I'm a mom, therefore I am not perfect

This post has been a work in progress for I can't even tell you how long, well yes I can- I started it on March 21, 2011...so for over a year now I wrote, deleted, copied, pasted, typed and thought twice a hundred times about how I wanted to write this.

You see, I blog because I am a mom, a mom to two beautiful girls and a wife to an adoring husband. There are things I like to share, and things I have chosen to keep private. But when it comes to content that I feel could strongly benefit my readers, I yearn for the day to create an awesome post and magically hit that "publish" button and know that it was a good one. So I am hoping to accomplish that with this here post.

If you had asked me three years ago what I thought being a mom was like, I'd be the first to tell you how naive I was to the parenting scene. I had watched other parents, my parents' age, parent their children and I had taken notes on what I wanted to be as a parent and what I hoped not to be as a parent. For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be the "cool parent", the one that the kids ran to with open arms and big, loving smiles, always wanting to play and have fun. I didn't really envision myself as the "rule maker" or the "disciplinarian" at all. I guess that is because in my household growing up, my father was the "rule maker" and "disciplinarian" so I had a warped sense of that being a male-dominated role.

But I should have known that the roles would be reversed upon marrying my sweet husband. He is wonderful, super caring, always considerate, not perfect, but very loving. But his one  fairly big flaw is his passiveness. And that is where I fall in- I am definitely the "aggressive" one in the relationship- not in a physical or bad sense, but in a "get things done" sense. And because I am currently a SAHM, I am all roles of parent, friend, disciplinarian, teacher, rule maker all balled into one everyday, so the husband has definitely become the "cool parent".

The other day I realized that it isn't so important to me to attain "cool parent" status so much as it is for my children to just love me and want to be with me for the reasons they should. And that my friends is when I stumbled upon a very rude awakening. I had a major "Ah ha" Oprah-ish moment when I was yelling at disciplining Julianna for hitting Kelsey. My first instinct when Julianna began this behavior was to smack the back of her hand, so she in turn knew it didn't feel good and would hopefully stop. Well after many times of this repeating itself, I came to the realization that this was not the solution. My smacking her hand after she smacked Kelsey was teaching her that "smacking is ok", which it is NOT! So I have sought other solutions for this because I know this is a phase and she loves her sister dearly, but my patience and sanity have worn thin in reprimanding her for said behavior.

Long story short, I discovered that I was attaining the very models of behavior I had set out long ago not to. This was a big, fat smack across the face for me that lead to big, ole crocodile tears streaming down my cheeks. "How did I let myself become this" "Why would I reprimand my child in the very way I always said I wouldn't" "Why is it that my girls run to Daddy with open arms and the big, loving smiles, but are just 'ok' with me being there"....and the answer is simple- I'm not perfect! In fact, I am quite far from it. And not that I strive to be the perfect parent/mom per say, but I strive to be my best. And I now know that my best is easy- feeding, bathing, playing, teaching and loving my girls until they are exhausted from all of it and want to go to bed. That is my job- the best job I've ever known, yet the hardest all at the same time.