Awkward Mom vs. It-All

I can't keep up. With Super Baby, of course, but just in general. I can't keep up with all the paper that comes home from school. I can't keep up with if kale is still in. I can't keep up with which milestone I am supposed to be freaking out about for which child. I can't keep up with Halloween, Thanksgiving, or Christmas. I can't keep up with what my socially appropriate title is these days. (Is it still stay-at-home mom? Household CEO? Home parent? Is housewife still passe or are we trying to reclaim that one?) I can't keep up with developments in my past career field and wonder if I'll need to be totally retrained when I go back. If I go back. I can't keep up with politics, wars, diseases, the economy, natural disasters, or if it is supposed to rain tomorrow. I can't keep up with Game of Thrones, and I fell off the Defenders bandwagon. I can't keep up with Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. I can't keep up with dinner. I can't keep up with exercise. I can't keep up with cleaning this house. I can't keep up with dinner prayers and evening prayers and God questions and explaining communion in a way that doesn't sound vampiric. I can't keep up with taking all the pictures that need to exist to prove that childhood wasn't just Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and the occasional Lego fight around here. I can't. I just can't keep up with it all.

So here's the thing: I'm giving up on it-all.

Look, we're women (for the most part; hi Dad and the maybe 3 dudes that read this), and we are modern women, at that. We have been raised from day 1 to want it all. To need it all. It-all is what we are supposed to go after, accomplish, process, explain, document, and tie up in a pretty bow with some artful overhead shots before posting it on Pinterest. The problem is that no one ever really defined what "it all" is. Is it a Career? Children? Children and a career? Clean Children? Climbing Career? Charm? Connected? Civility? Capability? Centered-ness? Cute? Cookies? I want it to be cookies. If it's cookies, then I have crushed it-all and we can all go home.

It-all doesn't exist. Know why? Because it's ridiculous, impossible, and fairly insulting to think that there is one sanctioned path to true womanhood when there are billions of unique, gloriously human, stunning women roaming the planet. Therefore, I am done seeking the one true it-all and focusing my limited energy on my own five it-alls from here on out.

Right now my it-alls are: (1) singing Though the Mountains May Fall at the top of his lungs from a shower that is approaching its 20th minute, (2) spinning in circles in the living room with Invisible Grandpa, 2 teddy bears, a stick, and an Ewok, (3) creating art at the top of her outside-voice in the bedroom with another Ewok and a naked doll that has been colored on with a permanent marker and more than resembles a prop from some horror movie, (4) hurling his 18th truck down the stairs while laughing like a Bond villain, and (5) staring at me in a particularly disconcerting way.

You know what might help me tackle tonight's current it-all concerns? Cookies!

My It-Alls fit rather nicely on the couch, don't they? 

Cookies were most certainly involved in making that happen...