Maybe Father does know best....

I went grocery shopping last night and came home to a quiet house, my husband had put the kids to bed, including the baby.

It was beautiful.

But when they awoke this morning, bushy tailed and bright eyed, I realized what my husband's definition of pajamas were: my son came down in the clothes he'd wore all day yesterday and my daughter came down in a sundress and pajama bottoms.

My husband is an amazing father but our parenting styles differ slightly.

Where I always need to give them a bath and have them put on PJ's, he doesn't mind if they wear the clothes they had on all day to bed.

Where I try and clean up messes as they occur, he'd rather them sit until the end of the day.

And where I try to stick to a strict schedule preventing best I can any issues and conflicts, he'd rather just go with the flow, tackling issue as they arise.

Granted, I have relaxed a lot since having our third baby, because some things just aren't worth the time and frustration, such as my daughter tri-weekly request for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for breakfast, my son's desire to bring his favorite trains to bed, and a big one, i turned our dining room into a play room (I know... more information on that later).

Although I know that my kids thrive off predictability, maybe we could all benefit and learn a lot if I just chill a bit. It's not that I'm an uptight parent by any means, but I'd rather have a set schedule that we operate on, a clean house and ideally a limited amount of chaos, but in reality, I know that all these aren't totally possible, especially the chaos with the 3 kids, and the clean house, which I am learning more to accept.

So, at breakfast this morning when my son veered from his usual bowl of Life cereal for some Breyers Lightning McQueen yogurt and requested he have his favorite cereal for dinner, I said, no.

Then I looked at my husband, took a deep breath, and let go of the meat, veggie, and fruit servings I would knew they would get a dinner time, exhaled and said, "Sure why not, after all, it is Sunday".