FAIL.

So last week I had not one but three of those events. You know the ones. You start off at playgroup, rough morning, but you made it. You are all dressed improperly for the weather and there isn’t a potty and it starts raining and you have the sinking feeling you are making a mistake.  I define “mom-fail” as the sort of event that wrecks the day enough to require caffeine and/or chocolate and/or retail therapy. Fail= missed naps. Screaming kids. Mama gritting her teeth and hissing “be quiet I KNOW YOU CAN” to the grimy toddler wailing in the shopping cart. You know… fail.

With two kids, so many things can go “wrong” that there are times when merely venturing out of the house seems like an invitation for chaos. Over the last two weeks we went 90 mph every day. Just busy busy busy. My kids are both pretty scheduled little people and I am as well. I get sort of frantic if I can’t predict my day and I get even more frantic if a lot of plans change quickly. Oh, life in Dallas! There’s always something to do or some sort of class or something to dash off and accomplish. It seems like I am slowly finding I can only push my kids and myself so far before we all implode.

And then, after a season of that sort of madness, something happens. Maybe something big, even. Last week it was grieving with a friend over the loss of her father. We capped it off with two matching cases of croup and being punched in the face by my angel-pie. Sigh. Fail. Or… not. What can feel like an epic, tragic, mom-fail, might not really be a fail at all. Maybe those fails happen so that we STOP. My kids are more likely to be happy at home, nekkid in the sandbox, maybe not napped and definitely not clean. Sometimes we just all need a pack of fruit snacks and a dance party, no matter what the schedule says we should have done an hour ago or what hurts we have experienced that day… big or small. The sad, scary things like grieving along with a friend help to put things in perspective. Then when you spend five (oh yes FIVE) hours awake with your croup-y preschooler, it’s not as awful as it would have been without said perspective.

Failing used to bother me more. I was more quickly embarrassed by or apologetic over the state of my kid(s). I think with time our mis-steps are rolling off a little easier. What is it about not reaching our mental standards for success? Why am I so darn hard on myself and two little people? What would happen if I set out every day with the goal of achieving the small things or being content… not just trying to avoid a fail, or letting a fail dictate my day?

I’m learning to take my fails and use them for buoying us all as a family. I apologize to my sons and ask forgiveness if I have made a mistake, causing us to be in a “fail.” I’m also learning that “fail” needs to be in quotations because sometimes it’s not truly a fail. I can give grace to myself and my kids and watch them extend that back to me. Perspective is tricky medicine- it can spur us to fight deeper or love harder, maybe even go and do more… or grind us to a screeching halt and take us to soaking up snotty, filthy little boys who are just trying to grow up. They didn’t MEAN to keep me up all night, again. My fails are the lessons they are teaching me about… ME.