I'm sorry for the pictures I posted on Instagram

I just wanted to say: I’m sorry for the pictures I’ve been posting on Instagram. 

I’ve somehow – inadvertently and quite without warning – turned into THAT mother on Instagram, all sepia tinted and hashtag blessed. Not that I use the hashtag #blessed. I wouldn’t do that to you. But I’ve done everything else. I’M PLAYING THE INSTAGRAM GAME.

For that, I am truly sorry. 

Here’s the thing, right: I treat Instagram as a photo album. On Instagram, I’m not arsed about likes or comments; I just like having a little something to look back on. I should probably set my profile to private; in fact, I WILL, just as soon as I’ve finished this wee rant

But that’s not the point – the point is, I’m playing the game. Angelic photos of an idyllic life that should – if all goes according to plan – have you thinking, “Oh, what angelic photos of an idyllic life.”

Which is bullshit, obviously.  

My life is good, yes. My life and my house and my children and my friends and my family are absolutely fucking brilliant, but they’re not as perfect as my Instagram profile would have you think. 

Which is why I didn’t post photos of our fucking brilliant day at the zoo yesterday. I almost did, but then I was, like, why are you posting photos of your fucking brilliant day at the zoo yesterday? How would you feel if you saw photos of The Notorious MUM’s fucking brilliant day at the zoo while you’re home alone with three over-stimulated children and a turtle who’s escaped from his new terrarium? And I felt bad, so I didn’t. 

Because, of course, the pictures only tell half the story. Yes, it was a fucking brilliant day at the zoo, but ask yourself, where was my third, eldest child? Why wasn’t HE playing happy families with us? (Reasons, so many reasons, one of which includes the fact that we’d have to take out a second mortgage to get a family of five into the fucking zoo. Another of which is the fact that Paul’s said he’d rather catch the bus than travel any distance with our three children in the backseat.)

And today. Let’s talk about today. That picturesque birthday party in the park, where my two youngest kids were angelically dressed to perfectly coordinate with the birthday girl’s balloons? Cute, eh? What you don’t see, of course, are the 90 minutes of trauma leading up to the point when Frankie finally – suddenly and without warning – decided to stop crying and start playing like a normal child. Strangely, I don’t tend to document the unrelenting anxiety that consumes my middle child. 

Why’ve I stopped posting smug photos of my smug family? It probably has something to do with the many, many smug photos of smug families that have saturated my own Instagram feed of late and left me with this strange feeling of inadequacy. You know this feeling, right? Of course you do. You know when you were, like, “We really should build a gingerbread house even though I can’t be fucking arsed and they’ll eat the icing as we’re piping it and it won’t stay up anyway”? Remember that? That was Instagram’s fault. 

I have no solution, of course. It wouldn’t be a Notorious MUM blog if there was a solution. So I’ll just set my own Instagram profile to private and remind you not to feel bad for feeding your children so many additives over the festive season that their shit has turned a luminous shade of green. The end.