Parenting Perfectly - Or Not (Images)

If you haven't gotten it right by the time you have three or four kids, you're certainly not gonna get it right once you've made it to eight...or nine kids (like me).

Well, let me tell you...it seems we haven't gotten the Parenting Perfectly thing right, and I am resolved to believe that we won't ever get it right.

Here's why:

My kids and husband have not figured out that we are supposed to show up to the dinner table in coordinated and perfectly pressed clothing after a long, busy day. Like this family:

The kids are smiling, nobody is elbowing anyone else uMInder the table - (I can see all their arms!) And who knows if there's any kicking under the table, but it doesn't look like it.

We wouldn't get the table settings right like this family, either:

Although chopsticks are always fun to watch the kids and daddy trying to tackle. :)

And then this right here:

Have you ever walked down the beach with nine kids? Not only would we block the whole Sandy part off if we held hands, but no...this is not even close. 

I remember the last time we made it to the beach. It's been a while, I think we were us plus seven at the time. Anyway, they're kids. At the beach. 

And we can't get away with dressing our girls in white like these parents:

Especially at the beach. 

You better believe when it's time for family pictures again, it's probably not going to go this perfectly:

I mean, come on now, even the baby is smiling! 

You probably won't find us getting all dressed up to go skipping out in the middle of a huge field, either. 

Of course, at the end of the day, we will all get in our white clothes to sleep in our white bed, which has plenty of room for 4 to snuggle in...

Not! 

I don't know about you, but I would not dare to have white on my bed. That's just a Kool-Aid accident waiting to happen in my house. 

And, at night, when the kids have decided to climb into my bed and sprawl out, there's just a narrow crawl space for me to slither through to sleep in. 

It's nowhere near that perfect. 

No doubt, our reading time goes as perfectly and smoothly as this:

Again, I digress.

We rarely get it perfectly.

We're not a Facebook perfect family, and I don't know if I really want to be one, either. The unpredictable, chaotic craziness of our life is something I've already accepted as life with kids.

If your life is perfect like these pictures portray, I'd love to meet you! Hit me up in the comments!




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