We’ve been home bound for the past two days, a result of Morgan bringing home yet another bug or some kind of cough/cold/green snot causing thing from preschool. I am on more intimate terms with the phrase cabin fever, and if I have to wipe one more snotty nose or poop encrusted pair of buns, I’m really going to lose it.
Sure, this is all part and parcel of being a mom, and now, more than ever, I applaud moms everywhere. To all of the single moms, the working moms who come home and work inside the house, the moms who don’t have help, the moms who do have help but are too proud to ask for it (no, I’m not talking about myself), the moms who put school/work/other ambitions on hold to run the house, the moms who have to get out there every day for the benefit of their families, the moms who get up in the middle of the night to get glasses of water, take someone to the bathroom, make cupcakes for the class, finish sewing costumes for the school play and on and on and on. For the moms who do all of these things and everything in between — thank you, I appreciate you, I admire you. Seriously, motherhood, in whatever form it takes, is not for the faint of heart.
It’s hard to be all things to all people all of the time, and why I continue down that road, I can only chalk it up to my Virgo tendencies and my Type A personality. Letting go is hard to do, especially when it’s control that is the thing clutched in your grip.
When I get a chance to get on the computer — ten minutes here, five minutes there — I often visit other blogs and websites that I like such as http://www.truemomconfessions.com/. I like finding out that I’m not the only one who worries that having my children watch a half an hour of tv is going to undo all of the careful alphabet and number installation I have done, or that if neither one of them will become a homicidal maniac if I just leave one in the crib and one in the playpen for a couple or 15 minutes after they wake-up. They’ll still have strong bones if they eat goldfish and Cheerios for lunch because they don’t want to eat anything else. They don’t care that the laundry is still “soaking” in the washer, that the dishwasher still needs to be emptied, that the trash is still waiting to go out or that Mommy hasn’t put sheets on her bed in about two weeks (hey, at least I got them off the bed!). The featured post on TMC today was this:
I want to thank my mom for not losing herself in marriage or motherhood. She’s more beautiful now after 25 years of marriage and 2 kids because of it.
Thanks mom for knowing you don’t become just a wife when you get married and you don’t become just a mom when you have children.
I know that 25 years from now, I can look back on my marriage and revel in its strength. I can look back on how I have raised my children and be proud of what I see and humble in when I describe it to others. But you know what? Twenty-five years from now is too long to wait to sit back and admire my handiwork. I need to look at what I am doing now, right now, and be proud. I gotta go; time’s a wasting.
