Ritual Roundup - celebrating Leap Day with wackiness

As I've shared here previously, one of my favorite parental tasks is establishing and maintaining family traditions and rituals.  So earlier this week I posted the following on my personal Facebook page: "Offbeat question for all of you...does anyone have any special ways to recognize or celebrate leap day?"  To which friends responded with gems like "I make a point of going to work and not getting paid for it" and "I jump out of bed in the morning."  While good for a midday laugh, they weren't exactly what I was looking for.  (Though, to be perfectly honest, I thought I'd give getting the kids to "leap" out of bed a try.  Instead I ended up trying to get Miss Intrepid - who showed up fully clothed in my bedroom at 5:45 this morning - to sleep in, Princess Wonder woke up long before I did, and E2B was not even remotely interested.  And really, can you blame him?  Not my most inspired plan, that.)

I also ran a number of Internet searches that turned up party and game ideas that tended to focus around frogs.  The frog cupcakes were cute as were the felt and ribbon frog bookmarks.  Still, I was looking for something that was not only easily repeatable every four years, but something that would also be appealing to the kids as they got older.  Until they're too embarrassed to be seen in public with me, that is.  Which leads me to what we did do today.

Inspired by a "wacky day" photo my friend Ryan posted on Facebook of her daughter dressed for school in - amongst other things - a tutu, I decided to follow suit with our own brand of accessorizing.  Although I suspect Peanut's choice of clothing was inspired by Wacky Wednesday and Dr. Seuss' birthday coming up on Friday, I thought that donning wacky clothing for a wacky day like Leap Day was apropos.  We went out for dinner - though I could see us doing this at home in future years (especially when my kids are old enough to be embarrassed by me!) - wearing some special gear.  I offered to the kids that they could pick out a wacky hat for mom to wear at dinner.  They jumped on the chance and picked out something special for me to wear.  Dressing up mommy was quickly followed by dressing up themselves.  Their wacky ware went through a number of big and little adjustments up until the point that mom declared everyone done and we hit the road.

Without further ado, here we are!

Wacky ware version 1.0

Honestly, the kids took it easy on me with this combo

Wacky ware version 2.4

And, yes - we actually wore it outside of the house!

It might be a bit premature to call this a ritual, but I have high hopes for where this wackiness will take us when Leap Day rolls around again in 2016.  In the meantime, I hope you have a happy, wacky Wednesday, friends!


"Don't be afraid to look silly."  ~Tara Strong