Dear Jacqui,
Well, my MIL is scheduled to arrive in the next little while... My house is a pretty big mess (think dumped out board games, craft cabinet, buttons and train track), my children are dirty (though they are dirty because we spent 3 hours at the park today - MOTY), Masen is wearing no pants and has marker all over his face, my floors (despite my intentions of washing them) look like someone HAS eaten off them, and there is pretty much no evidence of the vacuuming and bathroom cleaning I did yesterday as a result of the park adventure. (Darn sand!)
You know, this week has been a little tough... rainy weather, Masen's breathing issues preventing him (ME) from getting any real sleep and a UTI that has been pretty much the most painful thing I have ever experienced in pregnancy... other than the actual event of giving birth. (Umm... but even if you want to, you can't get an epidural for a UTI... not that I asked or anything.) LIFE has prevented me from doing all the things I usually like to do to basically pretend I am a better me than I actually am. (Though for the record, usually I like the me I am just fine.)
And though I tell myself that no matter the effort exerted, there is no chance that my clean house would ever measure up to the standard it will be judged by, I still find myself in a place where by human standards, I feel completely inadequate.
None the less, I am choosing to try to choose joy... be thankful that Masen actually napped today and that after a week of rain we enjoyed sunscreen weather. That being said, if you wanted to send me a little message to let me know that I am not the worst mother in the world and that losing my baby in a pile of laundry is actually considered a rite of passage, I'll receive it full of gratitude.
Until then, I'll be on the sofa reading Romans 8, reminding myself that we aren't starving children in Africa and hoping for the rapture.
Love, Jen
1 comment:
Gee the one time I don't check this thing for five days...
You know, as I was reading, I was thinking how the mess of this visit might be just the right thing! People don't need to think you have it all together and can care for them joyfully when you're underslept in your third trimester of pregnancy and suffering a UTI! Probably the BEST thing is for your MIL to see how tired and sick you REALLY are. I know the visit's over so I hope it went spectacularly better than you may have been dreading when you wrote this post!
And just remember that although I AM sleeping through the night and feeling just fine (except the intermittent sciatica), I adopted an "it is what it is" philosophy to the running of my home about 3 months in to my pregnancy and am still living by it. So I wash my kitchen floor when it's so sticky I can't find a non-gross path across it, and I wash my bathrooms when they start LOOKING dirty, and I fold my laundry when I finally get sick of dumping out the basket to find my clothes for the day, and I give myself a good week at least of staring at the messy rooms in disgust before actually tidying them, and the playroom doesn't even factor in--quarterly. I'd say that room is done quarterly on those rare "motivated" days. Instead of all this "home maintenance" I spend my exhausted afternoons and evenings reading books and knitting and working on my digital scrapbook and staring blankly at the wall. I've come to terms with this temporary life of chaos and low expectations, and I KNOW your home is managed more festidiously than that. So, there's my encouragement.
Also, perhaps there is light in your future. Starting the past few days I've somehow magically regained what might be called "human" levels of energy, and things like kitchen floors have been looking up. So...you know, just wait for something like that. In the meantime, feel free to adopt my shameless philosophy to your heart's content, OR use it to remind yourself how great you are for at least doing more than that!
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