Do you ever feel like you spend every day, week after week, month after month, just trying to get on top of it all? Cuz I feel like that is the only message I get out of each and every Sunday meeting: I have REALLY got to get a grip and get ON TOP of my LIFE!!!! Oh, dear -- I sound like my mother!But seriously, folks -- I'm having a hard time getting on top of everything.
It's like every night is such a combination wrestling match/marathon that when I get the kids to bed AT LAST, I have to just sit for at least an hour to catch my breath! And then I wait up for Dave to get home so that we can see each other, read our scriptures, and pray together and have such a hard time sleeping at night when I finally GET to sleep that the morning starts on a sprint . . . . every morning . . . and I am doing good to remember to get food ont their trays or throw a morning/breakfast prayer into the mix with my starving little monkeys before they start screaming their heads off and/or developing lasting feelings of "mommy neglect."
And don't even get me started on discipline, because I know there are people out there who have babies that don't throw their food on the floor to either get attention or to signal that they don't LIKE it (when spitting it acoss the tray/room doesn't get the message out there loud and clear); and I know there are 16-month-olds that kneel and fold their arms and sit quietly for EVERY single prayer and whose parents have nipped any objections to do so in the bud the first time they hit. But me? Well - I'm just glad if I remember to say a morning/meal-time prayer or to feel the spirit at night when we pray over their cries and squirms and tired eyes. For some reason, though, they usually stay quiet during our nightly primary song -- or just sing along. Is there something wrong with this picture?
And the laundry? It seems that once every two months I get on top of ALL of the laundry in the house -- it is all in its place in drawers, on hangers, in storage bins and boxes, etc. And I am DETERMINED to stay on top of it and make sure I get one load done every day (or two or three days as demand warrants) and don't have HUGE, DAUNTING piles sitting in various corners of my house just waiting for my attention when I finally get around to them (and being mixed with dirty clothes that got thrown here or there before that happens -- leaving me wondering what is clean and what is dirty and basically feeling like I am starting ALL OVER AGAIN). Did I mention Isaac's favorite game is "throw the laundry"? Cuz he LOVES to throw all the laundry over his head into a nice, neat pile behind him and then turn around and throw it all back into another neat pile behind him and then turn around and throw it back . . . . and Abby is quickly catching on, though she prefers endless rounds of peek-a-boo to the make-a-new-pile version of the game. Yes, it is REALLY cute, until it is the FOLDED laundry they get to throwing!
Basically, I know I just need to get a grip. I know it should be so easy to go bed at 9:00 at night, laundry and dishes done, toys picked up, and the house in order to start the next day. I know it should be so easy to wake up at 5:00 in the morning, go running, come home, shower, read my scriptures, write in my journal, check on my calling, make breakfast for Dave, get him off to school, check my e-mail, write in my journal, and make breakfast for the babies so that I get them up with a morning prayer before they even get out of their beds and then have breakfast ready so that they can eat and play until they go down for that perfect morning nap that lasts an hour and a half so that I can work on making their quilts or other Christmas presents/projects while they sleep and get lunch ready so that they can eat when they wake up and we can go on an afternoon walk and play at the park and then go home and let them take another one and a half-hour nap while I work on other home projects I'm trying to get done (or write in their journals so they have an account of what they were like as kids), and then get dinner started so that they can wake up and play for a while and we can hopefully get Daddy home for dinner and sit and eat together as an ENTIRE family and play together and read scriptures together and pray together and get babies in bed together and get Daddy back to doing homework while I clean the kitchen, finish that one load of laundry, and get ready for the next day before reading our scriptures and praying together and going to bed promptly by 9:00 at night to start all over again.
It should be so easy.
7 comments:
Seriously. Seriously. I think every mother who doesn't go postal should win the Nobel Peace Prize (and those who do go postal should get our sympathy for SURE). I do have one shred of advice that may or may not be helpful. When we (FINALLY) got our own washer/dryer just a few months ago, I figured doing one load of laundry every day was the way to go -- then I never had that much to do and I could always cycle in the things that needed to be washed when they needed to be washed. Instead I found it meant I had laundry to do EVERY DAY, and that just didn't work out for me. So now I do all the laundry twice a week. Every Monday and Thursday I was anything and everything that's in the dirty clothes hamper. Usually it's three loads (I do all the sheets with Monday's wash and all the towels with Thursdays) but it varies. If I have time to sort, fold and put away during the day, great. But normally I just throw it on my bed throughout the day and then fold it all at night. And you know what? I love it. Twice a week, ALL of my clothes are clean, rather than every day SOME of my clothes are clean.
Might now work for you, but that tiny shift makes me happy ... at least twice a week.
**might NOT, not might NOW**
Yes, it SHOULD be easy, but IT'S NOT! Hang in there, there isn't anything you have mentioned that mothers everywhere tell themselves every day...do what you can, and don't sweat the 'small' stuff...scriptures and prayer are obviously more important than laundry and dishes, and at the end of the day sometimes you just take your laundry off of your bed and put it in a basket, only to dump it back on your bed the next morning in hopes that it will actucally get folded that day...and that's OK.--if it's on your bed, at least the kids can't get to it :)
To add to Monique's comment -- which I completely agree with, it also works very nicely if you simply dress yourself and your child/children out of the clean laundry in the basket -- it's clean already, so if you just put it on, you don't have to fold it :). I'm spoiled because Matt generally takes care of the laundry on weekends, all I have to do is actually put it away; but I still often find the leaving it stacked in a pile and just picking my clothes from the pile method to actually putting it away.
Oh, you had BETTER be saying "so easy" with the most dripping sarcasm imaginable! We have a motto in this house: "It is never DONE." Seriously, it's quite a relief to say it sometimes. It takes away all the guilt. If it doesn't, that means we need to go to bed NOW, because we're too tired to be rational.
You know what's so easy? Putting ourselves on unnecessary guilt trips. And you know who drives that guilt trip bus? Yeah, let's have his company as little as possible.
Since Ben is gone I have been thinking about single moms and I don't know how they do it- seriously. I love my little man, but all day every day gets exhausting. I guess most single moms work so they get a break during part of the day, but who says stay at home moms don't work? I know I'm work my tail off all day only to have a half put together house and I don't get "paid" to do it. You are a hard worker and your life and your childrens' lives will be blessed for it. It is so hard not to have the satisfaction of a job finished- like an empty laundry hamper. But I think with children our job will never be finished. We might as well try to enjoy the "help" we get with the laundry along the way. It's so reassuring to know I'm not alone!
I frequently tell myself that with just Darren and I, I should be able to have the house perfectly clean and homemade dinner nightly right? Wrong, life happens. I just have to remind myself that we need to provide a home where the spirit can dwell which doesn't require the shelves to be dust free or the toilet scrubbed all the time. And if we eat pizza now and then, oh well.
I only heard part of the RS general broadcast but there was a talk, I think from the president that that somethings are best left undone. Time and circumstance require it occasionally, and sometimes it's just okay. So here's to leaving things undone and enjoying life with my husband.
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