Balance

Lord knows I do not get it right all the time.  Being a parent is hard.  Working a full time job is hard.  Maintaining healthy relationships is a lot of work.  Keeping a household running is a lot of work.  Sometimes one or several of these aspects of my life is in a state of chaos.

This past weekend was a perfect example of me doing what I could to keep the balance.

I loathe housework.  You will never catch me bragging about my housekeeping skills.  We do not live in filth, but we sure do work around a lot of mess.  Laundry and toys and bottles and shoes.  Never. freaking. ending.  That's how we live most of the time.  It's picked up and the dishes are done and we have some clean outfits, but there's generally always something that needs cleaning or washing or putting away.

Approximately once a month, I get the urge to catch everything up and make the house as clean as I can possibly get it.  Saturday was that day.  I got up at 7 and cleaned and did laundry and changed sheets and pulled all the clothes out of the closets that were the wrong sizes or hadn't seen the light of day in over a year.  I did not stop until well after the boys went to bed.

Hooray me! Big pat on the back! Many accolades! Right?  Sure, if you aren't my three year old or my 6 month old.  Because they? Seriously pissed off at me.  Hearing "hold on just a second, mommy's cleaning/folding laundry/finding a place for all of these freaking shoes - how did we get so many shoes?!" 112 times on a Saturday is completely unacceptable to a three year old.

Oh the guilt.  The never-ending, I cannot do enough/be enough/give enough mommy guilt.

My solution to this was to make ALL of Sunday about the boys.  It was a water hose in the yard, buying a kiddie pool, hanging out in our bathing suits, eating hot dogs (and chicken noodle for Gav), don't go in until the sun goes down kind of day.  My kids smiled and laughed and made my heart burst with happiness.

The kids were annoyed with me most of Saturday, but the house got the scrubbing it needed.  

The house was messy again by bedtime Sunday, but we spent a ton of quality time together as a family.

Balance.

That's what I strive for these days.  

I know I am not going to get it right all the time in all aspects of my life.  All I can do is try to keep every facet of my life from being in crisis mode on the same day.  

Mostly I do, and that's good enough for me.