Real Life

I saw this quote on pinterest not long ago, and it really struck a cord with me.  I've actually been thinking about it a LOT since then.

If you think about this, really think about it, it is SO.  TRUE.  Even if we try not to, it's so easy to get caught up in the game of comparing yourself to others.  The catch is, though, that we aren't comparing apples to apples (not that we should be comparing at all).  

It is so easy with blogging (and with facebook, or any social media), to make my life look so much "better" and more "put together" than it really is.  Don't get me wrong - I'm really at a place right now where I am SO HAPPY with my life, but I have moments of doubt and comparison just like anyone else.  But when you're presenting yourself on social media, it is so easy to "crop" out what you don't like and only put your best foot forward.  For example, it is so easy to show you a picture like this of Cooper:

But this is what I made sure that you *didn't* see:

The fact that our bed skirt has ridden up and I haven't bothered to pull it back down.

The fact that we have junk under our bed.

That I have a shoe behind him that I didn't put back in my closet.

That you can see on the other side of the bed that there is stuff LL threw on the floor that I haven't bothered to pick up.

That the bed isn't made.

All of these things were SO.  EASY.  to make sure that you didn't see.  And while these are so minuscule in the scheme of things, I think that the theme behind them is not.  I've gotten emails from a few readers that say something along the lines of, "I love reading your blog, you seem to have it all together, etc. etc.".  And while I LOVE getting emails like that, I also feel like sometimes I'm duping you out.  This isn't always the case; sometimes we really do seem to have "picture perfect" days around here.  But a lot of the times, we don't.  

I think we can all use a reminder that we can't compare our "behind the scenes" to someone else's "high light reel".  

In the spirit of that quote, I thought I would show you a "real life night" that we had around her not long ago.  I was tempted in the beginning to do my cropping, editing, retouching, etc. as usual, but I though I would show you what often our real life looks like.  I did enhance the color in some of these pictures, but I did not other editing work to them.

After a long week of sickness, adjusting to being back at work, and LIFE, we went outside one Thursday evening after dinner to just soak up some fresh air in the fading light of an October evening.  It's finally starting to cool off in the mornings/evenings around here, so I'm starting to feel comfortable with taking Cooper out more than we have before.  After dinner, we grabbed a blanket and headed outside.

Here's my boy: tired after a long day, happy to be with us, and covered in drool and spit up.  Real life.  :)

LL was close by, talking to us, playing with Cooper's stuffed lion.  Of course, she was playing in a yard that is about 2 weeks past the point of needing to be mowed with weeds that had been pulled weeks ago but never been disposed of.  She was also surrounded with flower beds that need to be trimmed back, weeded, and mulched.  Real life.

Because of the fact that it's fall AND our grass was so long, we had to battle little grasshoppers and bugs that do NOT make for a pretty picture.  Real life.

The grass still looks bad, LL isn't smiling, her hair is crazy, and dinner is still all over her face.  Real life.

At least Uh-Oh looked presentable.  But the car wasn't pulled into the garage and out of the way because we unloaded some stuff from the back of it, put it in the garage, and haven't bothered to move it so that I can fit my car in there.  So right now one car is parked in the garage and one is in the drive way.  Real life.

It was "decade day" at school, so I still had all of my 70's make-up on, I had changed into an old t-shirt, and threw my hair up and out of my face.  Not cute.  But real life.

LL's hair was falling out of it's holder - down and wild.  Real life.

Trying to take a picture of those beautiful blue eyes that I love, but she still has some strawberry on her nose that I didn't bother to wipe off (that's what bath is for, right??).  Real life.

Cooper's first time putting his toes in the grass - even if it was overgrown and past ready to be cut.

Despite the fact that these pictures show you how disheveled our lives can be sometimes, this is also a part of our real life.  I could have fixed LL's hair before we went outside, wiped off her face, changed Cooper's clothes, changed my shirt, put my hair down, cropped out the grass and the weeds, etc.  But that's a lot of work.  And sometimes we just all need to be reminded that other people are "normal", too.