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I am a mother. If we are friends on Facebook you already know that. You see the cute pictures of my kiddos I post on a regular basis. You may even see evidence of a halfway clean house from time to time. It may look like we are having a leisurely weekend snuggled up on the couch for family movie night or sitting at the table together for a nice family meal face to face. What you don't see is the rush I was in for two hours to get that dinner on the table at a decent time. You don't see the 30 minutes of arguing my children did to pick that movie we are watching. You don't see the hour we spent working on homework after school while trying to calm a crying baby. You don't see countless hours I spend on a daily basis warming bottles, changing diapers, cleaning ears, googling every possible thing under the sun. The time I spend figuring out which bills come out of this weeks check and which will wait for the next one. You don't see all those things because I choose not to show them to you. That is the funny thing about Facebook or, as I like to call it, the "highlight reel". You see what I want you to see and, let's face it, who wants anyone to see the stress and the busy. I would much rather look like I have my life somewhat together. Keywords there being "look like".
I wholeheartedly believe if you could look inside a mothers mind you would see a clerical team, pen in hand, taking note after note and filing them away until they are needed. For instance, "I have a load of warm clothes in the dryer. I better get those folded so I don't have to restart them again. I also need to treat all the baby's clothes with shout and start those. She's running out of stuff to wear. Speaking of which, I should probably pick her up more onesies on my next trip to Wal-Mart. Speaking of Wal-Mart, while I'm there Greg and I need new socks. Ours are full of holes and driving us bananas. Speaking of bananas, we need more fruit in this house. I'm tired of the kids eating so much junk food. Speaking of junk food, I need to pick up a cake mix for the edible animal cell project Lana has due on Monday. Also, they have school pictures Wednesday. I hope I don't forget to do something decent with their hair this time. Mama's birthday is also Wednesday. I should get her a card. I can drop it off this weekend while I'm checking on her cats for her. Speaking of cats, I need to make a vet appointment to have ours spayed. Lord knows I don't have time for more kittens. Thinking about appointments reminds me that I need to double check Ella's appointment time for her 2 month check up. I wonder how much she weighs now? I can tell she is growing because her clothes are getting tighter now. Speaking of clothes, I better restart the dryer again because the wrinkles have now set in. That's three times in a row now. Maybe I'll remember next time!" Whew! That was a mind full. And just think, that was only about a minutes worth!
As exhausting as it is to be the main one in charge of remembering all the little details of everyone's day, I do enjoy it even if I'm not always good at it. I love getting up in the morning, fixing a cup of coffee, opening the blinds to let in the days light, warming the baby's bottle and waking the big kids up to get ready for school. I would miss it so much if I was not able to be here right now. I'm grateful for the work, the noise, the stress and on some days I'm even grateful for the laundry. (I said some!) That being said, mothering is hard sometimes. No one has it all together all the time. (That's what I tell myself anyway.) I use to really worry that I wasn't doing it right. I worried that I was somehow taking something away from my husband and children by not being more than I was. More organized. More fun and spontaneous. More creative with dinners. More playful with the kids. More frugal. More. More. MORE! I eventually had to stop the negative self talk and let things just be the way they were. My house is still a mess and there are still mountains of things to do everyday but I'm happier. I may be a total mess sometimes but that is human nature. I want to embrace the chaos of this life instead of spending every moment thinking of things I need to improve on. I am a mess and that is OK.
