A friend asked how my Christmas was today, and I told her– it was pretty good. Moments of fun and moments of “WE’RE NEVER DOING THIS AGAIN!” She told me that she’d never know it by my blog– that I seem like the “world’s best mom”.

You guys. I don’t want to be THAT person. The one who puts on a show of perfection. Wonder mom who seems to do all things.

I’m not. I have my strengths as a mom, but I also have tons of weaknesses.

1. Something that I left out from Christmas Day?

I showed my kids the following adorable Christmas video.

Afterwards, I asked them who that was all about and Reed said “Moses?”

2. My cabinets are a HUGE disaster.

If you look closely, you will notice not only the mess, but also evidence of my chocolate covered pretzel addiction. I regularly sneak candy behind my kids’ backs.

3. My floor desperately needs to be vacuumed and mopped. Ugh.

4. That Advent calendar. Yup, I rocked it.

Here was December 8th’s card.

We did it. And here are the canned goods on 12/27.

… by our back door. And I took a can of beans out last week for dinner.

5. I adore my sweet dogs, but they leave a huge mess everywhere around them. Nose prints, much?

If you are still under some illusion about me being the “world’s best mom”, just ask my kids. Although I actually did, and Lena told me that she just wants me to not correct her ever. And Reed wants me to stop dragging him to the dog park. But, there’s a lot more than I wish I could change about myself and more I’m sure they’d say if they understood what I was getting at. I lose my temper and yell or speak harshly. I regularly (as in, almost always) skip class parties. I’ve never volunteered for anything at school. We almost never have friends over to our house, which I know Reed would certainly like me to change. We are late to school at least once a week, sometimes every day. And I am a couple of minutes late to pick them up almost every day. Doing homework with my kids sends me into fits of frustration. I only share the fun stuff on here (usually), but there are lots of days where my kids watch too much TV while I sneak chocolate and don’t do anything productive. It’s true.

I’d love to do better at those things, and a lot more. But, I’m learning to not feel bad for what I cannot do and learning to not feel guilty about what is in the past. My friend Bethany shared the article, Parent Guilt – A Silent Epidemic, in my first Imperfect Friday post and I really enjoyed that. My friend Jill(who is fabulous and looks gorgeous even right out of bed, so obviously she doesn’t have any self doubt whatsoever) wrote this post, Why I Don’t Suffer Mama Guilt, which is also awesome. I’m sure I’ve read more great articles on perfect and mom guilt recently, but I’m currently suffering from another common parenting epidemic– mom brain.

Whew, anyways, I have some more photos to share with you today– and I promise they are not of my dirty house this time, so I will be back later!