No Judge Judys here!

I have been critical and judgmental my whole life. As a kid, I irritated my neighbor friends with criticisms of their grammar and incorrect vocabulary usage. As a teenager, I turned my nose up at close friends and classmates who made the decision to drink at field parties despite the fact that I was making my own terrible decisions in other areas of life. As a college student, I gave the skeptical side-eye to suite mates who would skip chapel. As a full-fledged adult, I feel like I am constantly judging other adults/moms/wives for the way they're doing life.

I call baloney on myself. (Or is bologna? Bologna doesn't have quite the same effect when you write it out looking that crazy way that it looks. Baloney it is.)

Tonight I had a brief conversation with a fellow mom from a local "Moms of Multiples" group that I belong to. We, of course, talked about our twins and the stages they're in and that led to us talking about how we're each handling everything. We talked about how life is so challenging sometimes with these crazy little people. She mentioned that she often wants to write a Facebook post on the closed group to let off some steam about how hard this parenting gig can be, but every time she goes to do it decides not to because she doesn't want people to think of what a terrible mother she must be.

No one wants anyone to think that they're a terrible mother or a terrible wife or a terrible person, but I think if we were all just honest about the challenges we face and the emotional battles we go through doing whatever stage of life we're doing, it'd knock out a little bit of the power of other people's judgements.

I tried to reassure this fellow mom as best as I could that there's probably nothing she could have typed on that Facebook wall that would surprise me. In the last couple of months I've been drowning in this motherhood gig. I've confessed to brief thoughts of not coming back to pick up the kids after I dropped them off at Nana and Grandpa's so I could do errands (don't worry - I would honestly never, ever do that).  I completely ruined Father's Day with a self-centered panic attack. I sneak into my bedroom some afternoons and mutter "shut up" a thousand times quietly because I can't handle hearing the word "Mommy" one more time.

The mom that I am is so unbelievably different than the mom I want to be or thought I would be, but you know what? I'm not a terrible mother because I love my children something fierce and I bet you love yours the same, so why don't I step out of it and stop judging you for the choices you make? Well, unless you don't come back to get your kids at your parent's house after you're done with the errands. I might throw some thoughts in on that one...

And just because no one wants to see a post without pictures, here's one of each of our knuckleheads from this weekend: