I have really hard time justifying myself leaving home when girls are not quite 100% in shape. Somehow I feel terrible as a parent and disappointed of myself... no matter how well other things in life is going.
Then I felt relieved when I stumbled upon the latest blog post on Zen Habits... about reducing stress when we are very busy. Especially the second point about "See your ideas and let go of control"... and how fear of not meeting our ideal is the real cause of our stress. I realized that I had this built up expectation... the ideal about the perfect mother figure for our girls... that I am "the" person for them when they need the ultimate comfort. And when I couldn't comfort Coco when she was teething, I totally beat myself up and wondered (and told myself) that I couldn't help her because I was not with her all the time...
Maybe it's true that I couldn't help Coco when she was uncomfortable because I am away while at work... or maybe teething is just teething and it's hard to feel comfortable for any babies when it happens. There is no definite answer about it but I felt better when I acknowledged that I was making myself more stressed out than I needed to because I was worried about not being the amazing mom I imagined to be. So instead of losing my sleep over about something I couldn't change (like my needs and desires to work for Baum-kuchen, her teething condition and her cold...), I just focused on having great time with both girls when I was with them.
The mindset shift definitely made things feel different... and better.
I think ideal is good. It's what drives me to become a better person... but sometimes... I need to remind myself that what matter is NOT about always "meeting the ideal" and an inevitable gap between ideal and reality. It's more about understanding that I have an ideal picture and saying that what I actually have in our hand is just as awesome:)
