Expectations

I'm trying to let go of them.

It's hard.

BUT, I've finally figured something out. Our blue bathroom here helped me do it.

When I first painted our bathroom blue in this house I was upset with the result. It was not the blue I had pictured in my head. It was way brighter, way more "in your face" than I had wanted. I had envisioned a nice, calm, "beachy" blue. Instead I got a bright, happy, almost turquoise blue.

I really wanted to change it but I had painted during Austin's naptimes on the last week of school and school was ending, so I was running out of kid-free blocks of time.

Plus, the kids liked it.

So I kept it "just for now".

Well now, I've realized that I will really miss that bright blue bathroom. Someone told me it looks like a spa. Honestly, it's the closest that I think I'll ever get to a real spa, unless I win a contest, but I can kind of see what they mean. It's kind of soothing, in a bright, cheery sort of way.

Once I released the expectation of what I thought I wanted and accepted what I ended up with, I realized that I liked it.

Same with our new house. The paint colors that I used that I already had here, I am happy with, because they turned out just as I had expected. Some of the others are good and I'm happy with them, but there are a couple that I am not thrilled about. They are just so not what I had expected.

But really, thinking it through rationally, I think it's the same thing. If I can just let go of what I thought I wanted, or what I had pictured, they might turn out to be good colors. They are just darker or brighter than I had expected.

It's hard to let go of expectations, especially for a control freak like me.



I think it's the same with my kids and their personalities.

Once I can let go of the expectations I have for them, and how I think they should turn out (or even the fact that I expect them to turn out somewhat the same as each other), maybe then I can just let them turn into who they really are and accept it and figure out that maybe I really do like these unique little individuals and their different personalities, crazy quirks and all. They just may not be the sweet, docile little children I had pictured in my head before I had children.


Wow, from paint to children. Maybe all the paint fumes have finally gone to my head. That was deep, even for me, don't you think?