Something’s been bothering me lately. Looking back over the past month’s posts on this blog, here’s what I see: an essay about how I stay sane because all my children still nap; a Valentine’s day guest post in which my husband reveals his secret for recapturing married bliss; and a smattering of more spiritual, serious, almost advice-y pieces.

It all comes across as a little too good to be true.

Someone reading this blog over the past month might get the impression that I Have It All Together. That I Have It All Figured Out. That I sit here in my perfect little life in Vermont, enjoying my perfect marriage, dispensing advice while my perfect children nap.

This bothers me, because of course it’s NOT true. It bothers me because, once we get other people believing that we have it all together, 1) we damage our relationships with those people (Who’s going to be honest about the muck in their own lives with someone who’s perfect? Too embarrassing.), and 2) we run the risk of believing our own hype. I’ve lived long enough to know that once WE — by which I mean the average person — start believing that we have it all together, that we’re pretty dang okay, then we’re in BIIIIIG trouble. Life has a way of keeping us in check, keeping our egos in balance, smacking us down to size just when we think we’re at the top of our game.

And it bothers me because it’s completely NOT the point of this blog. Inasmuch as this blog has a point, it’s that somewhere around December 2011, I decided that I was bored with posting happy pictures about superficial events in our family’s life. So I slowly started experimenting with what would happen if I told the truth, if I wrote honestly about what I was thinking and feeling and experiencing at any given moment.

Therefore, in an effort to avoid coming across as Together and thus risking the wrath of the universe, I’m going to lay out some total honesty right now.

1. My Marriage is NOT Perfect. I deeply love and respect Erick, and I’m thankful every day that he’s my partner in this crazy life. We get along pretty well. But we’re real people with real, annoying quirks. As Erick was working on his Valentine’s Day blog post, he talked through some of his ideas with me. One night, he pulled out this line: “One of the biggest ways I show you ‘costly love’ is by listening to you at the end of the day.”

I almost fell off the couch laughing. Because, at that point, I had just spent at least 20 minutes listening to Erick talk about HIS day. He’d been home for three hours; had he asked once about my day? No, he had not.

Erick hit it out of the park this Valentine’s Day, which is usually a pretty minor holiday in our household. In addition to the blog post, he came home with flowers and candy, and surprised me by getting a sitter and taking me out to a nice dinner. All of which, he said, was “to build up credit for the next time I screw up your birthday.”

I’m hardly at my most romantic these days, either. I’m six months pregnant, and I  feel about twelve months pregnant. I’m trying to get through this pregnancy without buying any maternity clothes (I gave away all my old ones back in California, because, remember, we were done having children?), which means that I cycle through the same four outfits each week.  So, when Erick gets home, he finds a massive wife in the same old yoga pants and oversized sweater, who’s been chasing after three kids and a puppy all day long, and who’s prepared a meal based on the simplest thing that the kids might actually (maybe, just possibly) eat — which means crockpot, mac & cheese, or nachos.

It may be a comedy, but trust me, it ain’t a romantic one.

2. My Kids Are NOT Perfect. My kids are normal, average kids, which means that they’re people-in-training. I’m not going to list all of their individual issues — that’s just not fair to them — but let me assure you that they’re a long way from  being presentable to polite society, let alone perfect. About every fourth day, I’m flooded with love and awe and gratitude over these remarkable little creatures who’ve graced our lives. On the days in between, I mostly feel like jabbing an ice pick into my temple.

They squabble with each other all day long. The oldest two want meals made to order, and Georgia demands whatever she sees anybody else having — which sometimes means she wants four meals at once. They aren’t always nice to their friends. They often have to be asked ten times to do something. And, while they really are pretty good nappers, bedtime feels like psychological torture: an hour-long party of screams and thumps, punctuated by at least three call-backs per night. Also, these days, they want to listen to the Annie soundtrack around the clock.

3. I Am NOT Perfect. Want to know what I said to Erick this month? I said, “How many kids do I have to have before people stop asking me to do things?!?” How’s that for kindness and love and repentance and all the other nice things that I write about and try SO HARD to live out?

What I said was awful, with its implication that I really don’t care about others — that my motivation for having kids, in fact, is mostly to put a buffer between myself and the needs of the world — and it’s not even accurate. In many ways, my life now is simpler than it’s ever been: I’m not working outside the home, life in Vermont is slower and less stressful than anywhere else we’ve lived, and people aren’t really asking me to do much at all right now. (Even if they were, we live in a small town, so there are fewer people to do the asking).

What that comment really reveals is my own guilt. People aren’t asking me to do too much; I’m asking too much of myself, and then falling short. I do believe in living out love and kindness, but sometimes I get my motivations and self-expectations all mixed up. I start comparing myself to others, or I start feeling overwhelmed by the needs all around me, and I wonder why I don’t deliver as many meals to the ill or infirm as other people, why I accomplish so much less than mothers who work two jobs, why I don’t feel able to reciprocate the countless acts of kindness that others lavish on our family.

I am selfish, and lazy, and it’s hardest for me to love well the people who are closest to me — the people in my very family.

Remember how Erick surprised me with a babysitter and a dinner out on Valentine’s Day this year? Want to know my reaction when he came home from work and announced that we were going to a nice restaurant in 45 minutes? I thought: You mean I don’t get to have a relaxed pizza dinner with the girls, take a shower, and eat popcorn on the couch in my pajamas? I have to make myself presentable, when the only clean clothes I have are the yoga pants I’m wearing? I have to make this disastrous house and these messy kids presentable for a sitter? 

