Validation

I have a friend who is constantly telling me that she's jealous that I'm such an amazing mom.  She says it's so great that we are always out and busy, camping and doing activities.  The thing is, half the time, when it comes to our activities, I feel like a below average mom.  I'm not great at getting down on the floor and playing with my kids, we don't get outside and go to the park every day, and I don't read them nearly enough stories.

I look at this same mom and think that she's unbelievable.  She's in the lake with her kids, she goes on walks to the playground twice a day.  With a two week old, she was still taking her two year old to activities on a daily basis.  

I have another friend who potty trained her son before he was two.  It was a long road, but she took the time to sit with him in the washroom.  To constantly ask him if he had to go potty and stop what she was doing to take him throughout the day.  And I think, she's amazing!  I don't have the time or patience to do that yet with Parker.

I think that we are all looking for validation that we are good moms.  We see what other moms do and think that they are doing it better than us.  I want to take my kids to the park twice a day too!  But then the day happens and the park doesn't.  But there are things that I'm doing that other moms wish they could do.  But the lucky part of this is, that our kids don't really know the difference.  They love us for what we do actually do with them.  Parker might not have memories of tons of playground visits (although this summer I'm making a huge effort to make millions of memories), but he will remember all of our camping and cottage trips every weekend.  

And at the end of the day, when we are looking at the other moms highlight reels of their days, they probably had a time in their morning when their two year old just cried for no reason, they were cleaning up spilled cheerios and milk and they were exhausted because their eight month old has suddenly decided to wake up every two hours throughout the night.  Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there.  None of us are perfect, but we are all doing our best.