Drama vs. grossness

This week my good friend, Laura, gave me some good blogging material.  Laura has two girls.  Our kids are "sandwiched" between each other, age wise.  Her older daughter is one year younger than Jay and her younger daughter is only 4 months younger than Nick.  This week it was spring pictures at school.  The only reason I knew about it is because a note was sent home from school.  There was absolutely no preparations in my house for spring pictures.  My boys could have cared less.  On the morning of spring pictures Laura called me (as she often does) on her way to work.  The first words out of her mouth were, "I thought about you this morning my friend and was just wishing I could have had Jay and Nick in my house vs. my own girls."  My first thought was REALLY -does Laura really know what she'd be getting into with Jay and Nick - all of the farting, the burping and let's not forget all the pee around the toilet seat every morning.  She went on to describe the week long ordeal in her house in preparing for spring pictures.  I, on the other hand, just kept thinking am I missing something, are spring pictures a big deal?  Clearly with girls, they are!  Laura said it took weeks of preparing the outfits, buying new outfits, making sure the outfits went together right and on the morning of it was the hair!  First it was braids which Laura admitted she isn't very good at then it was a "fish tail" which to a mother of boys a fish tail only means something that is on a fish that will probably get cut up for frying purposes. After the braid and fish tail fiasco the girls decided they didn't like that either and one girl wanted her hair straightened and the other girl finally settled on a pony tail.  I asked Laura if she started her day at 4 a.m. in order to prepare for the big spring pictures.  Ha!  Laura said she was exhausted by all the drama that morning and wished she had my boys for the morning (but only for that particular morning).  Now I'll admit boys could care less about pictures and getting them to even smile for one, let alone having them care what they are wearing or how they look is a challenge.  Don't all us moms face our own challenges with each one of our children?  I suppose it's how you look at it and I know on certain days Laura and I would love to switch children.  I could get the exposure to braids and fish tails (and not the kind you eat) and she could get exposed to mud, pee on the toilet seat and lots and lots of talk about hunting, guns and four wheelers.  I suppose it would be a breath of fresh air for just a bit but then I know neither one of us would trade our kids for anything.  We just make sure we have a lot of vodka to sustain us.  Just kidding - sort of.