My work schedule is strange; Rarely do I work Monday-Friday, more often I work a weekend and then have Monday and Tuesday off. Those are my stay at home mom days and I try to fill them with lots of fun things for my 20 month old and myself. This week I had my SAHM days and was feeling a little tired so I decided Monday would be a low-key day mostly at home and Tuesday we’d go find something fun.
Monday we slept in (thank you Atlas!) and then ate three separate breakfasts because one isn’t enough with you are a toddler who thinks he is starving. We were watching an episode of Sesame Street and they were painting. Atlas loves to paint so we went to town with our own masterpiece, followed by a sink bath to remove the layers and layers of paint. We had a coffee date with a new friend and then went to the park. Everything was picture perfect and I took tons of pictures to prove it.
Tuesday. Tuesday was harder. Atlas woke up a little crabby, maybe I did too, but we toughed it out and went to the YMCA for open swim. Swimming took a lot of energy and he fell asleep within 30 seconds of our tires moving. I thought we were back on track after I successfully moved the location of his nap to his crib.
What I didn’t know is that he would wake up rejuvenated and spirited in his beliefs of how our day would continue. We went to story time at the library but he refused to sit and wanted to pull all of the books off of the shelves. We switched to playing where he did well until he decided he needed his snack right. this. minute. We did some shopping which was great, until he decided to run like a maniac through a bookstore and scream at the top of his lungs every time I tried to pick him up to leave.
At this point I probably should have just gone home, but I decided to go to Target. Target was great until it wasn’t fun to ride in the cart anymore and I had to carry him instead. I bribed him with a Ninja Turtles hat to sit nicely at the register. And then we went home to cook dinner, pizza, his favorite that just wouldn’t cook fast enough for his liking.
And so it continued. Good, glorious moments of motherhood alternating with hard, seemingly endless periods of time when I wanted to just sit on the floor and scream with him and fantasize about Wednesday when I would have a “break” by going to work.
Toddlers, man, who knew this would be harder?! I thought the baby stage was hard, but this is harder, and I have a relatively easy kid! It is easy to get caught up in the idea that our days should be perfect, that our kids should be perfect, and we as moms should be perfect too.
But I’m not perfect, I’m far from it. Many days things go well and I feel like I’m in my grove and others feel like they will never end and that I’m doing a terrible job. We don’t post the hard days, because when you are in the middle of a hard day you can barely keep your head above water let alone stop to take photographic evidence of it. So sure, you might scroll through my Facebook, or your friend’s feed, and become discouraged by the fact that your reality looks nothing like their curated photos of the good days. If you do that though you are feeding into a limiting belief that your life is never that good and that’s not reality.
Reality is that some days are hard. Some weeks, months, seasons–are hard. That’s life. That’s living with a tiny human who is just figuring out how to walk, eat, and communicate their own feelings productively.
Reality is also that some days are beautiful. Or sometimes just moments of the day. Rather than focus on the negative, or the comparison, I have to remind myself to look for the next great moment. Forgive myself for the times I don’t feel I’m doing a good enough job. And to extend grace to all the moms out there who are in the same boat, riding along on the unpredictable waves of motherhood.
So the next time you are having a hard day and you take a quick look through Facebook or Instagram and feel worse about it. Ask yourself if you are feeding into a limiting belief for your life, or if you are focused on the moment you are in and how you can make it a better reality?
