Progress, not perfection

I hate that there has been a lack of posting on the J train. Not because I am a slave to the blog, but because a lot has been going on. And the amount of blogging has not met my personally imposed standards. But I have been trying to temper the perfectionist in myself and celebrate any forward progress that goes on around here.

My baby has emerged into a full blown toddler, complete with getting super dirty, finding all inappropriate objects and eating them, climbing on top of everything, and looking extremely cute (most of the time in her diaper) while doing all of the above. It is sad and beautiful all at the same time.

We had the 100th day of home school a couple of weeks ago, and it was complete with counting 100 things, eating 100 things, writing about 100, and the culmination (and probably the only thing they will remember) of burning 100 matches. If you would like to keep the attention of your home school student, just burn something.



The photographer and perfectionist in me really wants to apologize for these flashy, non artsy, quick snap shots but I just didn't have time for much else. We're going for progress here, not perfection. (And the above photo isn't even turned correctly! It says, "I wish I had 100 iPads, but I'm glad I don't have 100 poop.")

(I just turned around to see what Juliet was doing. She is standing on top of a chair playing with a knife.)

This past week was Spring Break and my older girls went with my parents to their house for a few days so I could work with the boys on their bedroom. We have not done anything in there since we moved in last summer and I have been wanting to transform it into something...anything, besides what it was, which was plain and boring and ugly.


So I ignored all housework and laundry for about 48 hours and we painted and shopped and hung posters and emerged much better than we started. There is still more to be done but there has been progress.



The kids and I left to go get the girls and spend a few days with my parents and while we were gone one more poster came in the mail and Jimmy hung it up, along with the mirrors. More progress. Not perfection, but progress.


(Speaking of progress, Juliet is now sitting on the kitchen table flipping through a magazine.)


If you can't tell, the boys decided on a Beatles theme to their room. The walls are gray, but while I was painting them they looked blue and even purple at times but they turned out fine. Sometimes you stick with your color because you believe in it. Sometimes you stick with it because you can't imagine having to take it back and start over. It was a little of both. Jackson bought a disco light with his own money. The black squares are chalkboard paint.


(Juliet has now gotten off the table, down onto the chair, off the chair, pushed the chair in and crawled into the living room. That's actually pretty close to perfection.)

Since returning from my parents and stopping on the boys room for now, I have been working hard to put everything away and clean a little and slay the laundry monster so I can have a fresh start to the remainder of the home school year. I always want to quit after Spring Break but we will press through it and look forward to summer break. I'm going to make all kinds of forward progress and tell perfection it can take a flying leap into a mound of laundry or a stack of school work.