The breakfasts were made the night before. The diaper bag was packed. Outfits were laid out. I set my alarm for earlier than usual. I had a detailed shopping list with coupons taped to it. My bags were by the door. I was ready for this day.
6:55am
Alarm goes off and I got up and ready on time. We were all up and dressed and fed and ready to roll not on time…..but EARLY!
*Fast forward to around 10am*
We are running through Walgreens, Laelynn is on my hip, Haven is announcing to the world that she has to go potty and can not wait any longer, and Jonah is tagging along behind….barefoot.
Everything had gone smoothly until we were done taking Aunt Lory to work and were about 5 minutes away from Aldi’s (my new fave grocery store). From the backseat, the alarm was sounded, “I GOTTA GO POTTY!” Ugh, really? You just went before we left the house. “I CAN’T WAIT!” Ok, fine, we will stop and pop into Walgreens.
*Parks car, gets out, climbs into backseat to unbuckle the minions, notices Jonah’s feet are lacking shoes.*
“Jonah, where are your shoes?”
*Mischievous grin and shrugs shoulders*
“Are they in the car? Did you take them off? Were you wearing them when we left the house?”
“I don’t think so.”
Usually we drive Aunt Lory to work and come back home so there are many times that we don’t worry about shoes. This was not one of those days, but apparently Jonah didn’t get that memo. At this point I am internally scrambling to figure out how to keep him from walking barefoot into the store but that seems impossible and Haven’s cries of bathroom urgency are intensifying. So I swallowed my pride and head into the store with a frantic potty trainer, a baby, and a barefooted boy. It was sooooooooo uncomfortable for this self-admitted germaphobe to have my son in the bathroom with bare feet, but having Haven wet herself in public with no back up change of clothes was even more daunting.
Once we were done, we searched the store for shoes of any sort. Thankfully we found an entire aisle dedicated to impulse flipflop purchases. I just wish they had had more than one pair of boy’s style and that the one pair wasn’t 3 sizes too big. Since the shoes were only going to be useful if they stayed on his feet, we moved on to Payless. After going through all of the shoes that were “too tight”, “too slippery”, “too squishy”, and “too weird”, we finally settled on something practical: water shoes. Whatever, at least they will come in handy this summer and they were on sale and made him happy.
I won’t bore you with all of the details for the rest of the day. It really wasn’t a bad day, just had a few challenges along the way. I forgot to use the coupon I had so carefully packed the night before and we ran short on time and had to skip a store that I was hoping to go to, but I’m still proud of us.
Having three kids 5 and under is not easy and sometimes we end up barefooted in Walgreens in spite of my best efforts. But you know what? It’s ok to be a hot mess. You do the best you can, and then you just roll with whatever ends up happening. Today, I kept my cool and didn’t take out my frustrations on the minions. Today was a great, hot mess day.
Basically, my message is this:
To the mom who’s kid is having a meltdown in the store, to the mom who hasn’t washed her hair in 4 days, to the mom with the teething baby, to the mom who forgot to pack snacks, to the mom who has a couch buried in laundry, to the mom who is trying to keep it all together while it fall apart around her…You Are Doing Great. We have all been there and no one is as perfect as they look on Facebook. We are all hot messes. Just keep on keeping on, and keep loving your hot mess kids, with all of your hot mess heart. God never said we had to be perfect. We put that on ourselves.
Focus on Him. Focus on grace, not perfection.
We’ve got this.
