Good Morning,
Pardon the goofy 90’s hip hop reference! My name is Erin, and I live with my husband of 11 years and our three kids aged 7, 5 and 2 in Richmond, Virginia. For most of my life I’ve struggled as a serial perfectionist. If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right, just right. I’m the one spending my entire evening on Pinterest searching for the perfect end of the year teacher gift, the one spending two hours constructing a weekly meal plan for my family that is both healthy and delicious and the one that everyone wants to go on vacation with because of my heavily researched restaurant reservation skills.
One husband, three kids, two dogs, and a house that is constantly falling apart later, and I’m finally starting to realize that I am enough, even when I’m not doing it right. Even when I’m at my worst, all those people (and pets) still love me. They love me when the house is a mess, they’re eating McDonalds for dinner and watching TV well over the AAP recommended guidelines. They still have an amazing time at birthday parties when I buy their cake from Wegmans and don’t have a theme with elaborately organized snacks and cute little signs describing each one. You fellow Pinterest addicts know what I’m talking about!
I’m here to share my struggle with accepting myself for who I am and to realize that, though I’ll never be a perfect mom or wife, I am good enough. Sorry to sound like Stuart Smalley here, but it needs to be said. From talking to other parents out there, this seems like a familiar topic for many of us. We often feel inadequate, lonely or just plain miserable when we compare our real lives to the visual highlight reels of our friends and acquaintances that are presented to us on sites like Instagram and Facebook. I’ve had to take breaks from Facebook in the past when all of the comparing I’d been doing had made me feel like a failure. I’ve lately realized that all of us are making mistakes, constantly, as parents, spouses, employees, etc. We’re just not posting those struggles on Facebook.
Look at the way no one is fighting and everyone is looking at the camera! This is not real life!
These would be my Facebook un-worthy posts from the last four days alone:
-It’s Thursday and I can’t remember if my kids have had a bath this week. Haha, just kidding, I’m fully aware that they haven’t.
-The kids can cross pretzels off their list of camp snacks this week. Someone ate the entire bag and an entire bottle of red while watching Midsomer Murders on Netflix.
-My 2 year old pooped on the floor not once, but twice today. I just cleaned it up with a baby wipe. If you drop food on the floor at my house, the five second rule does not apply.
-I put my kids in front of the television this afternoon so that I could play Farm Heroes Saga for twenty minutes straight.
My kids with their favorite babysitter. Nobody’s perfect!
The photo on the title page also happened this week, but that one I did put on Facebook. I knew they’d locked themselves in the dog crate and my conscience was clear.
Let’s stop pretending we can do everything right! On this blog I’ll share my successes and failures with parenting, wife-ing, meal planning, fitness, and anything else that comes up. If I find ways to make my life easier, I’ll share them here. If I try a new parenting strategy, recipe, product and it’s a total bust or just a waste of money, I’ll let you know. Most importantly, I hope to make you feel less alone in this struggle we’re all experiencing. We’re in this together!
🙂 Erin
