MWW: Get away and Be Yourself!

So, the first piece of mommy wisdom is get away! It is essential to your mental sanity and the health of your relationship with your husband and kids to have some alone time. You give and give and give all day, and in order to keep giving, you must be filled up! For me that looks like time with just me and Lord every day while MK is napping, putting MK in childcare at the gym 3+days a week to take a yoga or Zumba class, grabbing coffee with a girl friend while Mike watches MK, date nights with my hubby, and this last weekend it looked like going to Hawkins, TX with 500 of my closest girlfriends from Watermark! The Watermark women’s retreat was fantastic, refreshing, rejuvenating and growing. I bonded with my community group girls in a deeper spiritual way as we talked about the struggles of being wives, moms, employees and daughters of the King. I am so glad I took the time to fill myself up this past weekend. Don’t feel guilty that you are taking yourself away from your kiddos and husband to be filled up, they will survive without you and they will be blessed by a rejuvenated you! Even if it’s a 10 minute stroll around the block- get away and refuel!



Confession: I'm not a perfect mom! Point and case? I couldn't figure out for the life of my how to turn this picture around in Blogger... UGH!



One thing that I took away from the retreat was about the importance of just being myself- my second mommy wisdom for this weds. The speaker this weekend talked about taking off the masks that so many of us wear. Masks that we want the world to see, a persona that we portray. My mask is “the perfect mom” mask (among many, many, many others!). I try my hardest to make sure people think that I’ve got this mothering thing down. When, in fact, I do not! So, in an effort to take of my mask, I am going to be real. I am not a perfect mom. I lose my patience, get angry, am lazy, get annoyed. Sometimes MK watches TV (gasp!), sometimes she doesn’t eat a vegetable at dinner, sometimes I’ve let her cry just 10 minutes longer in the morning cause mommy is exhausted, sometimes MK walks around all day with a crusty bugger nose because it’s not worth the fight. I think us moms try so hard to let the world know that we are perfect moms because we as moms are so critical of other moms. You’ve been around those moms who never have a nice thing to say about how someone else is raising their kids. “Oh, I would never let my baby cry.” “Oh, if your baby was only on a schedule…” “You only breastfed for 2 weeks?” “My son has never watched TV.” “If only you would have had a natural labor and delivery, you would have had the perfect birth experience.” “You vaccinate your kids?” Come on moms; let’s give each other some slack. Let’s let moms be real. No one is perfect! Give your fellow moms the benefit of the doubt. Let’s celebrate every mom’s decision to choose what is best for her child, because for the most part, you know what’s right for your children. And let’s be honest, a little TV/formula/crying/crusty bugger/epidural is not gonna kill them! :)



MK watching Elmo... proof!



Hope you can find freedom from the energy wasting, time sucking masks in your life!

Love,

K Vog