NPR car

This week Emery began a Kindermusik class for which we need a parking pass. Like a good student (or parent of a student I guess), I dutifully followed the instructor's guidance to place the decal on the bumper of my car, since that's where the parking police like to see it.

As I was trying to place the sticker on straight (unsuccessfully), with Emery in my arms and needing to get back inside for class, I felt a little thrill. If there is anything I am not, it's musical. And if there's anything we don't do in the Doescher household, it's put bumper stickers on our cars. 

So you can imagine Matt's reaction when I told him about the sticker - "Now we have an NPR car! Why didn't you just put it in the windshield?!?"

Because! I know we don't normally do things like this, but I actually find it kind of fun/funny ... makes me feel like I can pretend to be a different kind of mom for the few months that Emery is taking Kindermusik. The kind of mom who annually donates to NPR (incidentally, the class really is held on the campus of University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and even in the building I think that houses the campus' NPR station. So he's kind of right), the kind of mom who sung in an acapella group in college and is now extending her love of singing and music to her young, impressionable daughter, the kind of mom who, even in the midst of all the demands of parenthood, still manages to continue nurturing her musical abilities by playing the violin in the local orchestra ... you get the idea.

None of these things will ever be true, but something about having the bumper sticker makes me feel like maybe more things are possible than I really think. Starting with Emery letting me listen to NPR news in the car in the morning instead of Toddlers Sing for the 80 millionth, billionth time.