The truth is I'm failing...

This is one of those real posts, on a bad day. It hasn't been planned neatly in advance. It hasn't been something I've been mulling over. It is an in-the-moment piece. While I'm sitting here, staring at my piece of cake (cake makes everything better right?), wondering how I feel so damn inadequate.

Here it is: I feel like I'm failing. I'm failing at motherhood. I'm failing at wife life. I'm failing at house keeping and management. I'm failing at keeping myself together. I'm failing.

Can anyone else relate? How effing hard is it to balance a marriage, parenthood, a household and your own interests? And here's the thing: I never thought I would be here. Before children I was so career-centric that I just assumed that when we had kids we would have a nanny and motherhood would kind of just fit in with everything else I would have going on (how terrible is that?). I envisioned that during pregnancy, I would be one of the healthy ones, sipping smoothies at the gym after work. Please can we take a minute to laugh at this notion. No, seriously - how on earth did I think I would be this person? I swear, I blame Instagram.

And so I was never fully prepared for motherhood (let's not kid ourselves - who really is?). I wasn't prepared to be so engulfed with love for a little human that I dumped my career and wanted  to stay with him always (yeah - I should probably do a whole other post about how I'm likely to be that overbearing mother who smothers her child with love). But more than anything, I wasn't prepared for what it would entail to become a housewife/home-maker. Seriously, how is it possible that a recovering (I kid) career woman can suck so much at home-making?

I wish I could blame it on the post baby transition period, but truthfully, we're a year and a half in and I'm still failing.

And so, the truth is, I am failing. And that's okay. I have good days where food is prepared and I feel like mom of the year, and I have bad days where take-out is ordered and there's definitely too much TV time. And, I'm going to repeat: That's okay. Honestly, on these days I swear I need to call a support group of moms to just come over for a coffee, not judge my house, and do a collective baking activity with the kids whilst consuming copious amounts of caffeine. But the truth is, if I do that I will feel judged - because my house is not perfect, and the mom of the year award will certainly not go to me on that day, and because, well, I don't feel like I'm up to scratch.

And so yes, I'm failing: not because of anything else, but because of my own damn expectations. Because the generations that came before us made it look so damn easy, and I didn't really acknowledge it (can we take a moment to applaud them - because hell, this is difficult), and because the men of this world look to the generations past and wonder why we can't just get our shit together. It's hard, I feel like I'm floundering most days, and I honestly don't know how previous generations managed without throttling anyone along the way. And so, I'm failing: But that's okay. Can we be easier on ourselves as women? Can we stop judging one another? Can we just be realistic about our own damn expectations?

So here's my check-list for a good day:

1. Have I cuddled my child today?
2. Is he fed?
3. Have I made him giggle today?
4. Have I played with him today?
5. Are the adults fed?
6. Am I dressed?
7. Have I avoided stepping on lego?
8. Do we have enough coffee in the house?