Hiiiiiiiiiii!   I know, I know, it’s been a while!  I didn’t even finish my domestic abuse series yet from you know, ahem, October (insert shame).  I promise to get to that riveting conclusion soon!  Okay, it’s not riveting, but I’ll share it none the less.  I didn’t intend to drop the ball on that but, as you may or may not know, I’m a photographer and thus the fall photo season tied me down with work, work, work.  Then it was holiday season and now I’m in a season of “Dear Lord, make it stop!!!!!”  I wish I had the time or the words to fill you with something inspirational and send you out into the day with warm and fuzzy vibes but alas, I don’t.  Fresh out of warm and fuzzy vibes this morning and it looks like I’m not restocking anytime before bedtime.  What I have for you is a pure unadulterated rant.  If warm and fuzzy is what you seek, look away now friend.  Look away!

Y’all!  I wanted kids soooooooo bad.  It was like my life’s mission to do motherhood and do it well.  You know, not to toot my own horn (toot), but it was something that always came pretty naturally to me.  For all intensive purposes, I was a good mom.  A refreshing combination of Martha Stewart, June Cleaver, Lorelai Gilmore, and oh I don’t know, Roseanne Conner.  The point is, I was rocking motherhood.

Or so I thought…

As of late, I’ve been feeling more like Gemma Teller or Norma Bates (of the series, not the movie).  A hot freaking mess.  This week has been particularly rough.  I’m looking around my house and wondering… how the hell did that happen?  What was the thought processes behind this?  I tripped on a shoe coming down the stairs.  Just one.  I immediately wondered what circumstance would make a child say, “you know, I think I’ll just take this one shoe off right here in the middle of the stairs and keep going for a dramatic Cinderella effect”.  When I went into the bathroom and saw a whole roll of charmin strung to and fro like party streamers I tried to analyze the thought process behind “I need to wipe my butt, hmmm… wait!  Let’s see how much toilet paper is REALLY on this roll.”  When I navigated through a battle zone of lego landmines in the playroom (you know, the ones I painstakingly color coded into fabulous Ikea storage bins a mere 2 weeks ago for 3 hours?), I considered what must have undoubtably been a disturbing conversation between my children and their inner selves.  Child: “Let’s play with the legos”  Child’s inner demons: “let’s ‘make it rain’ legos instead (I can almost hear their devious laughter now).

So as I’ve almost broken my neck tripping on a shoe on the staircase, re-rolled the toilet paper, and mumbled the F word under my breath with each painful lego jab it occurred to me that these little assholes were really making it hard for me to be the domestic maternal goddess I wanted to be!  I’ve been down on myself because I felt like I was failing in the mothering department lately.  But maybe I haven’t been failing in the mothering department at all.  Maybe they’re failing in the considerate children department.  You know what, that’s okay because they’re just kids after all.

The problem is, we as parents, equate our children’s shortcomings with our own failures.  Forget the fact that I spend 80% of my day cleaning something, the legos on the floor and the shoes on the staircase stare me down like I’m desperately failing at my job.  When they don’t excel on a spelling test or win their soccer game, we immediately blame ourselves.  “Maybe she would have made a 100 if I wasn’t working all day and spent more time studying with her.”  “Maybe she would have made that goal if we went to the park and kicked the ball around a little more often.”  We dwell on that one chick-fil-a meal we fed them instead of the 5 homemade meals we served.  Why do we put so much pressure on ourselves??!?!  We need to stop magnifying our failures and start celebrating our successes…  So today, that’s what I’m doing.  I’m celebrating the fact that I have 3 beautiful, intelligent, Jesus loving, healthy children and I’m going to completely ignore the lego landmines for another day.  In this moment I’m going to sit here with yesterday’s hair and makeup and drink a mimosa.  Because contrary to what I often feel like, I do NOT suck at life!  Cheers!  ❤