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Monday, January 14, 2008

Are YOU a Victim of Expectations?

We all have those days where the expectations of the world get to be too much. (You know, a sparkling clean house, days spent teaching our children to read while completing beautiful crafts, cooking gourmet meals in our tightest pair of jeans with our hair flowing soflty and jewelry glittering when our dear husbands get home to kiss us and the faces of his flawlessly clean children before he goes off to enjoy a relaxing evening in front of the TV with some of the homemade cookies you just baked while you go work out for three hours.) Yeah, right. Check one or two of those off your list every day and then do something more fun!

I actually finished the cleaning a bit early this afternoon so I indulged and gave myself a facial. Not just a little scrub, I mean a six-step facial. My skin feels great and it was so nice to have some pampering time. (I just let Aiden crawl around and empty the contents of whatever drawers he could manage to open. *SIGH* Boys....) I guess it was on my walk this morning that I realized my to-do list of house cleaning, exercise, scrapping and everything else could be put on hold. I got some of it done, but I really had more fun just playing with Aiden and reading to him this afternoon. Much more productive in the long run than trying to do my hair perfectly and squeezing into something Brian might like so I could get it splattered with the baby food carrots Aiden had so much fun spitting on me.

Let's not be victims of expectations. Instead, let's be the trendsetters of new expectations: Experiences, not appearances, are what really matter. I will forever remember that today was the first day Aiden sat still and let me read him a whole book. Then reached over AND GOT ANOTHER! I'll forget I spent the morning cleaning, I won't remember what was on my to-do list for today and I can promise I won't recall what I was wearing. The only thing worth recalling is that my busy-body little boy finally wanted me to read to him.

1 comment:

molly said...

Experiences vs. appearances. Yeah! Let's not worship 'ideals'.