Or: How on earth do Mommybloggers get anything done?
As I type this, it’s 8:20am. Which means that at any second, Grayson could wake up for the morning, and I have to start his day. This isn’t a bad thing, as I’m thoroughly enjoying being a mother. However, since his birth, the importance of things in the Velez house have become vastly skewed.
First things first – I am lucky enough that I get to shower almost every day. Typically I have to wake up earlier (7:00am on the dot, no matter how many times I woke up during the night), but it works.
Next, I try to see how many things I can get done before Grayson wakes up. Sometimes, I get a whole hour and a half, and sometimes I only get 20 minutes. Typically, there’s laundry, dishes or something else that needs to get cleaned, so I try to drop a load of laundry, start the dishwasher if I didn’t run it the night before, or sweep our kitchen floor that seems to always have dog hair rolling dust bunnies.
Once the boy’s up, we start his morning – breakfast, change his clothes and play for a while. This has become my favorite time of day, because Every Single Day it seems as though he’s learning something new. He’s grasping for things, has discovered his feet, and giggles all the time. Usually by 10:30 or 11:00am is when I try to set him in his swing for a nap, and there are those rough days where I’m not successful at all, and nothing gets done.
During the nap, I have lunch, maybe shower if I didn’t get a chance to earlier, pay bills, sneak a chance at Twitter or Facebook, switch out laundry and unload the dishwasher, or whatever else I can try to get to. If it’s a successful day, he sleeps for another hour and a half or so, and I can maybe start prepping dinner or get to cleaning that toilet that hasn’t been cleaned in over a month (don’t judge me). Then he wakes up again and we start the morning routine all over again minus the clothes change.
Then hopefully, another afternoon nap so I can get more stuff around the house done. (Oscar has asked what exactly I do all day long, aside from take care of Grayson. Heh. The easy answer to this is anything and everything inside the 2,800ish square feet of this house.)
I suppose if this entry had a point, it’s this: How do other Moms find/make time for themselves? Every time he takes a nap, instead of saying, “hey, I’ll go read my new Real Simple or paint my toenails, I’m thinking, “WHAT CAN I GET DONE!?” Seriously, right now, I even feel anxious about taking time to write out this silly blog entry as opposed to taking down my Christmas tree.
Do I need to learn to let things go (a FEAT, I assure you), is there some Mommy secret to getting things done that I’m unaware of? (And if it’s not sleeping, eff that, cuz I tried it already.)
I COMPLETELY understand. Even when Claire is finally, successfully napping and I can take the time to take a power nap myself (or even just read a good book with a nice cup of coffee), I go around the house and clean. I know that it’s perfectly acceptable to keep a messy house when you have a baby, but I go crazy and lose sleep when the house is a mess. It’s something I really need to work on, because at this rate I’ll drive myself to a nervous breakdown or something, especially if we have another baby in the near future.