Totally perfectly imperfect

Sometimes I feel my entire life is an endless series of worries. It seems like everything I have, am and do brings along its (un-) rightful amount of concern, which adds to what I already got on my mind. Then I talk to some person, and during the conversation something comes up, which I have forgotten to worry about. Reading what I just wrote I scare myself when I realize how little I focus on my joys and prides. The good things in my life just tags along in my existence; my worries (mostly about things which might happen, but never actually do) chew the rag in the background of my mind.

So, in order not to drive myself insane I measure it down. I start sorting the important worries from the unimportant ones, only to discover within minutes my thoughts are drifting into pondering about how that can be possible? In my opinion every part, and all the participants involved, together makes up what I call my life. If someone or something loses priority and attention my life is changed… and in spite of a lot of things I am quite happy now.

I often worry I'm not measuring up as a mom. Even though I have all the right intentions; I fail.

I'm not feeding my kids the right foods, all the time. Too often I end up serving the easy meals. The food I know they will enjoy eating and which takes no time at all to prepare. In other words: Less vegetables than I wish. Rice or mashed potatoes mixed with frozen vegetables is an improvised solution I often turn to, even though I know there is a heated debate whether they are as good as fresh ones (of course they are not, they taste differently).

I'm yelling too much. Maybe not really yelling, ‘cause I keep my voice down, but I nag.  I know they can hear me, but I also realize they are not listening. I’m starting to believe my voice makes my words sound like a continual senseless murmur not worth paying attention to. It is just another sound in the ocean of sounds surrounding them.

I find it hard to find time to watch every soccer game my sons play. Last week my youngest played one game as well as one practice. He is still so young the parents are expected to attend their practice. My middle son had soccer practice on Sunday afternoon, match on Monday and Thursday for his own team, then played a match for the b-team on Wednesday because they were a player short. It’s just too much for me to keep up with. Even making sure the suit is clean is quite an achievement, I think. I wish I was one of those faithful soccer-moms who attended every match, drove to every away match and cheered my son along… BUT I do set aside the weekends they play in tournaments and cups.

I've hindered their own style by choosing their clothes until they were 6. Up until then I made the choices regarding their clothes and the assemble they wear. I still buy their clothes, but they dress themselves.

I have learned to ignore the patterns and colours don’t match. That was a defeat I faced when my oldest son was a baby and his father dressed him. I sulked for a while, wanting my son to look nice, but then I remembered that a father is just as much a father as I am a mom, so I swallowed the camel and comforted myself by the decision to dress the kids for special occasions myself. (Stupid thing to do, though, as now I have to lay out the outfit for the entire family every time I really want to take time to look presentable (for ones) myself.)

I've failed, it is bound to be a failure, at least for my own ego and my wish to look ok. Instead I end up blessing the fact I don’t wear much make-up (hardly any, to be honest), as I put on mascara on the way. I dismiss the sneaking, displeased thought that I WOULD have put on make-up and look good, if I only had been organized enough to start dressing an hour earlier.

Even though I have all these failures and setbacks I don’t really suffer from a total breakdown, because, you know what ... I believe we all have worries and setbacks and feel like failures. We just need to keep in mind, and believe, that our kids will survive this! Let's just love the heck out of our kids, and try again tomorrow, and LOVE the other Mamas out there knowing they feel exactly the same:

Totally imperfect!