Nothing is perfect...change your expectations

So, it' been a while since I have written.  I really intended to write a bit each day, but I got a bit paralyzed.  Do you ever feel like whatever you do, it has to be the best?  If you don't feel that way, good for you, I'm envious.   I have off days.  More now than ever before and that sort of got me a bit paralyzed to write.   To be truthful, the more I thought about it, the more I realized this is exactly why I started this blog.  So that there could be a place to go to share, laugh and realize that you're not alone and perhaps to cut us all some slack.  To find a place where we can forgive ourselves for not having it all together.  Nobody does really.

I don't know about you, but I often tend to set some really high expectations of myself.  I think those expectations were great when I was single or a wife.  But the problem began when I didn't change those expectations with the arrival of my daughter.   It lead to some real serious feelings of failure.  The reality is that in your child's first years of life things do get put on hold.  Even more so if you have a spouse that works a lot and is usually only around an hour before your child goes to bed and you have no family anywhere geographically close to you.  It's freakin' hard.  Much much harder than I had anticipated. 

 I think back to the idealistic month before my daughter was born thinking that within the first year of her life, I would commit myself to learning German.  I'm laughing out loud as I write this...wtf was I thinking?!?!  My daughter was colicky, my dad was very sick limiting my Mom's ability to fly in for a chunk of time to help and my husband has the sort of job that gave him an hour off after my daughter was born and then the emails and demands immediately resumed.  I felt like a one woman show.  I was a one woman show.  And I thought I should be doing 'better'.

The fact is, I was doing the best I could do, but that didn't compare to those pesky expectations I had set.  It's close to 14 months since my daughter's birth.  I am a bit wiser and getting to that place where I can reestablish some realistic expectations of myself as a person, a wife, a mother and chocolate lab mama.  I also realize that the harsh standards I expect of myself will be evident to my daughter whether I like it or not.  I would never impose those standards on her, but she may if I keep this crap up with myself.   B's are good, it doesn't always have to be an A.

I would love to hear your thoughts?