This is my first official blog entry for CT Working Moms!

My little “advice to working moms” bit on my bio page (“Don’t try to be the perfect mom”) may be easy to say, but hard to follow. I do think we all need to accept that we are not perfect, but we all may be SuperMoms anyway. Sometimes, we just need to give ourselves credit for all that we are doing.

I do think that working moms feel substantial pressure to be able to juggle all those balls in the air with complete perfection and poise. Do you ever feel like you have to not only be a superstar at work, but also a superstar mom? Or friend? Spouse?

We all have friends who make their own fantastically-decorated cakes for their kids’ birthdays, have matching outfits for their perfectly groomed children, send cards out for every friend/family member/pet’s birthdays, prepare only organic food, and do all of the above while appearing completely calm, cool and stress-free.

I am not that mom.

I wish I could make Star Wars or Thomas the Tank Engine cupcakes. I wish I remembered to respond to that birthday invitation on time. I wish I had less clutter or chaos in my life or at least felt like I had my act together a little more.

I sometimes feel like the mom who barely gets to T-ball on time, may have one if not two boys looking pretty dirty and disheveled from some hard core outdoor play, may get McDonalds for the boys on Tuesdays because they’re $1.99 and may feel overwhelmed from time to time.

When I start thinking about all the things that I’m not doing absolutely perfectly, I do remind myself of all the things that we are able to do reasonably well.

My wife (who is an amazing mom) and I play with the boys as much as we can. We build, construct and knock down all sorts of structures. We have creative “inventions” and artwork taped to the fridge and several walls of the house. We have wonderful friends and family that enjoy spending time and many, many laughs with our crazy family. Our living room is very often transformed into a fort or rocket ship.

We try to do the best for our kids while working hard in the outside world to provide for them. Some nights, after being away from home for 11 hours, I can give the boys “bubble Mohawks” in the bathtub, read three books (even if one of the books is that Ten Little Dinosaurs book that I hate to read) to two clean little boys before bedtime, and the birthday cakes we make are designed and decorated by a 4 year old boy. For the perfect Thomas the Tank Engine cake, I call my sister-in-law.

We are not “perfect” moms in every way, but we have two happy, healthy, wonderful little boys who seem to be thriving.

Sometimes, we just need to stop and remind ourselves that we are doing the best we can for our families. We need to remember to not create standards for ourselves that aren’t truly our own standards.

Love your kids and laugh a lot, then you are a SuperMom!