That Does It, I Quit

Yesterday was the annual Little Flowers Mothers' Tea. Little Flowers is an after-school club for Catholic girls. They do crafts and play games, typical afterschool stuff, but they also do a lot of seriously intentional things: study lives of the saints, learn about the different virtues and how they can practice them, do charity projects. Sophia loves it.

So for the Tea, all the girls in her group were supposed to wear their official Little Flowers sashes. A blue sash like the green one we used to have in the Girl Scouts, with the different badges sewn on.

Stumbling block: DIH hates to sew.

Let me repeat that: DIH HAAAATES!!! to sew. Buttons can bite the dust, hems can drooop, and still she avoids the needle like the plague. Sewing is for the dextrous. Which I ain't.

But she pulled up her socks. She reminded herself that it was all part of the job. And then she dug out the sewing box and the thread and she sat down and she sewed eveyrone of those badges on.

They were not round, like those old Girl Scouts badges. One was octagonal. The others- and this I did think was odd- were shaped kind of like little tombstones. But I lined them up in rows stitched the things on. Then for obvious reasons I patted myself on the back. Good mom work, Desperate. Well done!

So I arrive at the Mothers' Tea and hand Sophia her sash with a flourish. Am I a great mom, or what?

She looks at me. "What did you do?"

It turns out the octagonal badge was supposed to be the center of a flower. The "tombstones"
were supposed to go around it, like petals. Little Flowers. Get it?

Sophia wouldn't wear the sash. This turned out to be fine, as only about three of the other kids remembered theirs.

I swear, that's the last time I try any of this crafts nonsense.