Jennifer and the Terrible, Horrible, Some Good, Very Great Day

I don't know how many of you are familiar with this children's book (Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day) but the title came to mind. We had a bad start to our day yesterday. Things started out like a fairly normal Sunday morning. Grace and I had a "chat" about how we would do her hair. I really wanted to twist it up in a clip. I thought it looked super cute. She however was not so sure. I tried convincing her with no success until I had a great idea. I told her that Grammy would love it. She wasn't sure. So I suggested we call her. She said I will have to see it & so we got on Skype and my mother assured Grace how grown up and cute her hair looked. And she was perfectly happy from then on (thank goodness for Skype). I hope this continues to work through her prom hair-do days. You can see her happily modeling her updo in the above picture. 

Sounds like a great solution, so what made the morning horrible? Well, that would involve our accident prone child Faith. While I was getting ready Faith was carrying around a glass container with those decorative glass stones in it. She was sitting on the carpet having a great time dumping them out and filling it back up. I was wanting to finish getting ready and thought it wasn't a big deal. Than 10 minutes later I hear a crash & screaming. Apparently she decided to walk around with said glass container, tripped, and it shattered into a million pieces. Her hands were bleeding with 4 or 5 cuts. She wasn't really hurt just stinking mad she needed to hold still so I could clean her up. So we had a wrestling match that resulted in 4 tiny band-aids being wrapped around her little fingers. She wasn't happy to say the least and repeatedly tried taking them off with her teeth. And when we put on her coat on they started bleeding again and got blood all over her hands and coat. Lovely! Needless to say by the time I got to church I was completely and utterly frazzled. (with a side of mommy guilt!)

But as you can tell by the title of this blog the entire day wasn't terrible. Last night I was super tired and not feeling real motivated to cook dinner. So my husband volunteered and made dinner for us. While I was enjoying playing with the girls he called down the stairs to ask where the cookie cutters were. When we came up for dinner he had made the girls hamburgers in the shape of a flower and butterfly. And I was overwhelmed with gratitude for his thoughtfulness for both I and the girls.  I am so blessed.

As I looked back over my day it made me think about how often when things aren't going smoothly I can write off the entire day. This is not a good day! But when I look at my days as a stay at home mom I realize few of them can be strictly categorized as good or bad. Even the rough days involve precious hugs and kisses from my kids. And I can't think of a single good day that was completely tear or tantrum free. And so God is showing me how to let go of a piece of my perfectionism...a day doesn't have to be perfect to be good, or even great.