it or not.

People actually look at these photos

This is the critical point. Your friends, family, frenemies and enemies (you know, the people you friended on facebook just so that you could show them that you are better than they are) will look at your kid’s birthday party photos. You might be asking yourself, why these and not the ones from any other holiday? Simple. Most of your holiday photos are overshadowed by the 9000 other photos everyone else is posting on the same topic. And really, no one wants to see photos of your kid in pajamas opening a Christmas present.

We will look through every birthday party photo. Why? If we came, we are looking for ourselves. If we didn’t come, we are looking to see who did make the invite list. If we are a frenemy/enemy, we are looking to see if you have started to look old…or at least older than we do.

All of these reasons add up to one conclusion. If there is one day a year on which you go above and beyond in the make-up and hair department, the kid’s birthday is it. So shove the kids off on daddy and take 10 minutes to slap on a pound of under-eye concealer, powder, blush, gloss, mascara AND eye liner. This is no time to half-ass it. While you are at it, throw some curlers in your hair or use a mirror to iron out the lump in the back of your hair. Birthdays are the big leagues, so bring your A-game and then revel in the compliments to come.

You’re welcome!

NOW PLEASE GO AND VOTE FOR ME IN THE CIRCLE OF MOM’S TOP 25 FUNNY MOMS COMPETITION. PRETTY, PRETTY PLEASE!