Monday, September 9, 2013

It's Like I Had Always Dreamed, Only It's Not.

3 empty car seats= mental health day for momma.
Today I dropped off Tyler for his first day of MDO. I think I was in so much denial of the morning that I didn't even think about taking a picture of Ty before we left. Add to the fact that for the first time in dropping off babies at MDO for the past 3 years, I nearly cried pulling out of the parking lot, I felt like I was really winning come 9:30am.

Don't get me wrong, a van full of empty car seats and silence can do a momma good, especially this one. It's just that I never had any intentions of putting my babies in preschool this early. I couldn't really figure out why I was so sad about everything until I had lunch with Drew today. And it dawned on me. That my whole life, I always assumed I would be a stay at home mom. I am more or less living my dream, and in many ways it is everything I always dreamed it would be. But in many ways, it's not.

This motherhood gig has been one of the hardest journeys of my life. My days are filled with a constant cycle of little people needs that never seem to stop. By the end of the day I am spent, with little left to give myself, much less Drew. While I realize this is a phase and that soon these babies won't need me every waking moment, I've come to a conclusion that I have to raise the white flag in parts that I always assumed I'd be able to conquer easily. I told Drew it was kind of like I was trying to manage a job that was meant for 5 people all by myself, doing poorly at all of it, and then being sad that I had to distribute some of that burden to someone else. That's not fair to anyone in my home, especially me.

As a perfectionist, this is a hard pill for me to swallow. I've always prided myself in being a good keeper of the home. Before kids, my home was pretty much spotless at all times. Now, I'm doing good to keep the rings out of the toilets and the shower floor not looking like someone threw grease into the tub. I thought I'd be able to juggle having multiple children 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, homeschool everyone and all sing kumbaya while we eat dinner after daddy gets home. My ideas of homeschooling went out of the window after having two babies in two years (and for other reasons too, but this is what got the public school ball rolling), having to spend every single day with my babies for weeks on end makes me want to pull my hair out of my sensitive scalp, and dinner time is often more resemblant of a war zone than the peaceful dinners that June Cleaver was somehow able to pull off (also, I realize I just compared real life to a television sitcom, but go with me here.)

Yep, life just doesn't seem to go exactly like it had played out in my mind. But what I am learning is that that's OK. It's OK to not be a mom who wants to homeschool. And it's OK if I need to send my baby off for 4 hours, especially if that makes me a better mom in the long run (and believe me, it does.). Dinner time with 3 boys under 5 years old will probably look more like a mess hall than a quiet sit down dinner with a table cloth and 5 courses of food. All these things, and I am constantly reminding myself that God doesn't require me to be perfect in my life, only to try my best and leave the rest up to Him. So grateful for His grace that will cover my inadequacies when it comes to being a momma. Lord knows I need it so much.
The first day of "school" was exhausting for little man.
(oh, and as for baby boy... he did great his first day of school, and was so pooped that he took a 3 hr nap when we got home.)
 

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