My Son Ate Dog Food Today, and That is OK.

I was not put together before I had kids. People sometimes got the impression from my college degree, and general ability to not buy anything and everything I wanted all the time that I was a well organized person. Generally speaking I did do these things, but I also killed a jungle of plants, rated as inconsistent as best on a fitness scale, hated veggies, loved Taco Bell, and drank a pot of coffee a day. Oh and a planner? Yeah, I owned about 10 of them, but did not use one for longer than three days at most. Then motherhood rolled around in the middle of a young life crisis, and I needed to get my circus together fast.

If you read that and thought, wow she is about to write some inspiration things about how she totally got put together, has perfect twins, and an active schedule. Please reread the title of this post.

As you can guess I am still not put together... and that is perfectly ok. I did make some changes, ones that I plan on going over in a separate blog post. I dusted off a planner, started listening to podcast, and got a few books to help encourage me. Recently I have discovered meal prepping, and free workouts. This however does not mean I have my little circus together. I just was starting to figure out where all my monkeys were hiding, and trying to keep them in the same tent. The monkeys and I were learning together, taking MICRO (this means smaller than baby) steps towards what some day might resemble someone who is put together. But as always nothing really goes to plan, especially this year.

So here I was, meal prepping behidning a closed gate with half a butternut squash peeled and cut. I was super proud of that I had figured out which peeler to use to make the butternut squash easy to deskin. I turned around for 60 seconds, adding in the squash to the veggies, drizzling some olive oil, salt, and pepper then plopping into the oven. This gives my life that little feeling of "She's got this eating healthy thing down". Then I turn around to find my son having broken through the baby gate. Sitting on the floor. EATING DOG FOOD like it is candy. In this moment I was suddenly grateful that we had switched to high quality dog food before huffing in frustration. Yes, in this moment my first thought was one of pleasure that we had given our dog a better baseline for nutrition because I like to focus on little practical things during moments that could become complete mental breakdowns.

You are most likely thinking that my next move was to pick up the kid, move him into his high chair, hand him a banana, and give him a stern but loving talk about how he can't eat dog food. A talk my 10 month old would not understand. If you are thinking this, well you are half right. I did eventually do this, however this blog post does include pictures of my child eating dog food. That is right, I pulled out my phone and took a picture of him eating the dog food. Actually, I took two snaps of him eating dog food and saved them before realizing that maybe sharing this was not a great idea. I was worried what my friends and family might think of this moment where I specifically was not watching my child to perform a loving time management act for myself. So while I debating how bad of a mom I was little man got to relish in his victory of eating dog food for a few minutes longer.

Here is the thing, this whole experience is perfectly ok. I am NOT a bad mom because my kid ate some dog food. I am sure that at this moment one of you has a child who is sneaking over to the dog food right now (Yes looking up to check is a perfectly normal reaction). Giving myself capacity to be ok with that is the number one thing I need in my life right now as we wind down the "Year of Everything". I need capacity for love, forgiveness, family, and imperfection just to make it through the day. I hope that as you read this you are giving yourself the capacity for those things as well. I hope that you are taking a moment everyday to breath, and look up from the self doubt in your life to realize how amazing of a job you are doing. My son ate dog food today, and well that is ok.