To-Do’s, Texts and Milestones

The fan is roaring, keeping the house filled with a slight breeze, mimicking the one Spring has blessed us with outdoors. And also, keeping my kids asleep by it’s white noise rotations. Where has the day gone already? It’s mid-day, nap time for my littles and the normal time for any mommy to run around doing everything she can.

I just finished up a deep conversation with a friend. By friend I mean a sister-friend from Michigan that I miss dearly and by deep conversation I mean a series of text messages that we sent back and forth… but no less heart-felt and meaningful than if we’d had the receiver glued to our ears for an hour. Oh, and I’ve totally been sipping my fave drink while texting, so it’s kind of like we’ve been sitting in a cafe pouring our hearts out over coffee. Touché technology, touché.

I’m realizing that there are so many days that I set myself for failure, and not that I actually fail at anything really, but what I’m referring to here are my lists. If you’ve been around here for awhile you know my love for lists, and that hasn’t wained. Today, I woke to a generous list of To-do’s that I created before I fell into bed last night, early, and completely exhausted from a long, beautiful day. As I set out to accomplish my list and enlisted the help of my little ones for some tasks, since it’s a day at home, a day we’ve been needing to have, we ended up with many breaks. Like trying to fix our speaker system after buttery little fingers broke something on it while trying to set up a movie to watch after making themselves toast. Or a long, celebratory pause in our schedule as Brayden sat down on the “potty“… and decided to stay until he was finished with all of his business. Most definitely something to be celebrated!

Here’s the point, I have to many items on my list and the issue lies in feeling like I’ve failed if not everything has been crossed off… instead of celebrating what has been. As I said in my text:

“And it’s not that I’ve failed all, but failing to do all feels like failure.”

When I was ten, by brother found me laid out on the living room floor in tears one cold, yet sunny afternoon. Of course, as any caring sibling would do… before laughing, he checked to make sure I was okay. I, clearly, was not. That day I came home from school with knots in my stomach for I had received the lowly score of 98% on a test. NINETY-EIGHT PERCENT!! How could I have failed so miserably?! Fallen so far below 100%?! In his eyes, I was over-reacting and he fell in hysterics over my tears. In my eyes? I don’t know where he came up with the “over-reacting” thing, 98% was definitely not okay.

Here we are eighteen years later, and I’m finding myself in the same place. Well, maybe not laid out in tears on the living room floor, but sometimes I fall pretty darn close.

My friend’s wisdom filled text:

“I’m trying to limit my list to three or four things a day.”

I think I’m going to add that to my list.

I kid. My response was a little more like this:

“It’s a hard thing to do. The hardest part is that I like too many things. And I don’t like messes… Those two ideals don’t play well together.”

I really do. I love doing things that make a mess, I love having a plan and then being totally spontaneous and ignoring it all, I love spending days at the beach and coming home still wearing swimsuits and sand… and then the other part of me feels like a clean home, and open space is what helps inspire the creativity and spontaneity in me. And they don’t mix.

So what am I saying?

That I will celebrate the accomplishments of each day, of each hour and not feel guilty in the letting go of others. That I will stretch myself out of bed in the morning with attainable goals, that I will enjoy my kids, my beautiful little messes, even when we’re taken off task… because more often than not, it’s for something even more grand, even more celebratory. Like reaching a milestone.

Because every post is better with a photo, us at the Strawberry Festival. More to come.