Monday, November 22, 2010

Guess what I did today? (The answer may surprise you!)

Have you guessed yet? I'll give you a hint... By 3pm I was ready for a nap, and by 8pm I was ready to crash!

Ok, time's up. Today I did.... nothing!

Confused? Me too! Let's see... It started at 7am when Chase woke up. Now it's 8:30pm, both kids are asleep, and I'm exhausted! But I'm looking back on the day and finding it pretty hard to come up with something that I actually did today. And I can't for the life of me figure out why I'm so exhausted from doing nothing!

Sometime during the day I managed to get myself and both boys dressed. I prepared some kind of breakfast and lunch for the boys (and since it was a "good" day I even managed to find time for me to eat, even if it was just a few handfuls of food randomly grabbed and thrown in my mouth on the way from getting Alec dressed to picking up the toys that Chase just threw out of his reach). I've lost count of how many diapers I changed. I got Chase down for three 30-minute naps, during which I threw a few dishes into the dishwasher and colored Buzz Lightyear with Alec. And ok, I'll admit that I did check my email and facebook pages a few times to catch any urgent messages, like whose cat just learned how to put down a toilet seat. Chad cooked a yummy dinner, which we chaotically enjoyed as a family. And I wrapped up the day by playing with the boys, tag-teaming their baths with Chad, reading books with them and then finally saying good night and stepping out of Alec's room feeling like I've just run the New York marathon.

So no, I technically didn't do "nothing" today. But really what did I do? The last time I checked, it doesn't take 13 hours to change diapers, cook, eat and read. But somehow I managed to do just that. And today was not an exception to our typical days at home. Most days I find myself exhausted at the end of the day, only to look back and see how unproductive I was.

It also seems like I spend all day with the boys, but at the end of the day I feel like I didn't spend enough time with them. I feel like I neglected them and should have done more with them. I look at other moms who are at home with their kids who manage to maintain an immaculate house, cook three perfectly balanced meals a day (plus a batch of delicious organic carrot-banana muffins for their kids' school), create an Eiffel Tower out of Popsicle sticks, organize the neighborhood clothing drive, head to the local park with the kids for an hour, and make a trip to the gym after the kids are in bed. And that's all in one day! I'm starting to think that I've been having black-outs several times a day, which prevent me from doing anything productive. That must be it.

Oh, and then there's the time that disappears when we're getting ready to go somewhere. Before having children, I was the kind of person who was early to everything. I mean I'd get to wherever I was going so embarrassingly early that I'd hang out in the car or drive around the block a few times. Now I'm lucky if I can even be fashionably late. But here's the thing... I don't know why I'm late. Soon after Alec was born I realized that I needed to allow myself an extra 15 minutes to get everything together before heading out the door. Now, with two children, I try to allow at least that much extra time. But I must have another one of my black-outs during this time because it never fails that we're still running late. For example, Alec needs to be to school at 9:15 in the morning. With no traffic, we can get to his school in 15 minutes, plus the five minutes it takes to get the kids out of the car and into the school. So I try to be on our way out the door at 8:45 to allow for traffic, spilled sippy cups, diaper explosions, wardrobe malfunctions or meteors. But it never fails that I look at the clock in our van as I'm pulling out the driveway and it always says 8:57. Where did those 12 minutes go? I know it doesn't take 12 minutes to click an infant carrier into its base. Must have been another mom black-out.

I'm not sure how long these mom black-outs will go on, but for now I'm just trying to accept that they are a part of my life. I guess this is why people say that kids grow up so quickly. So in my limited time in between black-outs, I'll just try to spend as much time as I can enjoying Alec and Chase without rushing around. And at the end of the day, as I'm dragging my exhausted self up to bed with the dishes still in the sink, I can only hope that my kids know how much I love them, even if I can't be the mom making Popsicle sculptures with them.


My next Mommy's Always Write topic: Giving thanks the kids way

1 comment:

  1. great post kim. i especially agree with the part about being fashionably late...i lose those 15 minutes every time we go somewhere!

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