Imperfect Parent

I am not the parent I thought I would be back before I had kids.

Let's face it...I am not that parent tonight that I thought I would be this morning at 5:30 when nobody was awake yet. 

Today my plan was simple...wake up, don't lose my cool, go to bed. That plan was completely shot by 6:15 a.m. 

I spent half of my day today feeling like a failure and the other half of my day feeling like a failure. 

I'm sitting here in a quiet house feeling awful because I experienced the happiest moment of my day today when everyone left for dinner, meaning I didn't have to cook or hear anyone complain for a solid hour and a half, and then immediately experienced the saddest part of my day when I sat down to type and my beaming children were staring at me on my computer. So there I sat feeling like a disaster of a parent because I used to have happy kids and now they are kids who spent the whole day throwing tantrums living seemingly unhappy lives as long as I was around. 

The dumbest part about it all?

My kids are happy. And I have not failed them. But I'm so busy comparing myself to everyone else's happy that I'm forgetting that they aren't always happy either. 

Being a parent is tough. But when you combine that with the pressure we put on ourselves and each other by the constant comparisons and judgments, it is almost impossible to ever feel like you are doing enough. Parents are just too hard on other parents. 

I don't know where this is all coming from. 

Maybe it was you, brand new mom at Target who was staring at me with your holier than thou eyes today, pushing your sleeping baby in his car seat carrier in the front of the cart with the whole back of the cart free for groceries. Go ahead and judge me as I wrestle with my blonde haired blue eyed cutie who is terrorizing himself as he tries to writhe his way out of the seatbelt (that you probably think I have fastened too tightly), and I ignore my four year old telling me that it is my fault they don't have Frankenberry cereal and that I don't love him because I won't let him buy me flowers today. 

I could judge you too. 

You also thought today's shopping trip was hard as you walked quickly through the aisles praying to God that your little one didn't wake up, have and explosive poop or need an unpredicted feeding between the predictable feedings that you scheduled this trip around.

And I could tell you that what you are going through is so much easier than what I am going through...

But it's not. And I won't. Because I remember being you, and it took a lot for you to get to the store today. So I will instead ignore your stare, allow you to be proud of you and will be empathetic when you have the day I am having (that you are currently swearing you are never going to have because your kids are never going to be like mine).  

Or maybe it is coming from the realization of how much time we spend judging the choices of other parents who are not doing their whole parenting thing the way we are doing our parenting thing. 

Why can't the bottle feeding mom be happy for the breast feeding mom? Why does bottle feeding mom feel the need to defend herself to anyone who says they breast feed? And, on the flip side, why do we think parents who bottle feed are bottom dwellers who must not care about their babies the way we do? I have been stared at like I said I beat my children when I say that I gave up on breast feeding the very first day we brought our first son home and that I never even attempted with our second.

Why?

I think it is phenomenal if you breast fed your baby. And I think it is fantastic if you bottle fed your baby. Bottle or boob, that shit gets tiring. I say bravo for not letting your little one starve.

Seriously.

And why does it always have to be harder for us than it is for everyone else? 

We all have aspects of our day that are easier or harder than everyone else's.

So why, as parents, do we constantly have to act like the constraints that we parent within are worse than the next guy's? Personally, I find comfort in knowing that my stay at home parent friends and my working parent friends all have struggles along with their triumphs. 

So why do we act like stay at home moms and dads have it so easy or that working parents just have no idea what it's like? I'm not a stay at home mom, but some days I would like to be...

And then some days I actually wish it were Monday. 

It is hard to stay at home. Sure, you get to see your kids more than I do. You don't have to miss the Halloween costume parade at school or use a vacation day to take a field trip, and you don't have to call in sick when your little guy has a fever. But you don't get to call in sick. 

Ever.

But why can't I just admire you for being able to be a stay at home mom? Why do I have to feel guilty for saying that I work and that even if I didn't have to work, I would probably choose to work a couple of days a week because while I may not love my job, I do love having a job outside of the house and I don't think I really need to justify it. 

It is not easier for me because I work and it is not harder for you because you stay home. 

We have different challenges. I'm sure we each have things the other is missing.

You need a break and so do I.

We both fought battles today. And, quite honestly, the fact that our kids got food, had the chance to play and went to bed knowing that we love them (even on days when they say we don't in the front of Target where they keep the damn flowers) should sometimes be enough.
At the end of the day, we each did whatever we had to do to make the day happen, whether we we were there for all of it or not, so shouldn't we just be proud of the fact that we are making it all work as best as we can?

Don't get me wrong here. I think that we all need to stand for something, believe in something and we all need to be able to feel bad for ourselves every now and then. 

Go for it. Tell me what you believe in, open my eyes to some information regarding any aspect of parenting that I don't know about (there are lots of those)...but don't make me feel like an idiot for not doing it your way. I think you should do what you are doing. But it doesn't make any one of us wrong for doing it a different way. 

And, please, if you are having a bad day...let it out.

Tell it how it is. Be the victim. Complain away. You need it. We all do.

Believe me, a couple of months from now, when we are in the heart of basketball season and Joe is gone from 6:30 in the morning until at least 9:30 at night for weeks at a time and I have had zero help around here and my kids have only seen their dad for 25 minutes while everyone is still half asleep before we are out the door for the day, I will be feeling really awful for me. 

Have that day, don't beat  yourself up over it. 

And when your kid does something amazing...tell me about it. We are parents. We should brag. Our kids are the coolest kids. 

This whole parenting thing gets more judgey and competitive with every picture posted and recipe pinned. What should be an awesome way to share our lives with our friends and family who would otherwise not have as much of a window in, kind of gets in the way of us patting ourselves on the back for just being parents. 

So stop beating yourself up over the things that other parents are doing that you are not.

For every first step captured on video, there were 100 people didn't have the camera handy. 

For every cute profile picture of your friend with her 3 smiling children, there were 324 pictures taken where she thought she looked fat, her hair was ugly and her kids were crawling away or screaming.

For all 25 of your Facebook friends who take their kids to the pumpkin patch this weekend, there are 250 people who aren't. And for every photo of every delicious home cooked meal on a real dinner plate that has been posted, there are people like me feeding their kids (and husband) dinosaur chicken nuggets and Kraft Mac & Cheese for the third time this week. 

Enjoy whatever it is that you do that is better than everyone else and be okay with the fact that you aren't good at everything. 

Bad days are going to happen, awesome days are going to eventually overshadow them, and I am pretty sure my kids probably love me even when they are mad at their imperfect me. 

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