You must be busy...

I get that a lot these days. Before I had baby, I had A LOT of comments about how busy I was going to be when the baby arrived. Considering I was 8 months pregnant and had three children clustered around my person most of the time as it was the school holidays, you can imagine what I wanted to say but bit my tongue over ;).

Truthfully, I don't know many non busy people and it has absolutely no bearing on how many children they have. Some of the busy-est people I know have one child but what extra time they might gain from having only one child to nag, do pick up and drop off and cater to their many needs, they easily fill with other things.

Working Outside the Home in Paid Employment Mums seem busy. They are forever rushing to and from, shorterning days and making it up at home so they can be there for the important things, they're taking short lunches to get home 15 minutes earlier and somehow managing to do all the other parenting stuff they need to do while still working. Frankly, I have no idea how they do it because its pretty crammy in my life sometimes trying to fit it all in without having to actually do a specific job as well.

And for what its worth Working Inside the Home but Not being Paid Mums are actually quite busy. There is the image of the latte sipping SAHM, casually drapped across the sofa while watching something rivetting on daytime television. Well first of all, lattes suggest an espresso maker or a trip to a cafe... I don't drink coffee myself but I come across enough unfinished drinks in my house to know that if I did make something something special using the espresso maker, I'm actually unlikely to get it drunk in one sitting. And if I did go somewhere for a drink which I do sometimes, its not just me having some downtime, its me and whatever children I happen to have with me. I am not so much sipping latte (or hot chocolate) but juggling my drink while breastfeeding the baby, spooning leftover fluffy into the toddlers mouth and trying to let my preschooler into the playarea all at once. Its not exactly restful.

And I can assure you that what little have seen of daytime television, its not worth making time for unless its the Olympics. Being a SAHM rocks during the Olympics even if my children don't appreciate the finer points of hockey or athletics.

So am I busy? Well yes I am. Kind of. At the moment I 'have' to take time to sit down in order to feed the baby. Its good in a way as it makes me sit down and relax, well, sit down anyway. Its hard too because as soon as I sit down I see all the stuff I haven't done and won't get done today anyway.

The Crazy Invasion

The crazy has invaded my home.  Its funny how it seems to have just hit now, the last few weeks.  Maybe because its winter?  With the dodgy weather, bugs on endless replay, cold nights, extra clothes to get dirty?  Maybe its that the baby is now 5 months old and becoming his own little person who likes nothing more than to have Mummy's undivided attention?  Maybe its because if he doesn't need me, Little Miss A, with her boundless energy and determination does.  And then when the big kids get home they need to squeeze as much parental attention as they can get in the few hours before bed.

Sometimes I have days when I feel like I have been on the go all day and I am still no further to defeating the chaos than when I started.  I can sometimes tackle it once all the cherubs are asleep (and thankfully for me, they go to bed reasonably early) but by the time the dishes are done, the floor swept, the toys put away, the washing folded, the planning for my next parenting session done and things like that, its bedtime and the night shift begins.  I can manage to get the washing done and the meals are usually pretty good and I can sometimes get a chance to wave some eco-friendly cleaner in the direction of the toilet or bathroom, but it seems like the mess just replicates.  Maybe there is some sort of reproduction cycle of mess that we didn't cover in biology.  More often than not my to-do list gets longer and I get overwhelmed by the crazy and almost don't know where to start so retreat somewhere (it used to be somewhere with sugar, my retreat space, but I've gone sugar free so have to find something else)

So I got thinking.  I used to look at the women profiled in magazines like Next.  These amazing women  who usually look fabulous (not still wearing their outgrown maternity jeans haha), they often have an awesome and creative business idea, or they've got an wonderful home that has been uniquely renovated or made out of straw or something clever.  They usually have a couple of children, often with bedrooms that are imaculate (and I do realise that's what they do for a photo shoot and that surely its not like that all the time)... and then I look at my life and wonder how some women can juggle that and everything is on an even keel and I am only doing the child-care bit and I am dropping the ball(s) constantly.

But then, maybe this is actually my life.  Maybe it is meant to be a bit on the crazy side of chaotic?  Maybe I am not destined to be one of those women.  My kids are healthy.  They're pretty clean (I'll try to forget that last week my first born wore the same pair of socks ALL WEEK because he couldn't find the other pairs nestling in his sock drawer).  They seem happy.  And they do add to the crazy.  I was tackling the arsenic hour the other night, D was reading me his book, A was desperate for a Mummy cuddle and had a whinge attached to that, Baby was also really wanting attention and I was making dinner as well as soup for lunches...  I guess what I am proud about is that I didn't lose my cool or sanity and managed to cope and then my dear Hubby came in and got a couple of kids thrust into his arms which is our version of "hi darling, how was your day?"

So maybe I need to start changing my perspective.  Maybe the chaos is not so bad.  Maybe its what my life is meant to be.  Noisy, busy, messy.  Maybe I need to celebrate what I achieve in the day rather than dwelling on what I didn't.