The Summer Blues

I posted a picture on Instagram today, it wasn't some gorgeous picture of our perfect day, but rather a picture of an imperfect moment.  A picture of a lesson learned.

This time of year {a week into summer} my feeds on Facebook, Twitter, IG and blogs are filled with complaints from parents about their restless and bored children.  And every year it makes my blood boil.  I understand where these parents are coming from, don't get me wrong, I really do.  For me, the anger behind it comes from a very deep, personal place.  

I wish I had 3 kids to make me crazy in the summer.

I have one.

We tried, we prayed and we looked at all of our options.  God answered back with, "Caroline's enough".  And we said, "ok".

Seeing people talk about their 2-4 kids and the gripes of when does school start, it just really makes my heart sad.  Add to that, I have to share my daughter all year long with her dad, so my summers with her are cut in half.  Yes, there are so many of us who struggle with co-parenting issues and sharing are precious babes year round, but when you don't have to do that, you don't understand the pain that causes.  I always hear people say, "gosh, I wish I had a week without my kids", and I'm sure if I never had to alternate my time with her I would feel the same way.  Believe me when I say, I understand needing a break, or how a weekend away would be nice.  But...you won't hear me saying those things.

I feel the strain of summer just like all the other parents of the world.  What do we do with our kids for 2-3 months?  How do I entertain them?  The constant making snacks and meals, helping get things from the closet, playing games, going on outings.  I get it.

Some of us have outside jobs, some of us work from home, and some of us are full time mommies.  The titles may be different, but we all feel the summer blues.  For me, working at home is almost harder then when I worked in an office.  Balancing work and focusing on my limited time with Caroline is hard, and sometimes like this week, I lose focus of how lucky I am to get this time with her.  I let the need to edit a session override a special moment with her.

Tuesday was one of those days where I needed to spend the day editing, but Caroline had been dying to paint my nails.  So I worked for awhile and told her she could do my nails that evening.  When the time rolled around, I was still knee deep in a wedding and I finally caved to Caroline's demands.  The only problem was, I had the wrong mindset.  I just wanted to get back to what I was working on, didn't want to enjoy that my 11 year old daughter wanted to do something nice for me.  She takes after me and loves to have pretty nails, she'd been scouring the web for exactly what she wanted my nails to look like.  She gets everything out and tells me she wanted to do polka dots.  She did a practice run on a paper plate and got upset because it wasn't working the way the video she watched showed it would work.  Of course I was getting impatient.  She immediately sensed it, got upset and wanted to just give up.  How do I respond to that?  Yep, I get upset that she's throwing in the towel, try to show her how to do it, get more frustrated and end up being short with her.

I took a deep breath and encouraged her to finish, telling her that she can do it even if it doesn't look the same as the video or the same as my attempt.  When she was all done, she was still a little sad at how they turned out, and honestly, I was feeling the same.  I like perfect nails.  It wasn't until this morning when I sat and looked at them, that I thought about how special it was that she wanted to paint my nails and she wanted them to be perfect.

They were perfect.  It just took me longer than it should have to see it.

When your sitting there, having the summer blues, listening to your kids fight and scream, "I'm bored", stop for a minute and refocus.  Think about the blessings God has given you, think about all the imperfect moments, and how those moments are perfect in the most special ways.