Read about me and you just may feel better about yourself. Although I’m a perfectionist at heart, I have determined after having my 3rd little boy that…
1. It is okay to let my kids go to sleep in the clothes they’ve been wearing all day long (although I did draw the line when I saw Jude wearing his Armor Bears bible memory club t-shirt on Friday when I got home from work, knowing he’d been wearing it since Wednesday night)
2. It is okay to not do a bath night until my kid has given himself a bath in some unknown substance (last night the Levi and his little shadow, Asher, got an impromptu bath after I discovered Levi soaking in something that I later determined was chocolate milk – he had gotten a hold of Jude’s cup and there was a pool of chocolate milk on the carpeting)
3. It is okay to wear a low pony tail to work day after day and not actually do my hair (I can’t even remember the last time I blow dried my hair since I forgot to bring it with to Bloomington, Indiana and haven’t used it since we’ve been back home).
4. Taking a trick from my dad’s book (from the one time he had to watch Mike and I while my new sister, Katie, and my mom were in the hospital after her birth), I’ve learned it is okay to dress my kids in the same outfit day after day (just throw it in the wash at night and it’ll be ready again in the morning, with no folding/putting away required).
5. This one nearly kills me, but I have found the world does not come to an end on the nights I just shut the light off in the toy room and leave the toys out and ready to play with in the morning.
6. Need to squeeze in some school time for the kids on the road? Hello iPad!
7. Change the sheets once a week!?! Whatever! (How about whenever guests are coming or when there are visible stains? Once Katie and Phil got stuck sleeping in the guest room on sheets that I had just changed, but that Andy had laid Levi down for a nap on. Who knew that Levi had pockets full of sand from the sandbox? Katie and Phil were pretty horrified after they laid Jonah down on that bed and he complained it was “scratchy†and then we pulled back the sheets to learn why.)
8. It is okay not to wash the windows as long as sunlight still can come and and you can still see out (but if you have time to kill or need something to do while chatting on the phone, go for it).
9. It’s a good idea to never sit down (who has time for that and it results in a loss of momentum)
10. If I’m going from one room to the other, I need to quickly scan the room I am leaving to see what things are out of place that I should take with me (and if I still have room in my hands, I like to grab a boy or 2 to take with me)
11. Come on — they are kids and they are hungry – do they really care if you use the microwave oven instead of the real oven to make their chicken nuggets? (Andy gives me a hard time about this one, but Jude insists that Mommy’s soggy chicken nuggets don’t taste any worse than Daddy’s crispy ones that take 10x longer to make.)
12. Sam’s Club is a great, easy and cheap source of work clothes – only catch is that since they have no mirrors in the store, I have to rely on my 5 year old’s opinion as to whether the item looks good.