Mom is Just a Nickname

Being a mom is sucking all of my time up.  One of the kidlets has lice, so every waking moment, it seems, is dedicated to picking lice and nits and doing laundry.  I’m also really trying to get up that oomph I talked about to get the house clean and keep it clean.

For some reason, the baking bug bit me the last couple of days.  Homemade cornbread to go with the homemade white chicken chili; homemade pear-blueberry cobbler; homemade whole wheat banana bread.  I wonder what will come over me next? I wonder why that energy isn’t being more appropriately directed to cleaning the house?

For reasons which shall remain nameless here, we’re getting rid of a Sauder-style bookcase (ok, a watermelon went bad and sent its watery juiciness beneath it – I swear my house isn’t THAT bad).  My husband and I spent part of the day sorting through the books on the shelf and found a bunch to get rid of.  Sometime this week I’ll take a trip to the used book store and see what kind of store credit I can get for them.  It may not be much, but it will help pay for books for the kids and such.  Hey, I wanted to get a move on decluttering…just not sure I wanted to be pushed to it by a rotting watermelon!

Anyhow, this mom has got to get back to picking “nits and fleas” (as my youngest kidlet put it)….so, back to being ‘Just a Mom’ for awhile.

I’m not sure what possessed me, but a few days ago I decided the kids and I needed a schedule to follow this summer. It had to be flexible enough to be spontaneous, but firm enough to guide our actions in the day to day.  I dedicated Mondays to sticking around the house, Tuesdays are grocery shopping day, Wednesday we go to the pool, Thursday to the library, and Friday is our Adventure Day, where we go somewhere exciting around town and explore. Adventure Day should mean the zoo, or a museum, or the beach. But, I’m still trying to recover from our late night Wednesday so I wanted to to stick close to home.  So we followed Monday’s schedule more than Friday’s, yesterday.

Here’s what we did:
7-8am: read in bed, watch TV, or check email
8-8:30: breakfast and get dressed
8:30-10: Gardening: planted the rest of the iris and started some seeds in containers
10-10:30: Shower/change clothes, have snack
10:30-12pm: Craft Projects (I was collaging our summer schedule, J was doing a sort of engraving project and X was painting)
12-12:30: Lunch
12:30-1:30: Chores (Clean up lunch dishes, clean kids’ bathroom, scoop cat litter)
1:30-3: Shopping at Home Depot and CVS
3-4: Quiet time
4-5: TV watching

About that time, J got a phone call from a friend inviting her over for the evening. So we dropped her off for that and then went out to eat, instead of eating at home like we were going to. Ooops.

So far, the schedules are popular with the kids, and I liked it too.  I feel like I was more productive today than I normally am, and this made me happy. I felt like the kids enjoyed their day. There was enough time for them to go off on their own and do their own thing, but not so much free time that they were whining at me about boredom. They got to do fun things (gardening and crafts) but it was balanced by getting things done that we needed to get done (chores and shopping).  Jillian especially seemed to appreciate being able to look at the schedule and know what was coming.

I really hope that we can keep up this schedule. I’ve never been one to stick with things like this, except when necessary. But I really think we NEED this structure to our days this year.

So, if you’ve got kids, what do you do to help tame the wild days of summer? How do you keep from hearing “I’m bored” all summer long?

My daughter, who is nine, set a gift on my keyboard for me to find this evening. Upon opening it, I found a piece of blue construction paper cut into a shape resembling a wide and bushy evergreen tree. Upon its branches was glued a computer printout with my name, “Beth”, at the top. Curious, I began to read:

Beth…

Nice, Sympathetic, happy, great mom

My mom and friend

Who loves her children, my dad, and books

Who is afraid of losing another child, certain spiders, and mean animals

Who wants to see her children grow up, my dad get a good job, and us live

a successful life.

Resident of the moment

…<insert last name here>

She’d been telling us at dinner about Personal Poems, which she was learning about at school. This must be an example of just such a poem. It was intriguing to me to see how she views me. I am grateful for this glimpse into her mind. I am honored that she chose to write about me. This will be going into her scrapbook (or mine!)…it’s a keeper.

Thank you, J-in!

Congrats also go to my daughter, who is wrapping up her fourth grade school year this week. She made straight A’s for the fourth quarter, as well as having good citizenship and perfect attendance this quarter! She also was recognized for making all A’s and B’s all year (only ONE B all year!) and for having good citizenship all year! Way to go, J! We’re proud of you!

And I find this very frustrating.

I’ve been a stay at home mom for the better part of ten years. It’s my JOB to keep the house in order and to care for the kids. I’ve tried creating my own routines, based on what I do anyway but with tweaks here and there to make them more efficient. I’ve tried using things like Flylady, which is supposed to give a person some shape to the days.  None of these seem to help.

I’d like a routine for a few reasons.  First of all, I get so tired of looking at my messy house.  Granted, it’s not as messy now as it has been in the past.  We’ve done better with keeping up with it since moving to this house.  But it’s never as nice as I’d like it, unless I’ve just busted my butt for a day or two to make it shine.  That quickly fades, though, no matter my good intentions.

I read about other families whose children happily fall in line with an orderly day.  They get up, they make their beds, they get dressed, they eat breakfast….etc. Everything falls into place.  This is not what happens in my house.  There are days (as there have been this week) that we simply don’t get our acts together and get dressed until late in the day.  Ok, so if you go to work (or school) each day, that may seem like such a luxury.  I know Toph often says he envies us our ability to take it slow.  I’d rather get up and moving and feel like I’ve accomplished something in a day.

Obviously, something is holding me back.  Some inner something is overriding my desire to have a clean house and to have productive days.  Is it laziness?  Is it boredom?  Is it some chemical imbalance in my head?  Is it a lack of purpose?  On any given day I’ll answer yes to every one of those. I don’t know what causes it.  I wish I did because then maybe I could get my act together for longer than a couple of weeks.

Sometimes I just get so sick of being me.  Sick of not being able to stick to something for any length of time.