Some thoughts at 4am

 

I had a couple of situations this past week that made me feel extremely frustrated and overwhelmed with my duties as a homemaker and a mother. Brygit has been feeling a little under the weather and has been wanting to be held a lot which means everything I do is one handed with a nearly 19 pound baby on my hip. Which is fine most of the time except for instances where Liam poops his pants and I need to clean him and the entire bathroom without her crawling all over the floor or screaming bloody murder. Or when he spills apple cider all over the table, floor, and (somehow) wall and she acts like sitting on the floor next to me while I clean is the equivalent of being water boarded all while Liam cries because his cup is now empty. I wish I had handled these situations better. I wish I hadn't yelled and lectured. I wish I hadn't grumbled and complained. I wish I hadn't looked at the clock and started counting down the seconds until bedtime when these days with my babies are so precious and are moving so quickly. I wish I could go with the flow a little more. I could have totally left those messes right where they occurred, roped off that portion of the house crime scene style and attended to what was really important but my brain didn't allow that. Anyway, I spent a day pondering why I reacted the way I did. I was tired, grumpy and needed a break. That's a given. But there is also a mindset I have somehow adopted along the way that makes me believe that my children need to always be taught responsibility and obedience and maturity and tidiness. I have somehow become a prude... at times... more often than I like. So I came across this blog post. Seriously, read it. And read the letter she links to. Basically she says that the key to raising happy children is to let them be children. Let them play and frolic and make messes and be irresponsible. They are kids for a short time and they need to enjoy it before they have their own responsibilities some day. If this week was their last week here, I would have felt horrible that I spent so much energy on what they were doing wrong and not enough time on everything they do right. The smiles and the cuddles and whatnot. If this was their last week here I would have never let Brygit's little feet touch the ground. Living like life is as short as it is has to be my new focus. It's the only way I want to live and raise my kids and it has to be a daily, if not hourly, aspiration.