There are days that I am gripping the kitchen sink trying not to let the anger steam out of my mouth because of the piles of dishes that have stacked up yet again.

There are days that I am fuming because the dogs want to go outside every five minutes and bark incessantly to chase down the mailman, the neighbor, or the leaf that threatened to knock down our house.

There are days that I have no patience for George’s temper tantrum over the fact that I tried to help him peel a banana so he could eat more of it (which he was also crying about not being able to eat more of because the peel was in the way).

There are days that I look back and think, “Well that could have gone better.”

I am learning every day that I have no clue what I am doing as a parent. Like zero.

There are days that I feel utterly lost, and I raise my voice more often than I would care to admit to the dogs and to George.

I feel an enormous pressure to be this perfect mom, which I understand is unrealistic, but I feel that is the time we live in. With all the comparison and articles surfacing on social media saying you should do this or that to be the best parent, it can be really degrading to look back at some of these moments where I have lost my cool.

You know what? I am sick of it. I am sick of feeling this guilt because I had one bad moment. I am sick of someone who doesn’t know me writing an article or making a comment online that I am not a good parent because I raised my voice a few times.

I am sick of ME telling myself that I am not good enough.

I think all we can do in this world is try, and then learn from those moments, and try to do better the next time.

I am trying to make the most of the time I am with George, but every day isn’t going to be sunshine and roses. I think we can do our best to have good days, but we also have to accept that every day cannot be perfect and go as planned. Parents are not perfect. God gave us kids to remind us of that I think. So why do we expect ourselves to be perfect every day?

God gives us trials for a reason.

Parenting can be a trial some days. They don’t just stare at you and coo sweet sounds forever. They grow up and try to put forks in sockets and hit the dogs with a baby swifter after dumping their milk all over the floor in a span of five minutes.

Parenting is beautiful yet messy, complicated yet natural, lovely yet trying, empowering yet terrifying, and oh so humbling.

While every day isn’t going to be a good day, I don’t have to let those days define me as a mom. I don’t have to let those moments limit the type of mom I hope to be.

Because the reality is there are a lot of good days. (It’s funny how one bad day can cloud up the dozens of good days.)

Regardless of the how we define the day, every moment I am proud to be his mom. And that right there (coupled with this sweet smile) is what makes me wake up every morning determined to have a good day.

This last month was crazy busy, but we accomplished a lot. I really like doing these monthly goals, so let’s see how I did with January before I share my February ones.

• Fitness-Do 1500 squats-I got a little behind, so I had to do several hundred yesterday. Over 300 squats is no joke. I didn’t really notice a difference in my leg tone over all, but it was a great start to the year to be focused on my health.

• House Tasks-
  • Take down Christmas decor-Done.
  • Organize/Put away George’s clothes he has outgrown-Done. Three bins worth are now in storage and two boxes to donate. Admittedly he does have a lot of clothes, but this is also clothes/shoes dating back to the 3-6 month stage. Ridiculous.
  • Sort/Donate toys-They are sorted, and I have a couple bags that are ready to get taken somewhere for donation. However we had Christmas presents take over those spaces. Why are toddler things so big?

• Something with George-Do finger-painting. He hated it. He put his finger in it once, grimaced, then tried to run away. It turned into a horrifying slip and slide for him. Even when we tried showing him it was pudding and he could eat it, he screamed like this was his worst nightmare.

• Something with Tom-Start watching Parks and Rec-We are a few episodes in, and we are loving it so far. It does remind me a lot of the Office. Unfortunately these days, I can’t get through more than one episode without falling asleep.
• Something for me-Do a mommy and me photo shoot-It may have not gone exactly as planned, but we did get some shots. And they are still sitting in my camera. I haven’t had time to get them on my hard-drive yet. My goal is to share them soon!

I did everything on my list! Now here are my February Goals

• Fitness-200 push ups. I know it doesn’t sound like a lot, but I am going to try to do a larger set every other day, which is a lot for my puny arms.
  
• House Tasks-
  • Hang up photos in dining room and our bedroom
  • Clean up the yard-We have a lot of big plans for our yard this summer, but the first step is to get rid of all the sticks and leaves that have accumulated.
  • Build the dog “apartment” downstairs-Yes we are those people.
• Something with George-build a blanket fort. I looked up toddler activities, and I have two issues. One, they are either messy, like have to take a bath messy. And after the finger painting debacle, we won’t be doing messy for awhile. Or Two, they involve a lot of stuff that we don’t have on hand or prep time that we don’t have time for. So building a fort in the living room it is.
  
• Something with Tom-Go on a movie date
• Something for me-finish some photo projects. I have several things over the last 6 months that I haven’t really had time to complete because they are just for me. So I have lots of sorting and creating I want to do with my photos.
  
• I also want to blog at least twice a week. I have kind of gotten off the routine, but I have several posts that are only half written that I want to get out.

What do you want to do this month?

People. I bought a magazine yesterday purely because it was a recap of all 20 seasons of the Bachelor.

I think I have a problem. This is an obsession. I NEVER buy magazines. But I had to know where everyone ended up!

And because drama loves company, I figured I would share my obsession with you.

Here were my thoughts this week watching the Bachelor:

Currently, I am…

Eating-chocolate pudding. Because I am a grown up, and I am in denial that the holiday “diet” is over.

Wishing-for 3 day weekends. Mondays are rough friends. I do love my job, and I am excited by the work I get to do every day. However, there are so many things I want to accomplish and do over the weekends that I always feel that let down on Sunday nights. Womp womp.

image via

Watching-Mad Men and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix. I really could not get more opposite shows. I love Ellie Kemper, and she just makes my smile with any project she does. This show is a great pick me up while I am cooking dinner or folding some laundry. Mad Men, however, I am not so into yet. It is kind of hard to watch with all the sexism. It is painful to know some of these things are still happening, but also heartwarming that so much has changed. I am half way through the first season, and I plan on watching the whole season to see if I get hooked or not. I can tell that I am not that into it because I can go days without watching it and wondering in the mean time what happened. Those clothes though…I may continue watching just to see the wardrobe. My dream era design wise!

Working on-meeting with so many students and their GPA configuration to retain scholarships or get off of academic probation. The last couple weeks have been non-stop students! As far as home projects, we are still working on getting our house guest ready. It seems like when we just are moving junk around to complete projects. But our basement is in a much better place than it was a month ago, thanks to the hubster. Now just to get to a place where we can see our dining room table again.

Wearing// layers and boots. I could wear boots every day.

Collecting// Kid’s books. Tom and I just admitted this week that we collect collections. So we are on a mission to have a massive library full of kid’s book collections. There could be worse things to collect. Right now, I am hankering for all the Curious George, Clifford, Berenstain Bears, and Littler Critter books. We also buy a lot from Usborne!

Excited to… continue building a new coaching program and working with student leaders again. Our office quite literally fell into some money two days before the session started that was earmarked for very intentional programming initiatives. Within those two days we created a framework of a peer mentoring program to start this semester, which included hiring two student staff members. It was kind of crazy to build an entire program from scratch in two days, and I still think I am flubbing around. We’ll get there though! It has been a couple years since I have supervised students, and I also mostly work with students who are at risk and need academic intervention. So it is really exciting to be working with this leadership population again.

Looking Forward To-February. January kind of kicked my butt. Also just generally warmer weather. My body is meant to be a beach body. George apparently has inherited the disdain for cold weather.