This week's lesson

This week's lesson comes to you late Thursday night, after the kids are in bed and my husband is out with his friends because I forgot about it. Last week, I instituted my own weekly round up of things I learned during the week that I would post every Thursday. Well, here I am, the second week and I forgot about it already. I remembered while it was still Thursday.

First lesson I learned this week is that if I'm going to post pictures of my kids, try not to post any that have the potential to have someone comment. The kind of comments I really want about my kids are how cute they are, not that I'm letting my son sleep on his belly.

I also learned that if you have a fund-raiser for your kids' school or daycare, it's best not to wait until the very last day to take it around to all your co-workers. When I got the order forms from Sophia and Ryan's daycare, I kind of assumed no one would buy anything. But you know what they say about assuming ... just don't. In the two weeks the order forms sat on the desk, two people ordered from it. In the last hour and half I was at work and actually asked some people about buying from the fund-raiser, three people placed orders. It was my first time. Now I know for the millions of other fundraisers I'm sure to have to do in my future.

I learned not to say no. OK, this one requires a little background because I have nothing to link back to about it. My husband and I rarely go out with our friends separately. In fact, he almost never goes out without me, while I occassionally get some girls together for dinner or lunch or whatever. He doesn't go out because whenever he wants to I tell him he shouldn't for one reason or another. I realized I was doing this when I told him this week that I might go out with some of my friends Friday night. He said he had made plans to go out Thursday night, which is now tonight. My first instinct was to tell him he shouldn't go out because it's a weeknight and we have to get up in the morning with the kids. But before I said anything, it hit me like a ton of bricks: I've been making him feel guilty about hanging out with his friends. It's not that I don't want him go out, it's that I want to go out too. But the thing is that we have kids and often times we can't go out together. So it's time I learn to compromise. If I go out with my friends, he, of course, can go out with his. But, we have to go out together every once in a while too.

I also learned that I'm not the only mom who feels overwhelmed and confused when it comes to raising children. The most important thing, I think, is that I learned to trust my own judgement and if I don't know, it's OK to admit that I don't know. This is a hard one to stick with because I think, as mothers, we are always second-guessing ourselves and making sure we are making the best possible decision and we don't always know if we did it or not. In many cases, we won't know if the decision was right until they graduate from college and leave home and start their own families. That's a long time to wait to find out if what you did was right or not.