Keepin’ It Real

So. Katie had this great post a while back about “truth-in-blogging,” if you will. The idea that sometimes, bloggers only show you the shiny, happy moments and gloss over what’s really going on. (Katie: I planned to just comment on your post, but alas, Blogger was cranky that day and I couldn’t comment on anyone’s blog…so instead, I started formulating this post in my head! Plus, this would have been a really long comment.)

McKMama’s solution to this is the hilarious weekly “Not Me Monday,” and she recently bared her soul on all things marriage (hers hasn’t always been smooth sailing, and she beautifully shared some of her story).  Check it out.

Here’s my two (or four or seventeen) cents: I’d never want you to come to this site and think that we are just shiny, happy people having shiny, happy moments. We are FAR from perfect and I am well aware of that, and I hope that there’s a good balance of funny, happy, and real on this site.  I have blogged through some of the valleys in our life, including my mom’s death and the challenges and mistakes I’ve made when parenting children with, ahem, sometimes-difficult personalities (not naming names, but it rhymes with…oh, nevermind), but lots of my daily posts are about more fun stuff.

But because it feels good to just get it out, here are some examples from just the last few weeks of my very imperfect parenting:

-Because I wanted to make white chicken chili, and there’s no way my kids will eat it (it’s pretty spicy, oh, and it’s soup, ya know), I’ve convinced myself that serving them lunchmeat for a few meals is perfectly ok! I am able to put out of my mind that I’m filling my children with nitrates and just enjoy the deliciousness.

-I forgot to bring Kleenexes to the park when Jack Henry had a runny nose, so I used his shirt to wipe it a couple of times. Now, guess where he wipes his own nose? Yeah. It’s great.

-There is a potty chair in my office (not for me ). Jack Henry has only sat on it twice without a diaper and nothing happened, but he will now occasionally sit on it fully clothed and yell out, “CANDY!” I can see that all the talk is really getting through to him. I feel like I’ve never potty trained a kid before. He’s nothing like the other two at this age.

-One of my kids has discovered mooning, and has done it to me more times than I care to mention the last couple of weeks, even though I get upset every time, but also kind of laugh at him, because hello, my kid is mooning me.  Starting tomorrow: strict consequences specifically for that behavior.

-I finally decided to mop the floors when the bottom of my socks was too disgusting even for me.

-The three-second-rule is firmly in place in our house.

-Come back tomorrow for a recap of a colossal day of failure.

I think that often, bloggers don’t share some of their struggles because they’re just too personal to put out on the internet. We’re currently making some major life decisions about schools/houses that we’re thinking about all the time, but I won’t be writing about it here as we go through it. It’s just not the place for it.  When it’s all said and done and I’m looking back on it, then I’ll do an overview of the parts that are appropriate.  And, of course, no one wants to read Debbie Downer posts all the time, so I’m sure that’s why people sometimes avoid the rougher parts of their day when posting.  But, it makes readers be able to relate and see the writer as human.

So, do you want to play along?  Feel free to leave a comment about a recent imperfect moment.  Or you can just make fun of mine.

Go on…it’s liberating.