Let 'em love you......

 I wrote this a couple of months back a few weeks after our little girl came rushing into the world......

Nothing like kids to make you realise a few home truths about yourself. We just welcomed a pink cub into our wolf pack and while some things are familiar and the effects of sleep deprivation are less of a rude shock ..the demands of two mini's has left me clear on one thing.......

I am a perfectionist.

I like to have it all together (or at least appear to). Two kids under two (or barely over) has made me reconsider such a premise..and when I say reconsider I really mean forced me to admit defeat. How you amazing people with 3 or more do it is to me, the 8th wonder of the world.

I've been having a rough shot of it the last few weeks. You know, late nights, early mornings, even earlier mornings and even later nights. No day sleeps because according to my kids, sleep is for the weak. (I am clearly very weak). Both babies waking up in the night. Attempting crazy hour or as I call it 'feeding bathing time at the zoo' on my own. Trying to to keep up with all the housework and laundry. Trying to make myself look and feel human.  Trying to keep up with the Kardashian's. Well just Kim and her post baby weightloss.

Well as you can predict, its going swimmingly. And by swimmingly I mean badly.

It's all a bit much for perfectionist old me. I have lots of days where I feel like I'm not doing it right, not coping or not well, I dunno, doing it like it should be done. But I smile and say its all good.
See I'm terrible at letting people love me...And I don't mean letting people compliment me, or buy me birthday presents. That stuff is welcome. I mean actually really letting people help me, when I actually need it the most...

I realised perhaps it was appropriate to call time on being a perfectionist one fine afternoon when both my babies were crying for their mummy, and I sat down on the floor and cried for my mummy too.

Ah yes, that moment. Please may no one I know ever see me like this. Not. Winning. At. Life. Then I realised, I hate that phrase. Life is not some kind of competition. It's not a tool I use to measure myself against others. Well truthfully, it is sometimes and quite frankly I should give myself a short sharp slap in the face.

It is the stupidest thing to do. I don't compare my friends to each other, I just love them as they are. I don't compare my kids, I mean its hardly fair they are different people on different journeys. So why apply a new set of rules to myself? Comparing myself to what? Some sort of perceived ideal. Good grief, all this time I thought I was vaguely intelligent.....clearly not.

So I wasn't managing so well - overtired, overwhelmed, feeling inadequate to meet the needs of two tiny humans and definitely behind in the 'number of arms required to do this task' stakes.....big deal..I can't be the first or the last person to feel this way (and if I am so what, someone has to be right?)

So I picked up the phone and called my mummy, who promptly dropped what she was doing and came and helped her baby. Because that's what mum's do.

 I stopped writing there, but in hindsight that little moment was the beginning of something...

In the weeks that followed I learned a few things....it's OK to ask for help. Its more than OK. It allows the people who love you, and aren't fooled by your attempts to say you are fine, to actually to get up in there and love you. In the weeks that followed here are just a few blessings that came my way:

• My darling friend and sister in law looked after my wee ones and sent me for a massage and a spa - I cried all through the massage, lucky I was facing the floor
• A single, male, student friend popped in on his way home from uni to see if I needed a hand and did his first toddler bath and nappy change, and the care and responsibility he did it with made me mist up - he then drove 30 mins to fetch man, who was stuck late at work..and dropped  him home with Indian takeaway
• I got my hair dyed when little was about 5 weeks and she got super distressed and I got super frazzled and had to leave quickly...I forgot to pay and my Mum, who was also getting her hair done, paid and refused my attempts to pay her back over and over again

 And that's only a few things. Family popped round with dinners over and over again, random pop ins from people at crazy hour saved my sanity so many times, my mother in law every week takes my toddler for the day....There were so many texts, calls, hugs from friends...even an impromptu manicure from a friend who has two children smaller than mine! And now that I'm through the post baby haze and sort of normal again, they are all still there. Still loving me. Perfect or not.

So if you are anything like me and afraid to show people your underbelly - I encourage go ahead. Maybe not to the whole world, but to those who really look at you when you talk, the ones who walk gently in your life. They'll surprise you.