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Tag: motherhood

Who Needs Sleep?

One of the dangers of being the Mom of this household is that I rarely get a moment to myself.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I get about 15 minutes to myself to shower in the mornings as long as the kids don’t wake up early.  Plus, if I time it just right, I can escape to the bathroom for a minute or two at a time before the kids start banging on the door.  Other than that, I’m pretty much out of luck unless everyone (including hubby) goes to bed before me.

To combat this lack of alone time, I’ve started staying up later and later at night.  About the only time I can accomplish anything is after the kids are put to bed.  This usually doesn’t happen until around 9:00, and then I have to balance the remaining time with the hubby, household chores, meal planning, bill paying, reading, web design, blogging, photo editing, knitting, and all of the millions of other things I enjoy doing.  Oh, and don’t forget keeping up with my favorite shows!  It’s all quite exhausting just thinking about it.

Recently I’ve been working on building a new web site for the church we’ve been attending.  It has taken up pretty much every free moment I can find over the last few weeks between communicating with team members, updating information, troubleshooting, editing, and creating new content.  The only way I can feel like I’m accomplishing anything is to spend a couple of hours a night on it and it still has a long way to go to become the site I want it to be.

While I’m definitely enjoying the challenge of creating this web site, it is wearing on me quickly.   Each night seems to get later and later as I strive to get just one more little thing done.  Then, when I finally give up for the night, my head is still racing so I need a distraction before I can fall asleep.  So I go to bed, pick up my book, and read until I’m ready to fall asleep.  Before I know it, it’s 1:30 a.m. and I have yet to turn out the lights.

This would all be just fine if I could sleep in until 9:30 or 10:00 the next morning, but unfortunately, the alarm goes off at 6:30 and it’s time to start another day.  As much as I wish it was, five hours of sleep just isn’t enough.  Somehow, I need to teach myself to shut down a little earlier.  My body is going to give out sooner or later.

The good news is that tonight is my TV night.  I plan to leave the computer turned off, settle in my chair with my knitting and watch three entire hours of good shows.  With a little luck, I may even get to bed an hour or two earlier.

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Want

I need a maid, a personal chef, a cat puke cleaner-upper, a bill payer, a computer expert, a chauffeur, and an extra pair of hands.  I need a clone of myself, actually how about 3 or 4?  I need someone to do all of those things that I don’t have the time for or just plain don’t want to do.

I want to escape the day to day life and go back to a time when things were simple.

I want to go sit in a comfy chair and read for hours on end, maybe even finish an entire book in a single day.

I want to knit until my hands cramp up, then warm them while I sip on a cup of hot chocolate and reflect.

I want to find a great photography book and teach myself how to set my camera just so and get that perfect shot.

I want to sew and to have the time it takes to learn by trial and error with no distractions.  I would like to make my daughter a dress.

I want to dust off my guitar and re-learn the few chords I used to know.  I’d like to learn to play an entire song that I can strum and sing to my kids.

I want to devote an entire day to playing with my kids without thinking about that bill that needs paid or the laundry that is piling up.

I want to design web sites again and finally finish the one that has been promised for so long.

I want a job that allows me to see my kids for more than 2 1/2 hours a day – one that is meaningful and that I can be proud of.

I want so many things, yet I feel like everything I want is so unattainable these days.  The thing I want the most is time.  There’s never enough.  We rush through the work week to get to the weekends, but when the weekend comes there is so much to cram into it that we miss out on the things that matter most.

Sunday evening I felt myself getting frustrated beyond belief.  I spent most of the day cleaning, trying to make up for all that was strewn around from the prior week.  We spent Saturday having fun with family, which was totally worth it, but it made for a lot of catch-up on Sunday.  While I rushed around the house picking up jackets off the floor, tripping over toys, cleaning the kitchen, vacuuming the floors, washing and putting away laundry, and fussing at Zach repeatedly to clean up his toys, Hubby sat and watched football.  Evie followed Zach and I around, taking out everything that Zach and I had put away.  Hubby was having some computer issues and kept stopping me to ask me questions.

I took a break from cleaning to fix dinner.  Hubby made his awesome guacamole that I had requested and we enjoyed a nice dinner together.  Then I started in on the evening bath routine.  While Zach was in the shower, I ran through the living room to put another thing away when Hubby stopped me yet again with a computer question.  I was short with him.  I just couldn’t take one more thing.  I was in a hurry to get Zach finished with his shower so I could get him settled down with a TV show and I could try to get bills paid before my shows came on that I wanted to watch.  Hubby snapped back at me after I snapped at him.

I just wanted to get done so I could finally relax.  In that moment I felt so under-appreciated.  I felt like I had spent all day working my butt off while everyone else spent the day playing and relaxing.  I was short with my kids and my husband.  I was stressed about the fact that I just can not ever get it all done.  I will never be caught up.  I will never feel like I can truly sit down and relax because my mind is going in a million different directions.

I need life to slow down.  I want my kids to have happy memories, not to remember a mom who yelled all the time because she was always so overwhelmed with life.  I don’t want to be in such a rush that I miss the good times.  I want to enjoy this life, not look back years from now and wonder where all the time went.

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