Career in the Rearview Mirror: Momma's Guilt

Motherhood really teaches you a lot about yourself, like A LOT! For example, in my experience, it has taught me how selfish I was before becoming a parent (and still struggle with because hey, I'm not perfect). It has taught me that a shower is a glorious, luxurious thing and that sleep is just a thing of the past. It has also taught me about grace.

I remember Ben making a comment after Lucy was born about how crazy it was that people get to have babies and just leave the hospital with them, no training, no nothing. I remember feeling somewhat confident in my ability to bring a baby home since of course I had plenty of experience with babies in my profession. I also am that person who read as many books as I could to help me figure out this journey into motherhood. Then Lucy was born, and all that stuff went out the window. Nothing has been black and white thus far in parenthood and I'm betting that doesn't change. With all that said, I mess up a lot as a parent. I make mistakes, lose my patience, have lazy days, etc, and I'm just now learning to give myself a little bit of grace.

Recently, I have really struggled with giving both Lucy and Michael the individualized attention that I so desire them to get each day. It seems like it doesn't matter how much time Lucy and I get to sit down and play together, when "time is up" and I have to feed Michael she gets pretty upset. Then I feel bad for Michael too because most days I feel like I'm not stimulating him as much as I did Lucy, and of course you just don't get those same snuggles that you do with your first baby. I try to remind myself that Lucy won't even remember this season and that Michael will turn out just fine if he doesn't get his tummy time in every single day, but lately it has just been hard to swallow.

I'm learning that I not only need to give myself some grace, but I also want to teach my kids about the importance of grace. I need to cut myself some slack sometimes when I have bad days and feel like I have totally failed as a mother, because being a parent is tough sometimes. And I want to be better about showing my kids that I need that grace. When I lose my patience with Lucy, I want to be able to get down on her level and tell her that momma is not perfect, and say I'm sorry. She needs to see that it's ok to mess up because we're not perfect, and there is GRACE!

So this weekend in an effort too alleviate some of my guilt and really just be in the moment with my sweet baby girl, we had a momma/daughter date Saturday morning. All of this has made me want to be more intentional with my "special time" with Lucy too. We need to carve out time that can be our little date time so we can hang out just the two of us or just her and Ben. So this past weekend her and I had the morning free and we rode over to the park so I could run around with her and actually get to play with her since I'm usually wearing Michael. It was a blast! After the park, we went to Target to get her a new soccer ball and I started the early Starbucks addiction with a little bitty vanilla bean frappe! :) It was great fun and I can't wait to do it again.