Get Real

Childhood Dreams
When I was a child, I often dreamed about what my life would be like when I grew up. Sometime during the later grade-school years, I created my “life plan.” This plan detailed how many children I would have, what their names would be, when they were going to be born, where we would live, how much money we would have, etc. I planned to have twelve children, and name them all after characters in my favorite books, which at the time included The Boxcar Children.

We were going to live on a farm where we could own a few horses, breed and raise Rottweilers, and go star-gazing every night. I had detailed floor plans of our house and barns and even had a list of furniture I was going to purchase to fill my children’s rooms (including cool plastic toddler beds, bookcases, toy-boxes, and child-size tables & chairs).

Then I grew up.

I am currently expecting our seventh child, so I’m more than halfway to twelve… but almost nothing else from that plan has happened or will ever happen. I got married earlier than I had anticipated (20 instead of 23), I obviously had no choice in the gender of my children, and none of them are named after fictional characters from children’s literature. (One of the twins has Henry as a middle name, but he is named after a great-grandparent, not after Henry in The Boxcar Children.) I recognize now that animals are a LOT of work. While I enjoy riding horses when I get the chance, I have no desire to own one or care for it. I raise children instead of dogs, and frankly I’ve discovered that I’m not really a pet person. I would still love to go star-gazing more often, but I’m not sure that the farm life is for me. I love the suburbs and our trick-or-treating friendly neighborhood. The floor plans I drew as a child would likely not pass any building codes and had no interesting (and very little functional) architecture. My taste in furniture and desire for race-car and princess toddler beds has definitely changed as well.

Adult Aspirations
When I was in college, I majored in Marriage, Family, and Human Development. I took courses on infant, social, cognitive, and language development, as well as parenting, marriage enhancement, and family finance. For several of these courses, I compiled binders full of parenting articles and created plans for how I would raise my children—what I would teach them, how I would train them, and how I would make them behave.

Walking at graduation, 8 months pregnant with my first.

Then I became a mother.

My first born, K, 30 May 2005

Reality is so different than fantasy, isn’t it?

Adjusting to Reality
These fantasies never came true, and that’s okay. Creating fantasies and dreams helps us to find something to work towards. 

"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars." - Les Brown

However, if we are forever dreaming and planning our fantasies, we can miss out on beautiful things from the present. There is a wonderful post at ZenHabits about Savoring Life. It can be difficult to savor life when we are constantly reminded of all the things we are not doing that we believe we should be. When our lives are cluttered with unfinished projects (or un-started ones), and items that our "fantasy self" would use... but our "reality self" just won't, we cause ourselves unnecessary stress.

If you truly want to become a master baker... start learning now. Make time for it. Put other things away and purge in other areas so that you can be free to bake as often as you can. Personally, my fantasy self would make homemade bread several times a week... my reality self is not good at baking, doesn't enjoy it at all, and would rather sew a quilt... so I guess I can pass on my pastry flour to someone who would enjoy it. :) Maybe then I can quit fantasizing about homemade bread, and enjoy my quilting with less guilt about not being the perfect homesteading wife. :)

Quilt squares that ended up in the quilts on my girls' beds.

My mother also sews, and when my siblings and I were growing up, she made our Halloween costumes most years. She always made high-quality garments and the costumes are still in great condition 20+ years later. I always thought that was awesome, and wanted to do the same for my children. One year, when I had
three children, I made themed costumes for my children, my husband and myself.

Pooh and Tigger - 2008

They turned out perfect, we got a lot of compliments on them that year, and we have used at least one of those costumes every year since.

Halloween 2009 with Piglet, Kanga, Thing 1, Tigger, a princess, Thing 2, and Eeyore

But, it was a lot of work, and I didn't really enjoy the process, and I've never done it since. In fact, now that we live close to my parents, my kids choose their Halloween costumes from Grandma's collection.

Halloween 2012 with a butterfly, Piglet, a cowgirl, a pirate, Tigger, and a princess.

Even if we didn't have access to Grandma's costumes, at this stage, I would rather buy costumes instead of sewing them myself.

Move On
My fantasy self from my childhood has changed. Even my fantasy self from 3 years ago has changed. And that's okay. It's time to grow up, move on, work on current goals and dreams, and let the old ones go... along with the clutter that goes with them.