When your best is not good enough.

Today was a day of challenges; I don’t say that word in a heavy, baggage-laden way, implying negativity. Some things were hard (not fun), but 0ther things were challenging in a good way.

Instead of going through each and every one of my hurdles,

naming the ones that I cleared and the ones that I knocked over,

I am going to tell you one story about today.

I picked my daughter up from school and we drove to my mom’s house to pick up my son, as she had been watching him for the day.

On our drive home, my daughter asked if we could go to Wendy’s for ice cream.

It is so funny, but out of all of the blog posts I have written in the past 4.5 years I can still remember this one. And yes, my daughter, son and I get Frosty ice cream treats sometimes.

But today, she had a decision to make: Play with Bubbie or go to Wendy’s. She chose playtime at Bubbie’s which lasted a good hour and a half.

On our way out the door she asked me if we could go to Wendy’s on our way home. I said that no, we could not, as we did not have time because she chose to play at Bubbie’s. This was met with great upset.

“I have an idea!” I said. “I will make you a Wendy’s Frosty at home.”

“Well what if it doesn’t taste the same?”

“I will do my best,” I replied.

“But what if I don’t like it?” she asked, in a choked up voice.

“Then that will mean that my best just wasn’t good enough.”

At home, I mixed vanilla ice cream, chocolate syrup and whole milk in my Nutribullet. Mind you, this was all going on as I was getting home for the first time since 7:45 this morning, meaning I had to bring in the mail, unpack her lunch bag, wrangle the baby, get water for the workers downstairs, let out the dog and, if I got a spare second, breathe.

So I made a homemade Frosty. It was less solid and more liquid-like than the real thing, but the taste was spot on. I gave my daughter her “Frosty” in a cup with a straw.

“No!” she refused. “I don’t want to drink it with a straw. I want to eat it like I do from Wendy’s with a spoon.”

So I dumped the contents of the cup into a bowl and added some more vanilla ice cream, mixed it up to thicken the consistency and handed it back to her. With a spoon.

She took one bite.

“Mommy? Will you be angry at me if I tell you something?”

I don’t even think I could muster up the ability to speak by that point.

“I don’t like the ice cream. I didn’t want chocolate.”

And so, my son got a special treat: a whole, delicious “Frosty” as his pre-dinner appetizer. I got frustrated.

photo(6)My daughter whimpered. She complained about being hungry and she kept saying the word “disappointed”.

And so I got up from the floor that I had been cleaning (I forgot to mention that my son+milkshake=giant mess) and said, “This is not an actual problem. There are real problems in this world. There are sad things and there are scary things and this is not something to get upset about. I have plenty of food for you to eat and we are lucky that we have so many things to choose from.”

She sulked away, up to her bedroom (oh god, I can only imagine what she will be like in 10 years) and I joined the baby at the kitchen table as we happily shared my delicious creation.

And do you know what I say to my daughter? Besides, “I tried my best.” and “I am sorry I am not perfect.” and “You are lucky that I even went through all of this trouble.”?

“I drink your milkshake.”

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