Nothing is perfect; Everything is perfect. Confessions from an idealist.

This afternoon was a little difficult. Robbie had to leave right at nap time to go to the transfer station, because that's when he was able to get help with his Dad's truck. Normally this would be perfectly fine, but I was really quite sick on Thursday, then wasn't able to get very much rest and recover on either Friday or Saturday. So today I was feeling tired, drained, and overwhelmed by the amount of things I needed to get done before Christmas. Yet I was also struggling with being at peace with all that needed to be done and just enjoy the present. Meanwhile, I was trying to get both boys to go to sleep simultaneously. Link would nurse to sleep, then Meo would want milk too and start crying because I told him to wait, waking Link. Link would cry, and not latch back on and start drowning from my abundance of milk flowing into his milk. I would pick him up and try to burp him and Meo would try to squeeze his head in to sneak in a sip while I was distracted with Link. I would push him away and he would cry; undoubtedly feeling excluded and like I don't love him as much. I see him crying and feel torn with the feelings inside me: the feeling that I want to let him nurse as much as he wants whenever he wants because I love him dearly and will do anything for him. Torn with the feeling that I feel like he is getting older and ever since pregnancy I haven't gotten back into feeling comfortable like I always had before about him nursing. Torn with the feeling that I don't know if I want Meo to nurse or not, and that WHY OH WHY will Link not stop crying, I am doing everything I can to help him feel better. So I get up and go to the rocking chair in the other room to clear my head and sing to him and Link finally relaxes and is content. But Meo rushes in and rest his head on my lap and is sad because he wants to sit with me too, and he tells me he "loves Mama sooooo much". And he interrupts my rocking rhythm and both boys start crying again. And then I cry too because I feel....well I just feel too much. Maybe twenty minutes later after many more attempts at having a successful nap time, I found myself bouncing with Link on my yoga ball and Meo sitting quietly on my yoga mat with his trains asking for help. I looked at him saddly and told him I couldn't stop bouncing right then. And then two year old Meo decides to tell me a poem. He says:

Boa constrictor, Boa constrictor, What do you see?
I see a mama crying on the rocking chair.

Eventually Robbie comes home and is able to put Meo to sleep by laying next to him and making up stories for him in his bed while I sat with Link on my yoga mat trying to make peace with myself and the last 40 minutes. When Robbie returns I tell him I need some rest, and he lets me take a nap while he cleans up around the house because he knows that I feel overwhelmed by all that has been left undone. And I wake refreshed and happy and loved, and hopeful that I will be able to spend some quality time with Meo in the afternoon to make up for this afternoon when I simply couldn't put his needs before Link's. And so while absolutely nothing is perfect, even writing that nothing is perfect contradicts how I feel because in my idealistic mind everything really is. Everything is just where it needs to be and should be for us in this place in time and we are learning and growing together. The ebb and flow of life is like the perfection a barefoot hike: sometimes it hurts like hell, but most of the time you feel so connected to the earth and ecstatic from the nature all around you that those occasional sharp rocks just become part of the perfection.

So for those of you who get annoyed with people who seem happy all the time or act like everything is perfect, maybe this will help. Of course things go wrong, and of course there are tears and feelings of being overwhelmed and chaotic. But when you have an idealistic perceptive, once the hard part is over, you can't help but find the positive in all that negative and dwell on that.  It's both a curse and a blessing. A curse because everyone around you thinks that you are always happy and well put together, a blessing because in a way, you kind of are. My life isn't easy, I just try to make the best of it.