"Practically Perfect in Every way"

Lately, Mary Poppins has been floating, umbrella in hand, into my head.   I can still remember as a child reading the book and watching the Disney movie over and over again.  It was funny, thrilling, heart-warming, and inspiring.  One of my favorite parts of the film "Mary Poppins" is when Mary stretches out the tape measure to find herself "Practically Perfect in Every way".  Indeed she was, always perfect with a beautiful voice, perfectly done hair, a mysterious white apron that never got dirty, calm tone, the right answer and the well timed lesson for children and adults alike.  For goodness sake, she even made popping in and out of a chimney look effortless.  While it was one of my favorite movie moments it was also one of the most terrifying to me.  Even at a very tender age, I can remember feeling a tinge of fear thinking about where I might measure up.

A few nights ago I had one of those realizations that left me certain the tape measure would find me far short of perfect! While everyone else in my house was fast asleep, I was reading through my Montessori Home School Resource Guide and I had a horrifying realization.  My bins are all wrong!  The activity bins.  The way I chose to organize the bins just doesn't fit very well with the approach.  So in the middle of the night, I began to plot how to correct my misstep.  All I needed was a hammer, some nails, and a few more hours in the night to get things back in shape before the morning.  The morning light found me half finished with my activity center redesign.  I was able to get things squared away by the end of breakfast.  Now, we just had a few errands to run and then we would head home for our Sprout School activity time, lunch and nap.  

I loaded one sleepy sprout, one laughing sprout, and one crying sprout into the car to knock out our morning errands.  The line at the bank was phenomenally long.  Happily, the littles were awesome and we had fun counting the people and finding all the colors and words we knew hanging around the room.  Then a "quick" trip to the farmers market turned into a long trip to the farmers market.  We had a wonderful conversation with an organic grower in our area .. but while I was speaking with her my precious littles started scarfing her blueberries.  I mean an OBSCENE number of blueberries mushed on hands and faces.  My son looked up at her and said Yummy, DELICIOUS!  I was embarrassed, apologized and of coarse offered to pay for the extra items eaten or damaged.  She laughed and said if she could have a picture of their blueberry filled faces for her table she would call it even. SOLD!  By the time we arrived home we were already @ lunchtime.  So sadly Sprout School and my "perfectly" redesigned bins would have to wait until after nap.  We had a great lunch, fun conversation, good food, but I was feeling like I totally failed and my head was reeling with the list of to dos during nap time: put away the pile of laundry in the family room, clean the dishes from lunch, clean the bathroom and so on. 

Then it happened, as I tucked my son into bed for nap time he grabbed my neck, then looked deeply into my eyes and said "Great Work, Mom!"  I almost cried.  Not because he had no idea what he had missed this morning ... but because I had almost missed how Great this morning really was.  Today, I learned that, that tape measure will most likely never find me "Practically Perfect in every way" but it has found me "Imperfect but blessed in every way" ... and I can honestly say, I'm good with that!  :) 

P.S. Sprout School time did eventually happen ... but.... I still haven't gotten to the laundry.  Sorry, Mary! :)