Birthday cake, baby powder, and imperfection

I have two rowdy boys. When my first boy turned one I had a party, made this cake from scratch for the guests and made his smash cake so wonderfully "perfect" and decorated. I was so happy about this. Well my second boy turned one the other day. I was on a quest to make his cake so cute too. One of my best friends mentioned a cupcake cake. I was stoked to try it. First...I filled the top too full...thought to myself huh thats too full...put it in the oven. Of course it spilled over the side onto the burners and stunk and smoked her whole house up...hate that smell. Oh well we can work with that...took it out.. I was too impatient to wait for it to cool and frankly I was out of time. So I put the top of the cupcake cake on the bottom part of it and watched as after about ten mintues it fell apart....So as im watching this all go to pieces I realize I have two choices. I can either get more frustrated about the fact that its not working out "perfectly" as I want...or I can laugh.... and have fun...and try to figure out a way to make it work. So I scraped off the top and just had a round cake....again i frosted it before it was cool and it melted off the sides and melted a hole right in the middle of it... I decided it would be a molten lava cake...making it up as I went! I stopped thinking about what my "presentation" of his smash cake would look like to the rest of my husbands family for the party and focused on why I was making it in the first place. I was making it for my son, who I love more than I ever thought I could...and even though the frosting was falling off of it and I made a gigantic mess in my friends kitchen (love you thank you so much and so sorry again haha)we had so much fun and laughed really hard. It got me thinking.... how much am I missing out on life because I feel the need to be perfect? I hate being fearful of negative judgments. My not so cute cake was "imperfectly" perfect to my son....and I also entertained myself and my friend in the process. Why does the drive to be so perfect, never make a mistake, and to judge those who do, have such a strong grip on this community we are in? What happened to helping one another become their best self...what happened to being truly happy for your neighbor, friends, family who have good things happen to them or "get ahead"? Trust me I am no saint... Im not perfect in this either...but I so want to make sure Im doing better every day. I realized that i dont know everything...and thinking or acting like you do know everything (for example how to make a birthday cake haha!) does nobody any good. I realized that in this "crazy road called life" There is a lot of misunderstanding, lack of communication, unnecessary pain and a TON of forgiveness that needs to happen, and also people who can help you and you can learn from... I loved the quote "Dont judge me because I sin differently than you" from conference... what a slap in the face of pure and utter truth that is!!! I also learned that we could all use a little more trust in people...a little more understanding... a little less offense and more trying to remember when we ourselves have been in their shoes. i also learned that patience goes a long way.... My oldest son decided it would be awesome to take an entire bottle of baby powder to the floor, mirrors, and sinks...and to add water, and eh why not a little dash of baby liquid soap too....what a fun event that was to find....I looked at his little face as I gasped and said "Hunter!" I realized...wow... this little boy was having soo much fun...does it really matter theres a huge mess? But somehow I never remember to stop and take a breath like I did this time. I looked at his scared stiff little self and decided to ask him "Did you have fun?"...he looked at me weird and said "yes" I said "I bet it really was fun...Id have fun doing it too...but guess what...it made a HUGE mess and when you make a mess youve gotta clean it up right?" "ya" so obviously he doesnt know how to clean this baby powder gunk mess up ...but I taught him how and asked him how he thought we should clean it up and took the time to do it. He was a happy little boy....not only that I was changed. I realized how important it is to "take a breath" as one of my sister in laws so wisely stated. I need to take more breaths...wow ... a lot of them..every day...not only with my children, but with myself, my husband, friends, coworkers, and relatives. My way of thinking, or doing things is not the one and only right way...geesh ... its a good thing I have kids to teach me a plethora of good lessons. sigh. I feel like The outside world brings us down enough...we dont need to add to it on our own.... Maybe our positive outlook and helping people see the positive will change lives...not only that but when you focus on the negative thats all youll find...if you focus on the positive youll see more positive.....anyway...enough for today.