Being a mother is all about realizing how dumb I am. How little I know even though I've been doing this gig for almost 8 years.
When I was pregnant with N and started looking for fabric for her nursery, I picked a cute yellow fabric with alphabet letters and animals. I clearly remember thinking, "This should last until she is about 5 years old."
HARDY-HAR-HAR.
It lasted until she was almost 3 and decided that she was down with Disney Princesses. I didn't realize how quickly children move from blathering blobs to small people with actual personalities and opinions.
And now, here I am again---realizing how little I know.
All of a sudden, our weeks are plum full of activities in the evenings. Mondays nights are piano lessons for me and N. Every other Wednesday night is Girl Scouts. Every 3rd Wednesday evening I have my neighborhood board meeting. Every 1st Thursday night is my book club. The first Tuesday of every month is dinner at Papaw's house.
This sounds very scattered until this week when we have piano lessons, Papaw's, my book club and an extra Girl Scout event on Friday night.
So something has to go, and it is book club, which on the one hand saddens me because this is "my" event, but it also relieves me because it is one less thing on my mental calendar.
I didn't expect that when I have an almost 8-year-old, a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old, my life would be so dang busy with activities. G's preschool on Mondays and Tuesdays and speech class on Fridays. M's playgroup on Wednesdays and G's playgroup on Thursdays. My exercise classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
I thought the kids would all be older, perhaps in middle school, when I would feel like I was constantly on the go, driving hither and yon, taking them to activities.
Of course some of this feeling of "What the hell is going on????" could be due to us having done absolutely nothing during the last two weeks of December. I am off my game and slowly having to re-acclimate to the schedule, the routine.
Just as I'm being mindful of clutter and saying "no" to more tangible stuff, I am also going to have to be mindful of those occasions, like this week, when there are more things to do than what feels right.
When I was pregnant with N and started looking for fabric for her nursery, I picked a cute yellow fabric with alphabet letters and animals. I clearly remember thinking, "This should last until she is about 5 years old."
HARDY-HAR-HAR.
It lasted until she was almost 3 and decided that she was down with Disney Princesses. I didn't realize how quickly children move from blathering blobs to small people with actual personalities and opinions.
And now, here I am again---realizing how little I know.
All of a sudden, our weeks are plum full of activities in the evenings. Mondays nights are piano lessons for me and N. Every other Wednesday night is Girl Scouts. Every 3rd Wednesday evening I have my neighborhood board meeting. Every 1st Thursday night is my book club. The first Tuesday of every month is dinner at Papaw's house.
This sounds very scattered until this week when we have piano lessons, Papaw's, my book club and an extra Girl Scout event on Friday night.
So something has to go, and it is book club, which on the one hand saddens me because this is "my" event, but it also relieves me because it is one less thing on my mental calendar.
I didn't expect that when I have an almost 8-year-old, a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old, my life would be so dang busy with activities. G's preschool on Mondays and Tuesdays and speech class on Fridays. M's playgroup on Wednesdays and G's playgroup on Thursdays. My exercise classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
I thought the kids would all be older, perhaps in middle school, when I would feel like I was constantly on the go, driving hither and yon, taking them to activities.
Of course some of this feeling of "What the hell is going on????" could be due to us having done absolutely nothing during the last two weeks of December. I am off my game and slowly having to re-acclimate to the schedule, the routine.
Just as I'm being mindful of clutter and saying "no" to more tangible stuff, I am also going to have to be mindful of those occasions, like this week, when there are more things to do than what feels right.
2 comments:
I am right there with you Carrie. Sometimes I feel like a total rookies at this parenting thing. I haven't been getting much sleep because the baby seems to always be awake. I made a comment about how hard this was to my hubby and he just looked at me and laughed. He asked me why I sounded so surprised...it's not like I haven't taken care of babies before! He's right!
I, too, have been surprised at how busy we are at such an early age. I guess it really only takes one or two commitments to up the busy feeling. When they all seem to hit in the same week, as yours did, that's pretty painful, at least for a person like me who likes to stay home a lot.
I at least have the advantage of being able to do some stuff during the day, since full-time school isn't a factor for us. That gives us some flexibility that I'm grateful for. I mean, "for which I'm grateful." You're an English major - don't want to end a sentence with a preposition......
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