{"id":715,"date":"2010-04-17T05:14:13","date_gmt":"2010-04-17T05:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.wordpress.com\/?p=715"},"modified":"2010-04-17T05:14:13","modified_gmt":"2010-04-17T05:14:13","slug":"joyfully-imperfect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/17\/joyfully-imperfect\/","title":{"rendered":"Joyfully Imperfect"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Alex, age 2 (identified by blue footie pajamas), who secretly swiped Mama's camera and replaced it after documenting cats and messes throughout the house<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve gone and done it again.\u00a0 I’ve stumbled onto one of those blogs that has suddenly convinced me of what a total deadbeat I am.<\/p>\n

You know the ones.\u00a0 With perfect PhotoShopped children in perfect homes with handmade, organic, felted toys and descriptions of blissful daily joy.<\/p>\n

I should know better.\u00a0 I know those places don’t really exist.\u00a0 I know Disney bluebirds don’t circle that mother’s head as she happily bakes bread every Saturday and her children laughingly play at her feet.<\/p>\n

But the pictures…<\/p>\n

But the descriptions of the days…<\/p>\n

Suddenly I was sitting in my messy house with my children up way past when most people’s children are sleeping and feeling so inadequate.<\/p>\n

And then I wondered if anybody ever wandered in here and accidentally got the impression that WE live that sort of life — all fairy doors and mud puddles and those ridiculous bluebirds.<\/p>\n

So I’m here to tell you that we are not that sort of family.\u00a0 This is not that sort of a house.\u00a0 I am not that sort of a mother.<\/p>\n

I try to say it fairly regularly and I try to include photos of the dirt and crumbs and stained shirts and chaos, but probably not enough.\u00a0 I know how easy it is to sit on the other side of the monitor and imagine.<\/p>\n

So once again, I’m posting a full disclosure post.<\/p>\n

We are messy, loud, tacky, goofy and more than occasionally irritable.\u00a0 The children bicker.\u00a0 Their hair is usually messy.\u00a0 My hair is usually messy.\u00a0 My husband is half bald but the hair he has left is usually messy too.<\/p>\n

My back yard is presently decorated with artificial Christmas tree parts that our neighbors gave us to craft with.\u00a0 My six-year-old has used them to decorate the swingset, the lawn chairs, the lawn swing and several planters for “Christmas in April.”<\/p>\n

I don’t know about those other mothers and what their homes and families are like.\u00a0 I’m fairly sure they mean to inspire and not depress with those posts and pictures.<\/p>\n

I have learned to read just enough of those blogs to get motivated — to clean the front porch, to try to bake bread in the bread machine tomorrow, to try that craft — but not too much that I start to think that I need to try to be that.<\/p>\n

I’ve learned that I’m okay with not being perfect.\u00a0 I like our loud, messy, crazy home.\u00a0 Sometimes there’s yelling, sometimes there’s chaos, sometimes there are tears.\u00a0 That’s real life.\u00a0 But there’s also a whole lot of laughing and silliness and cuddling and talking and living the most perfect life for us.<\/p>\n

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Self portrait of the artist\/thief, with runny nose<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve gone and done it again.\u00a0 I’ve stumbled onto one of those blogs that has suddenly convinced me of what a total deadbeat I am. You know the ones.\u00a0 With perfect PhotoShopped children in perfect homes with handmade, organic, felted toys and descriptions of blissful daily joy. I should know better.\u00a0 I know those places…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[102],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}