The SuperMom Conundrum

I have a ridiculously long post to write about our awesome vacation in Disney World, but sometimes when you have a seed in your head, it starts to grow, and refuses to go away until you just plant the darn thing already! So here are my musings on what I like to call "The SuperMom Conundrum."

If you follow my blog or know me personally in any respect, you know that I can be a tad bit envious of other moms. You know those moms I'm talking about. They are the moms who make me stop and say to myself, "How does she do it ALL? I wish I could be more like her. I wish I could make it look so easy!" Now, to be fair, I know deep in my heart and my head that NO mom out there has it 100% together 100% of the time. But some women are just particularly good at making this motherhood business look pretty darn simple. And I'll put it out there for you just so you aren't confused about my opinion, lol: IT IS HARD! It's so hard. It's the hardest thing I've ever done in my whole entire life, and most days all I can think is what a bad job I am doing, what a terrible mess I am making of it all, and I wonder how many years of therapy my kids will ultimately need to reconcile my OCD tendencies about their toys and my crazy obsession with hand sanitizer and my absolute intolerance to whining of any sort. And we all know that one mom (or 10!) who works full-time but still manages to remember show-and-tell and permission slips and also fits in PTO meetings and playdates and then somehow ALSO manages to stay in her highschool size 6 jeans! But that's probably not reality...right?

I think that somehow, over the course of the last 50 years and the Women's Liberation Movement, we women have put more pressure on ourselves than ever before. I read this article this week about the long-standing debate between working moms and stay-at-home moms and it resonated deep within me. When did we decide that we're not successful mothers if we can't do it ALL, do it WELL, and smile the entire time? There are only so many hours in the day! It's just not humanly possible to have a full-time job out of the home, spend every second with your children that they're not in school (and ENJOY it), cook a homemade dinner every night (with organic food and no high fructose corn syrup, no less!), clean the house, do the laundry, exercise religiously (God forbid you actually look like you kept children in that stomach at one point!), keep yourself looking kempt (my hair is starting to take on that perma-ponytail bump again...), and do it all happily, with no griping or eye-rolling or long winded sighs. It's can't be done...can it?

Somewhere deep inside of me is this version of the mother that I think I am supposed to be. Society, the media, and even fellow mothers have built my "SuperMom" up so much inside my head that I don't think I will ever, EVER, come close to her. I start off every day with these completely unrealistic expectations of myself, my children, my husband, everyone. And I can tell you from personal experience that when you start the day at 6:30am with unrealistic expectations, it sure isn't going to be a great day.

So I've decided that this is the year that I kick that SuperMom out of my head. She needs to find another head to live in. I don't have a full-time job and I'm not really using my college degree. I work outside the home 7 - 8 hours a week, and that's plenty for me right now. I don't have to cook a gourmet meal 7 nights a week. I don't have to be perfect 100% of the time and smile doing it. But you know what I DO have to do? I need to LIGHTEN UP. I need to revel in this phase. I need to remember (I'm stealing this from a FB friend, I hope she doesn't mind!) that this life is a marathon, not a sprint, and if I'm going to make it to the end, I need to set my pace accordingly. I need to congratulate myself on the small victories and know when to tell myself, "Better luck next time." I need to hug my kids more, yell at them less, and let my unrealistic expectations fly out the window. Because at the end of every day, no matter how tough it was, I still know that I am lucky like a four-leaf clover. And that is really ALL that matters.

Bye-bye SuperMom. This RegularMom is going to play Wii with her kids :-)