to be honest...

To be honest, I try to keep this blog a positive and encouraging place to record life's lighter moments, remember the sweet spots, and ponder daily accomplishments. I hope one day my children can look back at these moments we shared and reflect on the joyous moments of their childhood. I might even hope that the pictures and words shared here will sweeten the memories of their childhood to a rosier glow than they might otherwise summon to mind.

{rooster cutout from All Year Round}

To be honest, I never expected that anyone would see the pictures and bits of life shared here and assume that these lovely little moments I choose to share would indicate a blissful life free of constantly mountainous laundry, alternately crumby and sticky kitchen floor, sometimes bickering children, occasionally snappish parents and other various as-sundries that make up the less than picturesque parts of life.

{Elizabeth's new spring skirt}

To be honest, I know that I'm a driven, goal-oriented and constantly focused person who can't sit still for more than a few minutes a day, unless knitting or blogging is involved. That doesn't mean that I don't occasionally fall into the trap of comparing myself to other mothers who seem to be more crafty, more patient, more organized, more accomplished than myself. Fortunately, I usually recognize quickly that I can only be the best at being me and while I should never stop working on my short-comings, it's ok for me to admit that there are many areas that I excel in as a wife, mother and woman.

{St. Patty's day window ornament}

To be honest, in the last decade of mothering, I've tried to learn how to let the small stuff go. For me that means, I might be willing to let my kids play in the mud every afternoon, even carry cups of water outside to "make mud" when the mud hole has run dry, but that doesn't exclude them from fact that there will be extra laundry to fold. And just watch me chase them out if they try to traipse through my house with muddy shoes!

{ye ol' mud hole}

To be honest, I think another thing I learned in the last decade of mothering is that just because you have an easy, great-sleeping, easy-potty-training, generally happy-go-lucky child the first time around, it doesn't have anything to do with you. And it means you're more likely to get another child with an intense personality who is stubborn, demanding, and emotional. (Just ask me how I know this.)

{Finn's nosedive in ye ol' mud hole}

To be honest, all of us mothers are in this together. The crafty and not-so-crafty, the gourmet chefs and the take-out-on-speed-dial chefs, the super-cleaners (who are THEY anyway?) and the mountainous-piles-of-laundry mamas, the helicopter mamas and the let-2-kids-ride-one-tricycle-while-pulling-a-third-on-the-skateboard mamas.

{their favorite driveway play}

Solidarity, sisters!