The Deception of the Internet

I've been thinking about this recently, and I've finally decided to write about it.  Part of what got me thinking was rereading my last  post a few days ago.  As I read over it, I had the thought, ''gee, that sounds a lot more idyllic and easy than it actually was.''. Here's a better description of what really happened when I attempted to make pureed baby food:

Ann's taking a nap and Kaylene is wasting precious time on the internet.  Eventually she looks up a bit more about how she wants to cook up the produce she bought nearly a week earlier before any more of it goes bad.  With less than an hour before Ann will likely wake up, Kaylene finally goes into the kitchen and gets things cooking.  Ann wakes up just as the peaches are getting out of the oven.  Kaylene gets her up and sets Ann in her high chair and attempts to get her to eat a snack (she was still pretty sick and refused to eat almost anything for a few days).  While Ann is sorta eating, Kaylene is trying to peel the peaches and pears and get them in the blender.  Ann decides she is done eating and wants out of her chair NOW.  Kaylene gets her out and attempts to pour out the pureed fruit into her ice cube trays while Ann tugs at her shirt demanding to be held.  Kaylene bounces from trying to hold her sick daughter to trying to peel a toddler off her to do something to being pushed away from the counter, all while trying to get the vegetables pureed and in the freezer with the fruit.  In the end, Kaylene is very exhausted and grateful there's leftovers to be had for dinner since she doesn't want to do anything else in the kitchen for the rest of the day.

 I've realized how easy it is to leave out all of those more challenging details and just say, ''look at this cool thing I've done!". I started to wonder how many screaming children or other frustrating moments are hidden under the blog posts or Facebook statuses I read.  It also makes me wonder if part of my reasoning for going somewhere or doing something is so I can blog about it and in essence say, ''look, I can be cool too!". Kind of a ''keeping up with the Joneses'' in the worst kind of way, because it's only how I perceive reality to be, when in fact that may not be reality at all.

I know I can struggle with knowing what is ''normal'' in the life of a young mom, and I often can be too hard on myself.  Example: over Christmas break, I was so fed up with Ann for being a perfectly normal toddler (I was just so tired and running very low on patience) that I just handed Ann over to my mother in law and called my mom crying.  I told her how I was so tired, and I felt horrible for how frustrated I got with Ann, and that I sometimes wished I wasn't a mom anymore and just wanted a break.  But at the same time, I was frustrated because whenever I did get a chance to get out by myself or with Tom (like I had just a day or two earlier) all I could think about was Ann and how I just wanted to get back to her and take care of her.  My mom then said, ''Kaylene, would it help if I told you that you are completely normal?"  To which I replied ''yes, because I feel like I am going crazy.''.

I'm a part of an email mailing list with a bunch of ladies from church, and at some point this sentiment was shared: I wish we could all just see each others houses how they look on a normal day so we can all just stop being so hard on ourselves.

Anyways, this post had gotten to be a lot longer than I thought it would be.  I hope someone somewhere was able to get something from my jumbled, rambling thoughts.  I guess my point is that I hope we can all realize that we are probably doing better than we think we are.