“Real pants just aren’t my thing anymore…”

by Minnow + Co.

The title of this post?  That’s (unfortunately) a direct quote from me.  Those words actually escaped my mouth somewhere around a month ago, and though I would dearly love to be able to claim that I was being snarky or sarcastic, nope, I wasn’t.  It was a genuine, heartfelt admission to a fellow mommy in the heat of a playdate moment.  It’s a sentiment that had been rolling around my head for months, but I hadn’t been planning on admitting it publicly because, really, who says that kind of thing out loud?  I was just kind of hoping we could all ignore the fact that I now live in yoga pants pretty much full time, and was praying no one would submit me to “What Not to Wear”…

I don’t even have a good excuse – my pre-mommy clothes fit.  And I have some really nice, high quality grown-up-lady pants.  I just have no interest in wearing them.  Why not? Well, let me tell you:

1. I spend 90% of my day crawling/rolling around on the floor. And since they basically invented snazzy yoga pants to make rolling around on the floor in contorted positions more comfortable, I feel that jeans are inferior mommy uniform material.
2.  Sports clothing material shares some similarities with Swiffer cloths, instantly picking up every morsel of dust, cat hair, grit and grime, and thereby makes wearing them while rolling around on the floor count as cleaning.  Jeans do not possess this same magic quality.
3.  I wear jeans/real pants when I want to look casual, but nice.  E thinks I look nice in pretty much anything, as long as I’ve got the canister of her organic strawberry puffs with me, so real pants are unnecessary at home.  And I care very little about impressing the patrons of Target or the grocery store, so I generally roll through those high class boutiques looking like I fell into my car directly from bed.
4. Though I love my husband dearly, and really, really, really hope he can vaguely remember the way I looked when we met, after scrambling around after E all day, attempting to clean and organize a house that’s categorically incapable of being clean and organized , battling through 2 naps and 1 bedtime, preparing meals for E, foraging a few stray carrots for my own lunch, picking up toys 3,000 times, doing 17 loads of laundry, and cooking dinner while E holds on to my legs and screeches at me forlornly, honestly, putting on a pair of real pants is just asking too much.

When I do put on real pants, I feel oddly overdressed, even if I’m in jeans.  And I can’t help but count the hours and moments until I can cast off those fancy lady pants, what with their hems, zippers, and non-elasticized waistbands, and slip into the soft, stretchy embrace of my cherished Beyond Yoga leggings.  I’ve even found myself scouring the fashion pages, trying to judge whether a tunic/sweater/shirt will look appropriately put together paired with leggings, so that I can have the best of both worlds.  Instead of wanting a wardrobe that is fabulous, I now covet a wardrobe that will hide my legging addiction.

Considering E appears to be about theeeees close to walking, I’d say my days will soon become all the more frantic, scrambling and messy.  So, if you see me out, don’t worry about feeling bad for the disheveled mommy who couldn’t find the time to put on real clothes.  In all likelihood, if I’m in yoga pants and look like a hot mess, I’m a much happier camper than if I were were in jeans, and looked smashing.

And by the way?  For the sake of full disclosure – there’s a very good chance I have no business wearing leggings in public, but for the sake of my sanity, I put them on far, far away from a mirror and then leave the house with the absurd and false notion that in those leggings, I look approximately the same as the model from the catalogue.  It’s just that kind of blatant self delusion that gets me through the day.  And I’m OK with it.  Because at least I’m a very COMFORTABLE self deluded individual.