Me, and My Projects

I have days where (I feel) that I am failing miserably at being a mother. Like last weekend, for instance. A simple Sunday outing turned in to my youngest crying the entire time and my eldest asking me why our day was being ruined by him. There was nothing I could do really to make the day better. Well, except go home and put my little one down for a nap.

But it seems that whenever I have these epic failure days I turn to projects to redeem myself. Can't succeed at parenthood? Well, I can certainly succeed at completing a project!

I have a long track record of this. When I was having trouble coping with the fact that my eldest had a speech delay and was being evaluated for therapy benefits, I turned to scrap booking. When I was feeling frustrated with my tennis game last summer, I turned to painting my master bedroom a few different colors before settling on a new color! If I'm frustrated with my career, I'll make new pillows for the couch! 

Last Saturday I refinished a changing table that I purchased on Craigslist for $20. Sure, I bought this furniture piece a few weeks ago with the goal of refinishing it... but not all in one day! I was so disappointed with the way that the day had turned out, and struggling with the fact that all I wanted to do was be a good mother and take my children someplace fun, and I couldn't succeed at such a small feat. Perhaps I'm struggling with the "successful parenthood" problem more because I'm very pregnant with number three, but nonetheless it's a problem for me. So as my youngest was napping, and my husband took my eldest to the park/crashed a Birthday Party (seriously!) I sanded and refinished that changing table in about three hours.

At the end of the day, my neck hurt from hunching over to sand the pieces of the changing table down and repaint it... but the anguish from my day of parental failure had gone away.

I'm feeling a lot of projects coming on in the next few years...

Jenny K. is a mother of two little boys, with a baby girl arriving in August. She enjoys currently enjoys home improvement projects to make her feel better about her (lack of) parenting skills while very pregnant! You can also follow Jenny K. at her personal blog, or tweet with her on Twitter.