Maybe It's Good Enough

Hey Pill Fans,

It's 6am - a wonderful, quiet, glorious time in my household when all is quiet. Tom has already left for work and the girls are still asleep. I have a precious 30 minutes before all hell breaks loose so I'm sipping my coffee and sharing this time with all of you.

As I've been contemplating how to make this blog different than your run-of-the-mill parenting blog and lying awake nights trying to determine what my "brand" will look like, I realized that my worrying about it, my desire to be the perfect blogger, is exactly the subject I need to focus on. I've been writing notes about it for months - how to relax our self-imposed standards to be the perfect parent. Which of course doesn't and never will exist. As I've mentioned before, I want to stop reaching for the next best thing and just enjoy the moment. I want to be less frazzled, less anxious - call it a happy slacker.

So today, my mantra is going to be "It's Good Enough." If my 10-year-old makes her bed - and believe me it's hard to tell the difference between made and not made with her - I am going to consider it good enough. If my 12-year-old makes breakfast and leaves a peanut butter smeared knife on the counter, so what. If I don't get to the grocery store today, my family will not starve. And if I can't make it to the after school Nutrition Fair until the last half hour because of my work schedule, well guess what, that's going to have to be good enough.

Sounds easier than it is for a Type A control freak like me but baby steps are good. I'm trying to remember to ask myself these questions as I struggle to control the universe.

Can I let that go?
Does it really matter?
Is it good enough?

So I'll let you know later today how it's going. Meantime, have a 'good enough' day and be thankful you're not Kate Gosselin who really, as my daughter would say, "stunk it up" on Dancing with the Stars last night.

~Sue

8:15 am Tuesday morning: So I'm not off to a very good start. Katie always shuts off her alarm so to teach her a lesson, I didn't save her this morning. She ended up waking up 3 minutes before the bus came and ran out the door after a quick swipe of the toothbrush. I think she is wearing jeans that were on the floor and her hair is still in the pony from last night. (of course she's 12 so she still looks beautiful). Now I feel absolutely terrible. Ironically, she went off to her Nutrition Fair without having breakfast. Am I a bad mother?

Let it go, let it go, let it go. This is hard.