Letting things go...

I've always made a lot of jokes about how I have OCD, well, it's mostly true. I'm not sure if OCD is the correct term, but I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to certain things. Number one would be the state of cleanliness in my house. The funny thing is, I'm not a germaphobe or anything like that. I'm just a...clutterphobe. I hate junk just lying around. I don't like to see dirty dishes in the sink, cabinet doors left open, anything on the kitchen table if we're not eating off it, toys on the floor (unless someone is playing), beds unmade, clothes or shoes on the floor...um yeah now that's starting to sound bad. But seriously, I'm the one who does all the cleaning so it's not like I'm making someone else do all this work for me, I'm just working myself hard!

Anyway, when I had Elijah people always told me (messy people, yo!) that I would start to let things go once I had kids. I would get used to the mess, the toys and the clutter. Um no. I got worse! Though after having Sophia I've learned to prioritize better. Stick to my cleaning schedule instead of trying to everything on one day. Usually I end up trying to do everything on Monday, because it's the first weekday, and Friday, because I know I won't want to clean on the weekend.

Also, I'm trying hard to accept the fact that everything I do won't always be perfect. Goodness knows I've burned more meals since having two kids than I ever did before.

I really wanted to make Sophia cupcakes for her birthday. Not just any cupcakes, pretty cupcakes. The only problem was that I really suck at cake decorating, this is why Matthew always does the cakes around here. But I made them anyway. I had decided to do pink and green icing to match her party decor. When I added the pink coloring to the icing I put too much. I was going for a nice medium/light pink, and ended up with eyeball searing hot pink. I didn't have any extra white to add to it to tone it down, so I just shrugged it off and kept going. Then I painstakingly iced the cupcakes in pretty swirly patterns. Matthew even caught my concentration on camera...




When I finished I was pretty satisfied. No, they weren't perfect, but they were pretty. I set them all up on the cupcake stand I had got just for the party, picking out the thirteen prettiest and putting the best one on top for Sophia. After calling Matthew to come and admire them, and snapping a few pictures...



My perfectionism kicked in when I noticed one of the tiers on the cupcake stand was slightly crooked. So I reached over to try and bend it back just a little bit, hoping to straighten it out...and knocked the whole darn thing over. Yeah, I didn't get a picture of that. I was too busy trying to salvage the ones that weren't turned completely upside down. As it turned out, only four were completely ruined, most of their icing ended up on the table. The rest still looked okay. Normally I would have completely freaked out. If any occasion calls for complete perfection in everything, it's your baby girl's first birthday! But, I managed to not completely panic. I was able to replace all the smashed ones with the ones that had been left out the first time. They weren't as pretty as the originals, but they would do. And, the prettiest one that I saved for Sophia? It somehow survived a fall from the top and was still the prettiest.

Baby steps right?