InstaPinFace Perfect

I have an interesting relationship with social media.  I truly love having the opportunity to keep up with the lives of friends and family I no longer see on a regular basis.  I love having the chance to share pieces of our life with them as well.  I love using it to publish and share with each of you every week.  But I have to be so careful of the way it makes me feel. 

A few weeks ago, everyone back in Indiana was on Fall Break and sharing stories of their fun adventures on their week off and visiting our favorite Indiana pumpkin patch.  And as I scrolled, I found myself in tears because it reminded me of the all things I was missing so much.  I had to close my apps and walk away.  As much as I wanted to enjoy my friends’ adventures, my heart wasn’t ready to handle it. 

Other times I have to put the “perfect” in perspective.  I will admit it- I’m NOT the perfect InstaPinFace mom.  I see pictures of cute hand-made costumes, perfect birthday parties, matching family outfits, and moms who look like they just stepped out of magazines.  And I have nothing against that!  I will admit, I don’t put my messy stuff on InstaPinFace either, because I want to be a positive person, and I don’t want to create negativity and drama.  But I have to remind myself that life is not InstaPinFace perfect, and neither am I- and for me sometimes that comparison game is sometimes a tricky place to be. 

If you are an InstaPinFace #Fail Mama like me, hold tight girl, you got this.  Because this is real life.  Want to know what real life looks like?  For (a)’s birthday last winter I made and decorated a cake for him that was supposed to say “Our Buckaroo is 2.”  Instead, the icing ran and my sister took one look at the cake and informed me it looked like “Our Boy Karl”.  You didn’t see that picture on my InstaPinFace. 

Real life is the fact that I am frugal and took my kid to the local walk-in hair salon (and I use the word “salon” loosely here) because I had a coupon for a $7.99 haircut… let’s just say you get what you pay for.  He looks like he lost a fight with a set of clippers and it’s a good thing he wears his cowboy hat most of the time.  No perfect InstaPinFace #haircut pictures were taken afterwards.  Though I will admit I did take pictures of the terrible botch job it is so I could share with my mom and sister my moment of embarrassment and affirmation that we won’t be heading back to that establishment.

Nope the ear peel away is not a new trend... it is a BAD haircut!

Over the weekend we took the cowboy to the pumpkin patch.  I had been told by several people about one they recommended and so I was hopeful that it would not disappoint.  Now I should preface with the fact that in Indiana there is an AMAZING pumpkin patch close to home where we have taken (a) each fall.  I have adorable, Christmas-card-worthy pictures from him sitting in that patch.  It is a family farm that is not highly commercialized, but has tons of fun activities for kids and families.  By my standards it is epic.  When we arrived at the “patch” on Saturday it was clear we had come to a place that was a little different.  There were pop-up tent vendor booths lining the entire front entrance.  And the front yard was full of pumpkins that had already been picked.  When we finally got to the check-in counter, they confirmed my fear that there was no “you pick” patch and that many of the activities I was hoping to do as a family either did not exist or were not set up in an age appropriate way for the cowboy.  My first tears of the day started falling as I stepped away from the counter to relay this information to (A).  They did have a very nice playground, so we decided to start there.  And as I cried about all I was missing from home and how disappointed I was at the set-up (A) gently pointed out to me that (a) was having an absolute blast on the playground.  Wasn’t that what we really came for?  A fun family outing?  That is real life.

  After more than an hour of playing, we could tell (a) was starting to wind down so we suggested it was time for him to pick out his pumpkins.  Again, I got my hopes up for the perfect Christmas card picture as he chose a pumpkin.  I wanted family pictures and a picture of him sitting on one or holding one.  Instead… he was adamant that he should climb and craw across the display of pumpkins like he was a contestant on American Ninja Warrior.  He had NO interest in posing for pictures, and even if he had the vendor booths and parking lot were all going to be in the background.  No actual pumpkin patch like I wanted for my InstaPinFace pictures.  As I again fought back tears over my disappointment, a man asked if I would be willing to snap a few photos for his family.  His wife was wearing an adorable fall outfit that matched their baby daughter and they all posed perfectly as I snapped away.  Even the baby smiled and looked right at the camera.  Perfect InstaPinFace success.  As I turned back to my family, our kid was still crawling through the pumpkins making a total mess of himself and I caught a look at my shadow where I could see the intense wind of the day had me looking nothing like a perfect InstaPinFace Mama, but instead something more like a homeless woman.  Real life.

We paid for our pumpkins and loaded up the car.  I was so disappointed that the adventure had met none of my expectations.  But then a voice from the back seat began jabbering about the fun he had and the pumpkins he had picked out.  We stopped for dinner where he flirted with the waitress and ate all his food.  He even let us know when he needed to use the restroom (potty training WIN!) and informed his Daddy that “Mommy will be so proud of me!” when he went. That’s the good stuff. None of that is going to make it to my InstaPinFace… but it’s our real life.   

When I take a look around our life, I realize I can’t play the comparison game with what I see through someone else’s edited filter.  We do not have an InstaPinFace perfect life, we have a real life, and for me that suits me better.

P.S. I’m not going anywhere when it comes to social media.  You will still continue to see the silly faces and adventures of life with the cowboy.  I will continue to publish weekly and share my heart with all of you.  I will continue to only share positive things because the world has enough negativity.  But I am just learning to be more mindful of how the perfect world of InstaPinFace only exists on those apps, not in my real life.  And I am ok with that! 😉

“For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God?  Or am I trying to please man?  If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.” Galatians 1:10