Day 17-Is it Ever Enough?

On day 17 of my diet and I have lost a lot of weight and feel amazingly healthy! At least that’s a good thing; but, Nathan and I had a rough night last night. Lots of emotion came out and here it is…

“I never know what to play with Zak, because he can’t tell me what he wants to do. I don’t know if I spend enough one-on-one time with him. I don’t know if I ‘work’ with him enough. I think Zak thinks I’m boring; Dads always get to be the ‘fun’ ones. I just want to protect him, but I don’t want to keep him from anything because I’m being too protective. I’m so scared about the pain he is going to be in after his hip surgery. Zak is so picky I feel like I don’t feed him enough “nutritious” food. I’m afraid to push him too hard because I might cause him pain. Do I ‘teach’ him enough? Do I help him to really explore the world? …”

WHY, WHY, WHY do we do this to ourselves?

So, I think the thing on my mind today is: as parents do we ever feel like we are doing enough? Do you ever sit back at the end of the day and think, “Wow, I did everything I wanted to do today!”? Is there some magical balance as a parent I just haven’t figured out yet?

All I know, as people in general, we are WAY too hard on ourselves a majority of the time. We really need to stop this and know we do the best we can, in the moment we are in. We are going to have good days and bad days. We are going to have days where we know we could have done more, but those are the moments we need to learn from and move forward. We need to learn to take a step back at the end of the day and really reflect on what we have done. Most of the time, it will end up being a lot more than you thought.