I have a confession to make...

The day we got home from Maine...Anna dressed herself in this princess outfit... complete with a tiger tail (she is wearing her pajamas underneath) and demanded to be photographed.

F calls this look, "the Johnny Depp" look. Mikey loves his rain hat. And the pink, heart-shaped sunglasses we got from Emma...yes, that is the day he colored his face with green marker.

At Langley AFB park...Luke said he was in an aerial crane, rescuing whales from the oil spill. He will be five soon...how handsome is he?

I don't think I'm ever going to make life look easy, efficient, or well-planned. I'm not really that kind of girl. I am more the girl who is slightly shocked by the situation she finds herself in and then tries her damnedest to think of a strategy for damage control. I am the lady wearing dirty sweatpants who is walking out of the grocery store, trips over a curb, loses her grip on the shopping cart (which runs over her foot), dents the car, but manages to keep her 3 kids from being flattened by a truck. (No, that is not a real anecdote, but it could be.) I am a klutz who keeps driving into the fence when I'm trying to get away from it, the girl who runs over her phone or leaves it out in the rain. I keep trying to blame this tendency toward awkward self-humiliation on my 3 kids under the age of 5, but F assures me that I was doing ridiculous things long before they were a twinkle in his eye.

I have come to the conclusion that this is part of my personality. I keep waiting to outgrow my blundering ways, but I have now realized (and this is huge)...it's just the way I am. Someone said recently that my inability to focus and carry on a clear conversation is probably "Mommy brain", but I know plenty of women who can finish their sentences, learn whole new trades/skills (then turn them into a side business on top of the career they already have), organize their homes, and shower/don regularly laundered (therefore stain-free) clothing nearly every day, even with a few young children in tow (and this is not at the expense of their kiddos...they have awesome, well-behaved, dearly loved kiddos). Parenting is difficult, but they make it seem easy. And if not easy, at least graceful. This is not a skill I have.

I do things like tote the children down the boardwalk for an after dinner stroll to listen to the free Army band concert, belatedly realizing that not only does Mikey not have pants on(lately he has been expressing a desire to end his day without pants), but his diaper is the size of his head (which comically bounces to its own precarious rhythm and threatens to fall off his body as he runs), but his legs are covered in blue and black Crayola marker stripes. As we walked through the crowd of happy families, senior citizens with their polyester pants and supportive shoes, the occasional nun, and several soldiers done up in their dress blues, I glanced down, I noted that my shirt was sweat-soaked and smeared with dirt and marinara sauce where Mikey had wiped his hands on me earlier in the day. No makeup, hair in a frizzy, sad pony tail. In short, we looked like hobos. We were under-dressed (or, in Mikey's case, undressed) for that particular event, to say the least. (As a disclaimer, F was clean and wearing clothes that matched, so I don't include him in this.)

I'm not sure my clumsiness should bother me. What can I do except laugh at myself? Sometimes I wish I was more poised and elegant. I wish I knew how to make a centerpiece and perfectly time my cooking for a dinner party (or, more importantly, knew enough to actually attempt a formal dinner party), but I'm not sure I am truly interested in that kind of thing. Maybe I think I need to know this stuff because other people do and I admire them. I'm not fancy. I'm not proper. I'm kind of a mess.

In my isolated world, I get bemused, sympathetic smiles, and the occasional dirty look when my children are acting like wild monkeys pillaging the strawberry cartons in the middle of the aisle. Whenever I have these moments of clarity, whenever I see what a mess we all are (we, as in my children and I), I feel a little ashamed. I'm fairly certain that there are women out there who could crack a whip and do what I do in a more organized, hygienic way. And yet, I sweat. I struggle. If the children are far enough way or the music loud enough, I swear. I don't make it look good, this parenting business...I wear my imperfections on the outside. I don't know how else to be.

As I age, I am probably not going to change radically...I might learn tricks like putting my phone and keys always in the same place or checking to make sure I have my wallet BEFORE I leave the house, but I'm not going to magically become a different person. I'm still going to drip ice cream and ketchup on my shirt and stub my toe on a chair I just walked around. I know that these quirks which were endearing in a 20 year old will eventually become a little annoying to people who love me. But there is the key to happiness. Partly it is realizing that there is still love for me from my family when I do these stupid things, but mostly it is seeing myself as I am with compassion and kindness. As Oprah says, it is in self-acceptance (not sure she really says that, but I thought it was an Oprah kind of thing to say). Oh well...I'm happy to be the comic relief, I suppose...now, I'd better head off to bed...