My house was a mess and my photos were remaining unedited, which was driving me crazy. Little Miss wanted to sit in my lap and have me read to her, the first time ever. I sat in the middle of that mess and read to her after feeling frustrated and annoyed only 15 minutes before,

For most of the night she was clinging to me and whining and crying and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong but I knew I wanted to fold the laundry and clean the upstairs sink and she wasn’t letting me. My oldest had forgot a book at school that he needed for an important project and a long weekend was ahead of us, cutting down the time to get his project done. I was getting mad and frustrated and flat out ticked. I felt overwhelmed and inadequate as a mom and a housekeeper and I threw toys out of my way as I tried to clean up the potato chips Little Miss had stomped into the floor. 

It seems like each time I try to accomplish a project a toddler cries or falls off something, a child needs a drink, or an animal throws up. Hours later my husband comes home from work and finds none of the projects I claimed I could complete done. 

More and more I am realizing I need to stop expecting myself to be super mom. I am never going to be the mom I expect myself to be. I’m most likely never going to be like Donna Reed, cooking a perfect meal, helping the children with their homework, kidding my husband and cleaning the kitchen floor at the same time. I’m never going to be that mom who sweetly smiles at her child even when he forgets an important book after he was specially told the book was needed and then says “oh well! Let’s go make some lemonade out of these lemons!” I’m most likely always going to be the mom who swallows her annoyance and says tightly “we will figure this out …. Somehow.” 

But maybe I will be the mom who sits in the middle of the upstairs hallway, in the middle of her mess, and lets the toddler crawl on her lap and lift her first library book up to be read again and again because that matters more than clean upstairs sinks.