The unspoken Motherhood dress code

Lets be real for a few minutes. When you're walking through Walmart or Target, how often do you find yourself gravitating towards a sale rack loaded with patterned lounge pants? You run your fingers through the fabric, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and imagine yourself chasing after your toddler in a brand new pair of pink heart covered cotton crops with an adjustable drawstring perfect for various levels of bloating. You pick up a pair, drape it over your arm, in case you walk past the fitting room later. Just in case though, because you really don't need them, and $7 is too much to spend on yourself anyways. OK, you're not actually going to try them on, no matter how good that daydream was. If anything, you should be buying jeans, like adults are supposed to. Or really, you should probably be buying jeans for your kid. But, maybe... just maybe... you do have $7. And maybe... your kid doesn't need jeans today. If you play your cards just right, by the end of this shopping trip, these pink lounge pants... they could be yours. You could hurry the kids into the car, so excited about the forthcoming comfort that you ignore that kid #1 has chocolate all over his face and hands, and float home on a cloud reminding yourself that soon you'll be out of your awful day trip pants, and sliding into something much more heavenly. After the twenty minute drive, you shuffle the kids out of the car, into the house, flip on the TV to distract them, throw the grocery bags on the counter, dig through them at warped speed looking for anything that resembles the color pink, grab the pants so fast that the tag flies across the room (you weren't planning on taking them back anyways, since we're being honest), run to the bathroom, unbutton and unzip your tight fitting jeans that are somehow soaked in sweat from the exhaustion of a single shopping trip, and then 3... 2... 1...

You are at peace.

The unspoken Motherhood dress code is one that we all know backwards, frontwards, and upside down. Our husbands however, they don't understand. TLC with all of their "What Not to Wear" shows, they don't understand. The neighbor lady with her cute tube top and fake boobs to hold it up, she doesn't understand (although you'd think she would, since she did have a kid, or at least claims to have). Shes obviously not one of us. The UPS guy doesn't... OK wait, no... he does understand. He sees enough of us to be in on it. Hes off the hook.

Taking care of kids is hard. Like... really hard. We're not about to do our hair, and put on makeup, and psh, put on clothes, if all we're going to be doing is getting covered in bodily fluids that don't even belong to us, and chasing after diaper lacking butts (god knows where the diaper went). We're not about to take a flat iron to our hair, just so our 6 month old can grab a hold of our freshly straightened locks and pull on it like its a freakin' kite string. And if we're not going to straighten it, why re color our roots? We'll question whether we should put on makeup or not, and usually settle upon "not". We're most likely going to be covered in sweat and tears within a few hours, some of it being our own, some of it belonging to them. Why set ourselves up for failure? Earrings are a thing of the past. Just like necklaces. Bracelets. Jewelry in general, actually. Even a facial piercing is an easy target. "Ooh, that sparkles, GIMME!", they say. Painted fingernails? ...No. Fancy smooth and yummy scented lotion? Probably not. We're lucky if we remember to brush our teeth.

And why are they called "pajama pants" anyways? I take offense to that. They are obviously "lounge" pants, thankyouverymuch, lady down the street wearing the tube top. I'm sure it was you and half of the under 25 years old male population that came up with that.

Moms; rock your lounge pants and pony tail.

And um... thats not me in the picture. Really.