Doing

Introduction: I wrote this entry ("Doing") after a long day of mothering. After I published it and read it through again I realized it sounds pretty bitter. I was definitely venting, but I do love being a mom. I was trying to entertain my readers a bit by finding the humor in it all through a little hyperbole. I hope that this went without saying for most people who know me, but I wasn't sure. 

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This is a lot.

I have no idea how mothers of more than three children at home manage their lives. From dawn until way after dusk and into the wee hours of the morning, I am doing. I am doing everything. And I don't mean I'm doing everything to take care of our household, I'm certainly not, but I'm doing constantly, and what I'm doing doesn't involve much sitting and sometimes not even much thinking, but it is constant.

Turns out these little turds have to eat three times a day, Teddy even more often, and preferably healthy food that makes up a balanced diet, which is a lot of work just on its own and involves grocery lists and recipes-- two things I'm not very fond of-- as well as heaps of dishes every day.

But. There are a million other things these boys need as well. Like a cup of milk please and for me to take their hair out of the other one's hands NOW, and their Batman shirts out of the laundry before the villains strike, and for me to watch the AMAZING slide into home in slow motion and for their toothpaste to be extracted from their noses and for me to observe their ant farm through their magnifying glass and show them how to make their beds and get down Candy Land from their shelf and to open their applesauce lids and to take the teething ring off the baseball bat and look at the cool car they made out of gears and take Teddy out of the bedroom so he doesn't knock over their Lego restaurant and tape the box to the balcony rail so they can shoot their basketball into it and to clean the finger paint out of their ears and the Play-doh off the chairs and read their new books and set the chicken out to thaw for dinner and label the body parts of an ant and look at the pretty drawing they made and play their memory game with them and get their damn hockey gear on them before their hockey class and floss the corn out of their teeth and give them all baths that aren't too cold or too hot or too long or too short that actually remove the baseball field dirt from all crevices of their bodies. No biggie.

On top of these odds and ends that keep me hopping all day, I am to keep the house on the better side of the filthy and cluttered vs. almost filthy and fairly cluttered line, and hopefully provide some semblance of education and exercise to the boys' lives. How do parents do it and retain sanity? I like to think I am sane, but I'm actually not so sure. Right now I am drinking a Mason jar of wine and talking to a measuring cup full of chocolate chips, so you tell me.

These menial tasks and goals are what make up each and every day of my life and are why I haven't been blogging much. We also just moved Teddy into Cal and Clark's room, which has proved challenging to say the least. We have tee-ball, which has been a blast, but also consumes time and I've been maintaining a spot in my book club, which requires some late-night reading stints. One daunting thought is knowing that it will only get more hectic from here. The twins will develop different interests and not be doing every activity together, which will involve more time spent figuring out transportation for each of them, more weeknight and weekend activities, and inevitably more freaking laundry. Teddy will begin to be involved in more activities, and meanwhile I will not be working out, but remaining a lumpy blob of a mom who eats leftover hot dog scraps and secretly makes and eats piles of nachos and dips anything and everything into her homemade ranch dressing.

So, I'm kind of a mess.

But as all the well-edited articles about this stage of motherhood that I get a quarter of the way through but never have time to finish tell me, I should enjoy this time because it will pass so quickly and soon I will be missing the days that I find superhero capes in my pillow case and raisins in my hair. I will miss washing out bib pockets and stepping on tiny dinosaurs. Right now that doesn't seem possible, but in order to keep myself on the good side of sanity, I choose to believe that the articles on motherhood that I partially read are correct.

I also remind myself that I have only a little over two months before my little baby twins will be off to kindergarten and I might have time to actually vacuum the carpet and chop an entire onion up at once. But I know I will also miss them and their LOUD presence throughout my day.

I'm actually not even sure what the point of this entry is. I guess just to write something, because it is therapeutic and fun and it's a weekend night so I'll have Brian's help in the morning. And now Teddy is awake and I have to put him back to sleep without waking up Cal and Clark.

I know I will not miss this part.

These rings around the tub and dirt at the bottom sum up
the conclusion of my days quite well.