So, no, I Do Not Have It All Together. I am imperfect, a poor source to be dispensing any sort of advice. But in the course of a life spent dealing with my own imperfections and the imperfections of those around me, I have learned a couple things.

I’ve learned that when someone close to me — husband, child, family member, friend — asks me to do something reasonable that gives me a chance to show love, I should always say “Yes,” no matter how I really feel. So I try to always say “Yes” to a husband who wants to take me out, to a daughter who asks to be excused from nap to read together, to a friend who needs me to take her children. When I say “Yes” against my feelings, the feelings will eventually follow.

And I’ve learned that the only way to avoid guilt over my own imperfections and anger over the imperfections of others is to embrace grace. Grace — a word overused so that its meaning gets lost — means “unmerited favor.” I am a bad wife, a bad mother, a bad friend, a bad daughter, and most days I don’t deserve the love of those close to me. But they — husband, children, friends, family — somehow love me anyway. And when they don’t love me perfectly, the way I want — because they, too, are imperfect — that’s when I need to remember that I believe in a God who has the grace thing perfectly covered.

And that’s my Awful Truth.

FACT: I am an only child.

FACT: I am about to be the mother of four children.

The other day, a friend asked me, “How did you, an only child, end up with FOUR children?” And the answer is: I have no idea. When Erick and I were having all those premarital, heart-to-heart discussions about our future, the subject of kids did come up. As I recall, we both sort of shrugged and said, “Yeah, we probably want kids someday — not right now. Probably more than one.”

Once we started having children, the only thing that was important to me was the “more than one.” I had a happy childhood, but I spent a lot of time with adults. I always wanted a sibling. So we gave Fiona a sibling (with a vengeance). Then, after Campbell was born, I felt like we weren’t quite done. Our days in California were numbered, and we wanted the same doctors we’d had for our first two children, so we went for a third without giving it too much thought.

And our fourth, as regular readers know, was a total surprise.

As an only child attempting to raise three (going on four) children, I often feel like I’m missing the playbook.

But the more I talk with other mothers, the more I realize: THERE IS NO PLAYBOOK. It doesn’t matter whether you had no siblings or 44; we’re all running around out on the field with no idea what we’re doing. Do we catch, throw, or pass? What game are we even playing?

That said, there are daily occurrences in our house that I never experienced as an only child: sibling fights, simultaneous calls for attention, vastly divergent food preferences, and — above all — three distinct personalities.

The other day, out of nowhere, Fiona said, “Mommy, me and my sisters are really aliens from another planet. We knew each other before we were born, and then we decided to become babies in your tummy.” (She assured me that they’re planning to stick around for the long haul, though they might go back to their home planet when they’re grown up, “just to visit.”)

This was one of the most helpful things anyone’s ever said to me. It made perfect sense, and it explained a lot; until Fiona laid it all out for me, I had NO IDEA where my children came from.

Oh sure, our children have certain traits that Erick and I recognize as coming from us, or from our parents. (Anxiety and drama, for example, and a peculiar inclination to listen to the same song over and over and OVER). But for the most part, each one of my children is — and always has been — stubbornly, beautifully HERSELF. Where did she get that idea? Who taught her to say that?

Unfortunately, each child’s self is also completely unique from that of her siblings (aside from the shared desire to play with the exact same toys at the exact same moment). And therein lies the rub of parenting multiple children: these three unique individuals are stuck with two parents who are also stubbornly themselves. Erick and I came to parenthood with our own styles, ways of giving love that are natural to us. But having a child is not like buying a pair of shoes; you don’t get to choose what fits you. One child only feels loved through constant affirmation and attention, and another child wants to be left alone, and the third child needs to be prevented from climbing into the medicine cabinet — all at the same time. Needless to say, it doesn’t always work; I can’t simultaneously give undivided attention, grant freedom, and vigilantly tail a determined toddler, though God knows I try!  Each of our children needs a personalized parent.

And that’s just what you get as an only child: two parents who can focus entirely on YOU. It’s a blessing and a curse, of course. But I will say this: it’s simpler, and it’s definitely quieter. (Sometimes, when all three girls are clamoring to be heard at the top of their lungs, Erick and I helplessly stare at each other across the dinner table and shake our heads).

Where am I going with this? Well, I’m NOT going to make a judgement about whether it’s better to be an only child or have siblings, or whether it’s better to parent one child or more than one. As an only child, I learned to be happy spending lots of time alone, and I had enriching experiences that wouldn’t have been possible had my parents had multiple children. On the other hand, my daughters have best friends right in their own house, and they’re learning interpersonal skills much earlier than I did. Parenting multiple children often feels like trying to play a video game that’s been sped up, but parenting only one child seems like it might be a lot of pressure.

In the end, you get the childhood you get, and you handle it accordingly. Then you grow up and get the children you get, and you handle that accordingly, too. We all seem to be slightly mismatched, but I’m holding out hope that we’re mismatched for a purpose. To some degree you can plan and “choose” what your family will look like, but to an even larger degree things happen the way they will. One morning you wake up and have four children, and planning had very little to do with it.

Unless you’re an alien from another planet; then you get to choose your host family, or so I’m told.