It may not always be easy, but it’s worth it….that’s what they say, right?? It’s certainly cliché, but it holds true. There are some days that I am sad, angry and frustrated with this hand I’ve been dealt. There are others that I couldn’t imagine my life any other way!
There is one key phrase that I repeat to myself on a regular basis: “It’s okay to not be okay”. (Demi Lovato says is best!!) Really, why do we all feel this intense pressure to be perfect, to perform at top notch and not take mental breaks for ourselves? Mental health is SUPER important and we all NEED the time for ourselves to regroup when we are feeling overwhelmed or just down on life.
With Luca, I torture myself on a regular basis with questions like: Am I doing enough? What else can I do to make life better for him? Every single day I have a “shoulda, coulda, woulda” moment with him. But, do you know what? Deep down, I know I’m a good mom and I know I’m doing all that I can for him. It’s natural to question and second guess yourself – that’s life and that’s what society and social media have done to all of us. We see everyone else doing something better and it makes us feel that we aren’t enough. I have news for you; WE ARE ENOUGH!! It’s impossible to know what everyone else is going through at any given time. Sure, they may appear to be doing something better, but who knows how long it took them to get to that point or what the real story is. The moral is, it’s not okay to compare yourself to others. You will downward spiral into a rabbit hole – don’t do it 🙂 Just be you and do your best, that’s all we can do and control, right?! We are all human and we will all make mistakes. We learn, we grow from them and we move on.
So, this brings me to sharing some of the things we struggle with in my house. My inner circle knows me as the one who will always be honest and who doesn’t hold back. I don’t want to hide anything from anyone in regard to how we care for Luca because it’s just not always easy. There are days that raising a special child will require special, superhuman patience. INSANE amounts of patience!!
Let’s talk about the worst day we have had around here recently. I don’t want to embarrass Luca, but I do want to put this out there for others in case this makes just ONE person feel better about a day they’ve had. Luca isn’t potty trained yet….it’s a very long work in progress. He sleeps in a diaper and he he wakes up at ungodly hours in the morning (5am – no thank you!). When we hear him, one of us literally sprints to his room to get him. Why?? Well, Luca wakes up and often times likes to remove his diaper. One super early morning not too long ago, he didn’t make a peep, so we didn’t know he was awake. (Let me also add that we have Ring camera in his room with motion detection to also alert us that he’s awake as well!) The Ring motion sensor didn’t go off until it was too late, so we walked into what looked like a crime scene. The difference is this scene was full of poo instead of blood. Yes, he had a nice poo that morning and managed to slide out of his diaper undetected. From there, he managed to step in it and it smeared everywhere. There was poo all over the rails, the wall and the sheets. OMG – this is not a good way to start the day. This cleanup job took two of us! Greg came in and put him straight into the tub and got him cleaned up. I got to work cleaning the walls, rails, the sheets and blankets. Seriously, it was a literal shit show! But, we got it cleaned up and moved on with our day as if it never happened. That’s life, it happens sometimes around here and I’m grateful that is not too often. It’s sad that my little man isn’t aware how gross this is, it’s not fair that I have to clean up a mess like this and it’s exhausting to have to sprint into Luca’s room every morning to ensure this doesn’t happen. However, this is the hand we were dealt and it’s just something we deal with from time to time. We love Luca just the same through the good and the bad and are grateful that this often times is the worst of his behaviors. After all, things could always be worse.
Life is full of winding roads. We all have good days and we all have bad days. We all have our vices and it’s important to know what they are to help us to get through the bad when we are deep in the trenches. I have a support system that includes my husband, most of my immediate family and some very good friends. I also enjoy a couple glasses of wine more often than I should 😉 I’ll just go ahead and blame that on Covid.
This all being said, it’s just a snippet of a bad day….we have TONS of great days to make up for the bad. Always remember to look for the silver lining!
Here are some fun pictures from our last photo session with Lindsay Chan Photography (Naperville, IL). She’s amazing with Luca and we are forever grateful for the patience it takes to capture the perfect photo of our guy!
Loving Luca 
Humans are not perfect. Even machines fail from time to time. However, what’s important is that we learn from our mistakes and improve. Artificial intelligence systems also learn from their mistakes, so what’s stopping us from learning? Anyways, great post! Do check out my blog sometime too!
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