Wishing I was the Perfect Mother / A Day in the Life

via

I've had some people say to me "how do you do it all?" and I'm not totally sure what they mean... do they really think my house is as clean all the time as it appears in my photos on the blog? Trust me, I say this sitting looking at a bunch of crumbs on the floor, its not. I clean it constantly but it is not perfect. After all, I've got a baby that throws everything out of every cabinet constantly. Or how do I get projects done? Frantically, would be the easiest answer. :)

Well, I figure I'll give you a sampling of this week so far so you get a real picture of how it works around here. I'm warning you, there aren't a lot photos... Maybe you'll be bored out of your gourd reading this... but I figured I'd better answer a question that was asked. :)

A Day in the Life: Wednesday
6:10am Woke up (no alarm), went downstairs and turned up heat (first priority!). Read the Bible for a little bit... am reading through the book of Mark now. When I finished reading I worked on the blog because I was way too exhausted to do it last night.

8:10am Met the electrician at at a rental we own in Gloucester. Hoped he didn't think I was too stupid for never having been in the basement before because I was feeling like an idiot that I didn't know exactly where things were.

8:30am Drove to Beverly to get my blood taken for my annual physical (a week from today). Fed Drew a banana to keep him happy sitting in his stroller. Fasted for twelve hours up until this point hence wanting to get this done first thing in the morning.

9:15am Get back home and get a call that the fridge we ordered will be delivered to the same place in Gloucester. Drive back up with Drew. He was a complete champ... I credit a couple of things: one, an amazing baby and two: his little green ball that makes him wildly happy. Especially when I put it in my mouth, for some reason he loves that.

Went home after it took the moving guys a while to fit the fridge up the stairs and after they amazingly took out the old gas range without me even asking them too! Drew and I cleaned, ate a snack and vacuumed. I gave him a bath and he went down for a nap at about noon. Basically the second he went down I ran downstairs and popped some Butternut Squash Pizzas in the oven (made the toppings for it yesterday), made some hot chocolate and got to work writing this post. Once the pizzas were done I photographed them for the blog entry on Friday for my new recipes section. Drew woke up almost exactly at 1pm.

1pm : Got Drew ready to go and we drove to Savers and Salvation Army to scout out some deals for makeovers. We got nuthin'. Zip. I could find cheaper deals at IKEA than I could at Salvation Army, and I'm not being sarcastic.  I brought milk and an organic fruit pack for Drew and they held him over until we got home.

3:00ish: Woke Drew up so that I could give him a snack and take him running. He loves the jogging stroller because he is Mr. Curiosity and it allows him to spy on everything. We ran downtown and I mailed my phone back to Verizon (good riddance) and deposited a check for the church offering that I forgot about the other day (oops). Kept running to the beach, totally gorg. Drew fell asleep as we were almost home, AJ ran to meet us and then took Drew running for a while longer.

4:10pm Left for Gloucester (again!) to show an apartment we are renting out. Met a nice guy and then was stood up by my next appointment.

5pm Came home and made Chicken and Wild Rice Soup with AJ while Drew played in the kitchen with us.

6:30pm After eating dinner AJ left for the hospital to visit Meredith and came home at 9:30.

Drew with Mern the day she went into the hospital, 19 days ago.

7pm I finished cleaning up and played with Drew for 40 minutes then changed his diaper, gave him a small bottle and put him to bed at 8.

I've been on Pinterest since then (it's 9:41pm now) cataloging ideas for Nancy Mering's house spruce up initiative (Nancy was my former boss). She hired me as her consultant yesterday. I was basically jumping for joy. :)

You must think that I make Drew go and go and go. Today was not what every day is like, for sure. Some days, like Monday, we barely leave the house.

I was struggling after AJ left for the hospital and just feeling so overwhelmed. I felt like the house needed a cleaning overhaul, like I needed to get to work finding ideas for Nancy, like I needed to refinish some furniture to sell and then work on the blog. And then AJ called and talked some sense into me. He told me to play with Drew till he went to bed and then sit on the couch with the iPad and relax because nothing needed to be done today. He's right. So I'm sitting here with my laptop and am watching NCIS and getting scared out of my mind. But before that I just played with Drew, I told myself to not try and get anything done until he was in bed... it's so hard for me to be a person who is "being" instead of "doing". I want to not worry about the dishes, the crumbs on the floor or making a piece of furniture over. I want to be able to show Drew at all times that I'm wild about him. I don't want regrets when he's older. I never want him to think that my projects or a clean house were more important than him. I want to make sure that I'm loving on Drew even while doing dishes and sweeping the floor. And I definitely DO try to do that, but I want to be more conscious of it and even more than that, I want to make a conscious effort to just play with Drew. Even when I have a lot to do. Especially when I have a lot to do.

I wish I was a perfect mother who could do it all, but I suppose there is no such thing.