The start of school has turned my life into a treadmill of laundry, dishes, schoolwork, dinner, grocery shopping and sleep-deprivation. Various projects long for my attention, but I can’t manage to focus.
If you add the babysitting I’ve done throughout the years to the mix, I’ve been taking care of either a baby, toddler or preschooler for thirteen years. (My twins are 13. When they were three, I started a home daycare. Then I had my youngest son. When he was three, I got pregnant again and when that baby girl was a year old, I started babysitting again.)
I suppose little ones keep you young, but they also keep you from concentrating for more than a few minutes at a time. I mean, honestly, how much can you accomplish during nap-time? Or in the space between the kids’ bedtime and your own collapse into bed?
Life is chopped into little morsels, at least it is around here. The things I want to accomplish demand large chunks of time . . . whatever shall I do?
I will think about it tomorrow, that’s what. And I will thank myself for cleaning up the family room floor and the kitchen tonight so a scary mess doesn’t greet me in the morning.
Actual Unretouched Photo 
I figured it up once, and I have spent 10 years either pregnant or breastfeeding. 10 years.
Yeah, our lives, and sometimes our bodies aren’t our own, but take a look at that pic you posted below…makes it so worth it.
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You sound like Scarlett O’Hara! Just remember not to lose yourself…and your Dear Hubby…in the midst of all the chaos of raising a family. Maybe the two of you need a ‘renewal’ weekend. My Dear Hubby and I did that periodically thru the early years and it worked wonders. I will keep you in my prayers…I know these are not easy years. But the end-benefits are worth it all when all of a sudden they’re grown up and become your best friends! ((((HUG)))))
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You’re sounding rather ezhausted! any chance of a little break?
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O Fiddle dee dee. I was going to say the Scarlett O’Hara bit. “Aftah awll… Tahmarrah is anutha day.”
Even though the things I want to do get relegated to the back burner, I find that with the kids out of my sight, I can get so much more done in the small time allotted.
And do those things really matter compared to the love you have with your family? My answer usually no. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Keep your chin up, Mel. This too shall pass- and much quicker than you would like.
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Thank-you for cleaning up the family room Mel; and doing the dishes and the laundry and making dinner and educating your boys and giving up time for yourself in the process.
(I know how rare it is to get that from the people that I do it for, and sometimes it’s just nice to hear.)
🙂 You rock.
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At least you haven’t spent the last 20 years or so like that woman in Arkansas with all the kids – basically pregnant continually for two decades.
Just the thought of that makes me ezhausted!
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Somebody beat me to Scarlett. I have all I can do to get to the day by day stuff.
A project? I’ll think about it tomorrow.
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I could have written this myself. I cant carve out any time to to do the major projects. It’s just bits and pieces of things here and there.
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I once figured out I’d changed a minimum of 13,100 diapers before my kids were potty trained (low balling it at three changes a day). If it takes three or four minutes to change a diaper, how much time of my life has gone toward disposing poop?
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Is this what I have to expect when my son, now 7, grows up :0
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