I woke up this morning and had high hopes that I would find some motivation to clean and organize my house. My bedroom is looking especially awesome with several piles of laundry calling my name. So of course I am sitting here with my second cup of coffee waiting for my laundry to learn a new name..like my husband's. One can dream, right?

Sometimes you simply have to accept that life will hand you things other than lemons and you will have to make what you will of it. When you have children, you learn that more often than not, whatever you are handed will likely be stinky, sticky and occasionally if you are lucky, just a used Kleenex or something easily identifiable and safely wrapped. Hahaha...I keed. Most likely it will not be wrapped well, and you will get whatever it is on your hands.

I have come to terms that some of my furniture will have a random princess stickers. Some places on the carpet will always look slightly blue and sparkly. Some days, I will be excited that the house only kind of smells like wet dog and mostly like Febreeze. Other days I will have to spend countless hours wondering what 'that smell is' and more countless hours finding the source and getting rid of it. Finally, I have to accept that 'the smell' lives here and hopefully a bath will help.

Obviously I am not the best blogger. I am going for every January. So sue me. I did have something interesting to talk about so I'll be getting to that now.

On November 29, 2011, my husband and I experienced the miracle of life for the second time and welcomed little man, Brian P. Washington Jr., aka Patrick, into the world. As we have been adjusting to having multiple children in our house, including the lack of sleep, increased toddler tantrums, and the return of diapers into our home, I have been fighting the ever present thoughts of whether or not we are performing our parenting jobs to the best of our ability. Every parent I have ever met has come across this issue at one point or another. Wondering if you are doing things right, reading crazy research articles to see if you are feeding your newborn at the best possible angle to prevent ear aches, to reading other friends blogs and Facebook posts and noting that THEIR 3 year old can write their name in crayon while yours is still eating them...and dog food. This issue has been researched and discussed hundreds of times. How parents compare and worry about their parenting skills, and judge others accordingly is practically an American tradition.

Well, today I read an article that made me realize some things that I wish more people would think about, too. The story focused on the quality of CPS investigations, and how sometimes the children that are supposed to be being protected are still suffering and dying because of faulty paperwork, incompetent social workers, etc. It really is a sad story, but what it really made me think about besides the sad fate of many children in our world, is that while I may not be parent of the year, I have nothing to worry about when it comes to my parenting skills, or my ability to love my children.

Yes, many nights I have been too tired to read my 3 year old a story. I have skipped a tooth brushing because she fell asleep on the couch and I was not about to wake her. I let her sleep on the couch. I've fed her chicken nuggets or a brownie or both for meals more times than I care to admit, and I've lain awake for what seems like hours (probably 5 or so minutes) listening to my newborn cry and hoping they will just fall back asleep so I don't have to get up for the third time that night to feed him. I've done likely hundreds of parenting book 'no nos' and I will likely do many more. What I am starting to accept is that doing these things does not make me a bad parent or even a bad person. It just makes me imperfect. Human and very normal. I think what is not normal are the people that don't take this very true fact into consideration when they look at parents, good parents that are feeding, loving and caring for their children the best that they can and then try to pass judgment on them. This is especially to be noted by the parents that spend way too much time judging themselves.

Child abuse is a very serious problem in our world, and I am not trying to detract from that. I am just using that example to show the very drastic difference between hurting a child and letting them watch too much TV or if you are trying to sleep train them with the controversial 'crying it out' method. Try to remember this, parents, as you are letting your toddler cry themselves to sleep in their crib with clean sheets, holding their favorite blankie. The child that has a full belly of what might be goldfish and koolaid, but they are fed and warm and very lucky to have you. You are doing your best and you should be proud of yourself for it.