One of the blogs I subscribe to is The Modest Mom Blog. This morning she blogged about her un-magazine life, and it so resonated with me!
Oh, you have no idea how refreshing it was to read this post today! I’m 35 weeks pregnant and really feeling the low energy, more than with my first two pregnancies. I don’t know if it’s because my iron is on the lower end of normal or if it’s because I have two kids (the second time, my first was younger than my youngest is now and was more consistent with nap times, which meant break/rest time for me); of course, not getting enough sleep for a couple of weeks hasn’t helped either. But some days I just feel so inadequate. I don’t really have a good schedule in place; and even if I did, 1) my husband can’t seem to stick to a schedule, and 2) sometimes I’m just too tired to enforce the next step in the routine that I do have in place.
Add to that the fact that my mom lives 8 hours away and my husband works an hour away (one way) and has been studying for his master’s, so he has almost no time to help me. And some days I’m just too tired to get more than the basics done–meaning I try to make sure everyone has food to eat and clean clothes to wear and dishes to eat on. I have been eyeing the living room floor, where drips of water and milk have combined with the general grit and grime that children carry around. Thankfully I don’t have carpet, but our laminate floor is super smooth and shows every tiny smudge. I try to mop once a week, but it didn’t get it last week.
My oldest, who is 5, has only the most basic concept of color coordination. Today she’s wearing a plaid uniform skirt with straps and a flowery blouse. In all fairness, the colors on the blouse do match the colors on the skirt, but plaid and print rarely go well together, and I would make her put on a white blouse if we were going somewhere. Her hair is very curly (think Shirley Temple, only about half the amount of hair), and often she does it herself. Again, unless we are going to church or shopping, I usually don’t bother to fix it. Last night I twisted it into a bun to keep it from tangling in her sleep, and nothing has been done to it since.
Then this morning while I was fixing breakfast, my good hip (pregnancy makes one of them ache and hurt anyway) started getting sharp pains in it every time I took a step. Today is cleaning day. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get breakfast done, much less clean anything, because the pains, though brief, were sharp enough to practically take my breath away with each step. Working in the kitchen was tolerable (we have an island, so I could support myself almost everywhere I went), but I couldn’t imagine how I would ever get that awful living room floor mopped–not to mention the rest of the house!
I was feeling overwhelmed until my husband stopped to pray with me on his way out the door to work. After breakfast, I called a friend of mine who I know is free most Thursdays, and she graciously agreed to come over in the afternoon and lend a hand for a while. She’ll sweep and mop and generally give me someone to talk to, which is almost always cheering to my extrovert personality. That made me feel better, and I actually got one of the bathrooms cleaned before lunch!
My daughter is preschool age, and we started out the school year working through several preschool books I picked up at the dollar store. Then I got morning sickness, and then we moved, and then we had to settle down, and, well, we have only done about half of what I intended to do this school year. She’s only 5, and I don’t plan on starting 1st grade for another two years, but it’s easy to be discouraged, because she enjoys “school” so much. But some days it just doesn’t happen.
I’m not complaining. My husband finished his finals this week, so no more late nights studying for the rest of the summer. He’s going to take paternity leave when the baby shows up, which will help a lot! My mom is going to take my daughter over to Idaho for about 3 weeks after my brother’s wedding, coming back just before the baby is due. (Let’s hope he’s not too early! I want her to be there.) This will give me a chance to work on my son’s attitude, which leaves a lot to be desired much of the time. I just need to hang in there! This too shall pass!
And now my friend just called saying that she’s on her way, so I’m going to go finish lunch and see if I can convince my daughter to eat the lunch that “has too much garlic in it”. Funny, I didn’t think it did.
