When Andy started public school I avoided the PTO like the plague. I wanted nothing to do with it. I was happy to help whenever asked and volunteer for different jobs around the school, bring things needed in the classrooms for the teachers and even split the job of room mom one year, but was never, ever going to join the PTO.
I would have been perfectly happy with my elementary school career if we had continued like that, but then we moved. Nothing wrong with moving, but all the friends I first met when we moved here were very active in the PTO. We have over 600 kids in our school and there are only about 10 people on the PTO and I happened to make friends with all of them. Okay, one or two, but that was enough. So, I started feeling like I needed to get involved and go to the meetings and here I am, a member of the PTO. Just one of many reasons you should never say never.
Anyway, I was a pretty low key member and couldn't even make it to most meetings because they were at the same time we have a Spanish tutor come to the house for the kids, until the PTO President, who is also one of the moms in Sarah's Brownie Troop, asked me if I would head up "Muffins With Mom". I had already told her I wouldn't be in charge of some other event, so I felt guilty and said yes.
Muffins With Mom is something that we do the Friday before Mother's Day. The kids come in before school with their mom and have muffins, coffee, juice and a little fruit. There's a tiny craft and it's all put on by the PTO. Apparently last year's event was a total disaster because they underestimated how many people would be there and ran out of muffins and people had to wait 45 minutes in the rain before they found out they wouldn't be getting a muffin. Seriously, you can't make this stuff up.
So there was a little bit of pressure not to screw this one up and to do it right this year. There were already people saying they weren't going to come and a handful of people cornered me asking what we were going to do differently to prevent a repeat of last year. I'll tell you what we did. We ordered the equivalent of 2000 muffins, split up the line so that people could get through it faster, lengthened the time of the event and had a kick ass craft for the kids to do after they ate their muffins. I came up with a really cute paper flower craft for the kids to do so they could give it to their mom, but it was super labor intensive and I spent most of the week punching out paper flowers on my Sizzix machine.
It probably all would have worked out fine except that Charlie was gone the entire week on business and everything that could have possibly been scheduled on our calendar that week was as well as some things that never are on our calendar. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and my village decreased exponentially when we moved. Every single person in my new village was called upon last week so I could get everything done.
I ended up staying up until 2 a.m. every night and finally caught up on my sleep by this Tuesday. I didn't even get to eat a muffin with my kids at the Muffins With Mom event, but I did get to see something wonderful. I dragged the three kids out of bed at 6 a.m. on Friday so we could be to the school by 7 a.m., and all three of them pitched in and helped set up for the event. Even Amanda. They did not whine or complain and did what was asked and even asked how they could help. They forfeited a lot of my time last week as I got ready and tried to prepare a craft for 400 kids (that was our estimate) and they didn't complain when several kids made seven or eight flowers and they got to make one. I was so, so proud of them.
In the end we had a lot of muffins left over, but everybody said the event was a huge success and I think most of the bad feelings from the year before are gone. Plus, if I need to do it again next year it will be a ton easier because I know exactly what needs to be done. I'm still not super gung ho about being involved with the PTO, but at least now I know I can survive when called upon.
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