{Not So} Supermom
Today will go down as “sub-par” in the annals of my parenting. In fact, it may go down as “worse than sub-par.” It’s been that bad.
I am stressed out.
As I have mentioned before, we live in a crackerjack box of a house that we outgrew two-and-a-half kids ago. It might be counter-intuitive, but it takes a lot of work to live in a small house. One or two things out of place creates very obvious clutter. I have to be on top of organization constantly, cycling through clothes and toys, papers and other randomness that comes in our door. It takes merely hours for all of my hard work to come tumbling down on top of me (sometimes literally).
Our house is so small that we use our only two small linen closets to hold Colby and Lily’s clothes. This leaves a tiny amount of space beneath our sinks for towels and linens. My computer desk is located in our closet. And this isn’t a walk-in closet we’re talking about here… it’s a normal pocket closet that you’d find in an apartment. Between clothes, computer stuff, etc., you can imagine the clutter that surrounds me constantly. It doesn’t even matter how hard I try to battle it.
Completely over the clutter, frustrated that I have to de-clutter on such a regular basis, I set to work on the house. Everything I cleaned was completely negated by the twins emptying the contents of another cupboard.
Here’s today’s cycle:
Redirect babies who are taking all of the tupperware out of the drawer.
Resume cleaning.
Look over and notice that the babies had taken my hairdryer and towels out of the cupboard.
Colby and Lily scream at each other over something.
“Mom! She’s annoying me!”
I yell at them to knock it off.
Notice the babies are into something else.
Redirect.
Clean again.
Colby and Lily at it again.
“If you two don’t knock it off, I’m throwing your Halloween candy away!”
Babies are now in the other bathroom and have removed drawer contents.
Hm, didn’t realize I still had a pregnancy test.
Barricade babies using a baby gate in a room with toys. They scream.
Clean some more.
Realize I haven’t gotten anywhere.
Hold back tears, wishing we could buy a bigger house, and realize that there are several more years of this charade before we can even dream of that happening.
This whole time, I was fuming because everywhere I turned, there seemed to be something else to pick up or another corner of the house that had somehow collected clutter. Of course, it was one of those days when I dropped everything I picked up, which only added to my already *stellar* demeanor.
My friend came over for a brief visit and stayed at my house with the twins while I dropped Colby and Lily off at preschool. I had received a call this morning that my prescription was ready to be picked up at my doctor’s office. Since it was down the road from the preschool and I figured Michelle would be totally okay with it, I decided to swing by the clinic to pick it up. I felt a little guilty, but really, when you have an opportunity to run a quick errand without four kids, you snag it.
Quick, is the opposite of what it was.
Normally, I walk in, hand over my ID, and that’s it. This time, I was behind the slowest patients ever. Just as I was thinking about leaving, that it had been too long to wait, they were done.
Ohp, nope! Not done.
Surely, I figured, they were almost done. They seemed close to done. Plus, I was sort of committed at this point.
I didn’t end up getting back to my house for 35 minutes after I had left, and it wasn’t like I had a big commute. Each place was merely blocks from my house. I felt awful. Michelle’s kids needed naps, and here I was totally taking advantage of her being home with my babies. She swears up and down that it’s okay, but man, I felt so bad.
While Colby and Lily were at school, I cleaned the bathrooms. I had a tub of bleach water filled and sanitizing bath toys. I got down on hands and knees and sanitized the crap out of everything. Finally, I leaned over the tub to clean that last. I slipped and fell, torso first, into the water.
Per-fect.
It took me nearly 2 hours to clean the bathrooms, they were that gross. I was so ashamed that anyone had set foot in them.
Time came to pick Colby and Lily up and they started in fighting the second they got into the car. Lily was singing a song that bugged Colby, so he, of course, screamed at her to stop, which made her sing louder, which made him scream louder, which made me scream at the top of my lungs for both of them to stop it or I was going to “insert some sort of punishment here.”
They stopped. Briefly.
Back home, more screaming, more fighting, some of the screaming wasn’t even fighting, it was over fun and games, but by that point my scream-threshold had been reached and I couldn’t listen to it anymore.
Did I mention that we have a small house? Can you imagine how quickly screaming gets old here?
Between 4-6pm, I yelled at them. Like, a lot.
My brain kept saying, “Positive reinforcement, Lindsay!” but my energy level, my completely fed up from my mess of a house, my not-getting-along-kids, I couldn’t find it within myself to wipe the grimace off my face and find something to praise them about.
Lily lost her mind after I told her she couldn’t have any of her Halloween candy, since she didn’t eat her dinner.
I told her she was being ridiculous. (Nice, Lindsay. Real nice.)
I dressed all of my kids into pajamas and sent them to bed.
Without brushing their teeth.
At 6:15pm.
It was in the best interest of everyone’s sanity.
Part of what has me so uppity is that I feel like I’m being torn in several directions. One direction is Mom. One direction is Household Organizer. Another is Writer. Still another is Hot Workout Chick. Of course, I’m also Wife. At any moment, if I choose to do one of those things, it means I’m choosing not to do the others. We need a clean house. For my sanity alone, we need a clean house. Yet, when I choose to clean, I’m choosing not to write, which means I’m not helping us pay down our credit card, which means I’m not helping us get out of this house.
When I choose to run, I’m getting “me time”and benefiting physically (and it’s good for the marriage, if you know what I mean), but I’m not spending time with my kids or husband or my house.
Anyway, you get the idea.
I love all of the things I do and won’t give them up, nor do I think I have too many things on my plate. I think I simply need to organize my brain the way I organize my house and just be happy with whatever I’m doing at the time. It just takes work, practice and patience, I guess.
And probably less yelling.
Tomorrow is going to be a good day. I have a clean kitchen and bathrooms, a do-able “To Do” list waiting on my counter and will start the morning with a trip to the gym.
Tonight, I’m going to take a bath in my freshly cleaned bathtub, read a magazine and (maybe) not worry that there are about 5,239 other things I should be doing.
