Imperfect: The Day I Forgot My Kid

This is for you, yes you over there sitting on the couch in unwashed sweat pants and giving your kids cereal for dinner for the second night in a row.

You’re a good mom. They won’t remember the cereal. They won’t remember that you yelled when they spilled it. They won’t remember what you were wearing today.

You don’t have to be perfect to be good at this.

As a matter of fact, perfect and parenthood have kind of an inverse relationship. If you are a perfectionist I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but you probably aren’t very good at the parenting and if you are a really awesome mom you probably aren’t so worried about the perfect. (Have you ever heard Alexis Stewart, Martha’s daughter, talk about her childhood? It’s sad and uncomfortable.)

My middle daughter is turning 4 this weekend. Sure I could head over to Pinterest and plan a perfect party with a super cute theme and stress out and yell at her to not touch the rainbow cupcakes I spent 3 hours perfecting, but I’m not doing that this year. We are going to work together and bake cupcakes in ice cream cones because I told her those were my favorite when I was little and she wanted to do it too. They will look terrible and taste amazing. Then we will give her the toy we bought from the Disney store and she will be happy and we will call it good enough.

Because THAT is where perfection lies, in the land of Good Enough.

Case in point, you wouldn’t know it from the time stamp, but this picture was actually taken on Easter 2013.

We’re all doing okay.

Friday was a pretty rough day for our little family, for example, but it was good enough to be quite a memory maker.

Eddie was off from work and we were going to drive up to the land where we are building our house. Construction was scheduled to start and we wanted to see the progress. Of course it was pouring down rain, so we weren’t even sure the work would get done.

We dropped Nicholas off at school and drove over an hour to a different state. Our car needed to be serviced, so we dropped it off and took the girls out to brunch at a nearby diner. Eddie was also hoping to get vaccinated for a mission trip he will be going on in a few weeks.

After brunch the car still wasn’t finished, so we walked to the dollar store and let Abby pick out some princess themed plates and napkins and a balloon for her upcoming birthday.

The car still wasn’t finished. We walked down the street to the tractor supply store to look at the baby chicks and ducks and pick up some oil for our riding mower. Abby was playing with the handle of a wagon and somehow managed to hit herself in the face, getting a big gash under her eye. Don’t worry, she is fine. She said it didn’t hurt as much as it seemed like it should have and actually didn’t even cry.

This is the part where I share with you that I forgot to pick up my son from school. It was around 12:30.  “Nicholas is in the office. Today was a half day. Please come and pick him up.”

Ummmm…sure thing. Oops. Except we are an hour and a half away from the school and don’t have access to our car at the moment. If you ever want to look like a REALLY bad mom, just go out in public with a child who looks like she has a black eye, hold a crying baby, and snap back and forth with your husband about whose fault it is that your other child has been forgotten.

Thank God my mom didn’t have to be at work for a few more hours and she was able to get to him in about 15 minutes and take him to my in-laws.

“We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

Except the car STILL wasn’t finished.

So I found myself changing Penny’s diaper on the dirty floor of a public restroom while we waited. For another hour and a half.

Eddie discovered that he wouldn’t be able to get an appointment for the vaccinations until the following week.

We eventually were able to get the car back and drive by the land on our way to get Nicholas and the work that had been scheduled WAS done. Yay. One piece of good news!

Later we left the kids with my mom  (again. poor mom.) and went to IKEA to place the order for our kitchen cabinets. (Remember when I was trying to decide? We’re going for it.)

We were there for 2.5 hours and couldn’t place the order because the storms had taken out their online ordering system. Eventually the store closed and at 9:30 Eddie and I found ourselves running through a Chick Fil A drive thru because we still hadn’t eaten. They got our order wrong.

Sometimes all you can do is laugh. Do I feel bad about not getting Nicholas?

Not really.

My mom told me that when she went to get him there were at least 20 other kids in the office. The school hadn’t put the half day on the calendar they send home for the month. I wasn’t the only mom who had absolutely no idea.

Nobody’s perfect.

If you want more stories from moms encouraging each other by airing our imperfections, check out our new book, I Just Want to Pee Alone.