conversation

My response to Nic's response to my pseudo response to her post:
(I love when TFT's turn into real conversations, by the way!!)

I wasn't at all interpreting your post in a way that you yourself might be saying you're sick of trying to be a "perfect mom" as an excuse to not be the best mom that you can be.
You are an awesome mom Nic; I admire much of your "mommyness" and you are THE BEST mom for Porter.

Yes, we all have our moments, we all have our days. I did not feel in the least, that you were saying that moms should just give up and not try to be good moms. I'm so sorry if it came across that way.

I did love what you wrote and I think a lot (obviously a lot from the comments!) of mom's relate to that all to well. I know I do.

I was simply trying to say that for me, with the patterns I've developed over the last couple of years, with the challenges of two kids, with being so much more on my own after having moved away from so many of our friends and our family, or whatever the reason is, that for me it's more than that.

Your post came in the middle of a lot of "evaluating" for me. Really examining what I am not happy with in my life.

I'm admitting that I could easily use that "not trying to live up to certain expectations" as an excuse to not live up to my expectations. And I'm not talking about expectations like how my kids look or how they eat or how clean my house is. I'm talking about the fact that I know that on a regular basis I've been flat out too lazy to actually be the mom I know I should be. I'm not talking about making myself feel guilty that I can't do everything all the time. I'm saying that I was realizing that deep down I knew that I probably wasn't even trying 50% of my best 50% of the time. Wow, this is kind of hard to admit.

I know I'm a good mom. But the thing is, I know I was a better mom a few years ago. For the first three years of SJ's life, I was pretty happy and confident as a mom. And for some reason over the last two years, I've become whatever I've become; lazy, not as engaged, overwhelmed, whatever. I usually feel like I'm simply doing what I have to do to get by. And I don't like that feeling. I want to enjoy my kids, I want to enjoy being their mom more of the time, and I want to feel like I'm doing a good job. Not because someone else thinks I'm doing a good job, but because deep down you know when you're putting the right amount of effort into something or not. And I know I haven't been giving the full effort that my kids deserve.

I'm not going to be super mom, I'm not even going to be a great mom. But I'm trying more. I'm trying to have less of those days and those moments. Because those days and those moments were turning into the norm around here. Too much yelling, too much fighting, too much mess and chaos.

Nicole, your TFT post was what it was... "that we all have weak times as parents and that its okay to be human and have shitty days where we don't give our all".
I completely agree with you. And I completely agree that that's okay.

I took that a step further for myself and used it to admit that I was probably using the "I can't be perfect" mantra as an excuse for myself to not put my all into this most important job I have as a mom. I don't want to speak for anyone else, or assume others are as lazy as I have been. I'm just saying that's me and where I'm at.