Striving for Perfection

At what age do we start becoming dissatisfied with being imperfect?

I think I may be ruining the blissful childhood of my oldest son because he is no longer happy with giving his best efforts. He wants to be perfect.

Today when he came home from school I asked him to bring me his homework folder so I could see the papers he was bringing home. He brought me 2 crumpled up papers. I looked at the papers and at then at his face and he looked very sad and disappointed. Upon closer inspection of the papers i realized that they were a math test and a spelling test. The math test had a large 91% written on it and the spelling test had 90%. I was so excited for him but when I told him how proud I was of him he said "No mom, I didn't get 100 and so I just want to throw them away."

I tried to talk to him about the scores and that we don't always get 100% but we always have to do our best and try our hardest. He listened, and nodded when appropriate but at the end of our conversation he asked if he could crumple them back up and throw them in the garbage.

At first I was entertained by his attitude. I thought it was kind of cute that it was such a big deal to him to get 100%. But after thinking about it, I'm more concerned. I don't want him to spend his entire young life worried about being perfect. I want him to always strive to do his best, and work hard at learning, but I don't want it to affect his self esteem if he isn't perfect.

I realize now how much of my attitude Dyson is putting into himself. I struggle with lesson myself and so I don't know how to help or teach Dyson to not be this way. Sigh.

I guess we will both have to work on this and maybe in the process of helping Dyson become confident in who he is and his ability to be successful without having to be perfect all the time I can learn it myself.

I don't want Dyson to stop trying to get 100% in school though, so we both agreed that we are going to make sure Dyson is super prepared for his spelling tests and that he knows if the math problem is addition or subtraction.

He is super smart and I am going to help him reach his goals of getting 100% on his next tests. Wish us luck!

One Happy Girl

Miss Islay is one of the happiest babies. She is so content most of the time and she hardly cries. This is especially great after having Miss Rori. She was dramatic from the get go and only wanted her dad. Ice (that's one of her many nicknames) is much more of a momma's girl.
She has started to smile and does it all the time. She loves to talk to us and I swear she has something important to tell me. The noises she makes are very excited and she concentrates so hard.
She is growing more and more every day and it makes me more and more sad. I want her to stay little forever. I love snuggling with her and snuggling chest to chest seems to be how she prefers to spend her time.
She is such a joy to have in our home and we all love spending time with her. In fact the house work and laundry seem to be put aside so that more Islay time can be had by all.
Gotta love that smile!

When ever I am doing the dishes or in the shower I seem to be able to think of several blog topics and how I would word them. Of course they are always eloquently written and full of life altering insights about myself or the world. But, when I finally get a min to sit at the computer to compose such a post... all my wonderful thoughts are gone. Welcome to mommyhood. haha.

So I guess you'll have to settle for whatever is in my head right now.

Lately I've been thinking about my goals and what I want to accomplish. It sounds cliche with it being January and all but I haven't been thinking about it in a "New Year's Resolution" sort of way. More a "Who am I and what do I have I done with my life." This reflection usually comes from admiring my friends who seem to have it all together and me, of course, comparing myself to them.

I know it's unfair of me to compare myself to others especially because I compare their strengths to my obvious weaknesses, but I do it none the less.

It seems that my life goes in circles of contentedness and not, and finding the balance to be content with who I am and the progress I've made in my life and yet not be satisfied so I will continue to strive to be better is something I can't seem to grasp.

Probably the biggest and most public aspect of my life that is affected by this is my ability to keep a clean house. I grew up in a home that was full of love and laughter, and clutter. As a newlywed I struggled to keep a clean house (even when there were just 2 of us living there.) We always wore clean clothes and ate on clean dishes, but the clothes were usually pulled from laundry basket of unfolded clothes, and the dishes would have to be washed before we could eat. Since then I have made tons of progress in knowing how to keep a house clean and with 4 kids the progress is AMAZING. At times I am so pleased with the growth in self discipline and then people will be coming over and I see all the areas of my home that have been neglected and I feel as if I have made no progress at all. I am struggling with the ability to be comfortable with the fact that I have made huge improvements in how clean my house is and to be proud of how well I am managing with 4 kids and to not be embarrassed if the floor isn't swept or there are baskets of laundry. I worry that if someone comes over and there are dishes in the sink or the counters haven't been wiped that they are scrutinizing me and my home.

I want to be able to not feel that way. But at the same time I don't want to lose the desire to be better. The only way I was able to be where I am today is because I felt like there was so much room for improvement. I don't to become completely OK with the way my house looks now. I want to keep striving for "better" but I don't want the fact that it's not perfect to affect my self esteem. (Which, to be honest, it is)

Learning to be comfortable and even confident with who I am and yet be unsatisfied with where I am at in my personal journey (whether it's about cleaning my house, spiritual growth, or anything else) is something is not coming easy.

Wow, this post got kind of serious. On a lighter note. We got some new games for our Wii and we have been having a blast! We got Mario Party 8 and a Mater game. We also got 2 more controllers so we can all play.

Scooting

Islay is starting to scoot. When we lay her on the floor for tummy time she pulls her knees up and scoots a bit. This makes me very sad. She is my baby and she is growing too fast. I wish I could stop time. I know she will grow, like they all do, but that doesn't keep me from being sad about it.

The Storm

Our van is in there, somewhere.

This is the path from the front of our house to the driveway.
Two cute boys! They had so much fun playing in the 3 feet of snow. The snow was as tall as Ridge!
He still pulls faces in all the pics I take of him. Not much has changed since he was a teenager. But I still love him, crazy face and all!

This is our neighbor snow blowing his sidewalk.

Gotta have a picture of this sweet baby.

The kids in their Christmas jammies from Grandma on Christmas Eve.

I love my kids!