you know those times, you just wish you could crawl in a hole… hide away from anyone + everyone…especially your toddlers who are acting like the devil possessed them and took away their cheerios?

…

we live in a country run by celebrities and pinterest, all setting the absolute ridiculous expectations for what it means to be beautiful + perfect.  don’t get me wrong, you will rarely ever see a post from me that is negative in any nature…but i recently had two different encounters of people telling me how happy and perfect my life looked…and i just had to laugh.

spoiler alert: i’m not perfect. my kids aren’t perfect. my marriage isn’t perfect…i am NOT perfect.

but thankfully, i don’t serve a god who sees me as such  nor am i married to a husband who desires that all.

let me be 100% clear about one thing. i am extremely happy. i love my life. i love my husband, my girls…i truly am living my dream and don’t take that for granted…but it’s not all cherries and rainbows.

if you’ve been around for any length of time you know our world was turned upside down when zach was diagnosed with testicular cancer. and then again when we found out we would never conceive a child together. and then again when my pregnancy was so high-risk i almost lost one of my babies.

i can assure you there have been A LOT of tears. heartaches. a lot of not-so-pretty days. then add in two babies? bah…ha. #hotmessexpress over here.

it’s easy to get caught up in the filters, the perfect blog posts, those happy smiling babies. and yes, for the most part i have little girls who are so hilarious and happy, i absolutely love and adore them…but i’m trying to figure out this mama thing just as much as everyone else.

let’s be real here.

i have sat my 14 month old in ‘time out’. yep. it happened. she hit me in the face, 3x. so. i sat her where she couldn’t see me and withdrew my attention from her.

i’m going on almost a week and a half of absolutely terrible sleep, like back to the newborn days… living on coffee and on multiple occasions saying, ‘i don’t think i can mom today.’

just the other day, i was flying solo and attempting the grocery store.  we’re a circus, all the time…which i have come to appreciate, but for the wrong reasons on this particular morning. i was wearing piper while lila sat in the cart.   it was complete chaos since i got them out of the car…so bad that i thought multiple times about totally ditching the cart and walking out.

all the while, every other person is stopping us to tell me i have my hands full or try to talk to one of the girls who is either: screaming at the top of her lungs, hitting my face, throwing whatever is possibly within arms reach, swiping items off shelves… the list goes on. it was a nightmare.

i have lots of experience in public settings with kiddos displaying significant problem behavior… but for whatever reason, when it was my children, i was absolutely 100% mortified.

we finally made it through + it wasn’t pretty. i was just trying to get the heck out of there as fast as humanly possibly.

you win some, you lose some.

and by win some, i mean you put them down for a nap, pour yourself a glass of wine and try again in two hours.

…and it ain’t always pretty…

question: please tell me i’m not alone–this mama thing is tough!!

xoxo,

lindsey