Confessions of a Chart-Challenged Mother and the Permanent Repercussions to her Oldest Daughter.

Ok. So Lily’s always coming to me with these “theoretically” great ideas about how to organize things. Anything. It could be about cleaning, or cooking, or discipline, or practicing the piano, or anything, really. I usually give her a smile, a enthusiastic “Good idea” and then drop it, because, I guess I’m not much of a chart mom. Lily should’ve been born in my sister Daisy’s family…because she’s great with charts. Here’s an example of one of Lily’s charts…no kidding, she comes up with this stuff on her own. It’s pretty good. (Disregard the handwritten rules, these were written in by some unruly uncle)



So I was lamenting about this one day to my sister-in-law, Trieste, about how I was not a good mom because I couldn’t be the organized chart lady that Lily obviously thinks I should be. So Trieste decided that for Lily’s birthday she was going to make her a planner. Just something that an organized 2nd grader needs. So we had a wonderful birthday for Lily and she got, among other things, Trieste’s planner. She was polite about all her presents and thanked everyone…but I was unsure of how the planner was going to go over until the next morning. Lily was already ready for school and was waiting on Canyon to get ready and I saw her in the living room, without her knowing that I was watching, hugging her planner. I guess it’s official. Lily did inherit something, besides her freckles and red hair, from her dad.