Big juicy personal revelation with a side order of guilt

Yesterday was a good day. A very good day. The baby had woken me up the night before several times because of a stuffy nose, I had to rush the girls out of the house first thing in the morning, but still a very good day. The thing that was different? I got to go to work.

I met the babysitter at the new office and after Sweet P was tanked up with milk, the sitter whisked the girls away for a fabulous 2-1/2 tour of the wonders of downtown Mebane. (This woman is the childcare score of the century, by the way. Bean and Sweet P both adore her already, after only two afternoons with her.) I stayed at the office with Husband and our business partner and learned all about our new fabric printer. I learned something new! I hung out with grown-ups and made grown-up jokes! I thought about our business at length!

It was only later when I took the girls home and noticed how cheerful and optimistic I felt that I realized it was because I'd done something other than caring for my own children. Yeah, that's where the big helping of guilt comes in.

I don't think I need to say here that I adore my girls, but I'll say it anyway for the record. I'm crazy about them. They're wonderful, unique little people and I enjoy seeing how they evolve everyday. But I've been thinking this week that maybe I'm not doing such a great job with this stay-at-home mom thing. I've never been a patient person, I don't do the imaginative play thing very well, and you know what? Some days I am so bored I feel like I'm going a little crazy.

There. I said it.

I would really like to work a little while someone else takes care of my children. Not full-time or anything, but that's what I want very much.

Days without t.v....

DSC01235, originally uploaded by Secretsugar.

...are spent doing EVERYTHING. I thought I was busy before? Sheesh!

In case you can't tell, that's our dining room table covered with quilts and all the sofa cushions and throw pillows piled up to make a fort. Then there's the scrap basket with fabric scraps all over the place. ALL the Legos out. ALL the cardboard blocks out. And yes, lots of happy, imaginative play going on there so I'm not complaining. Too much.

Something fun

It's hard to put together the chatty, light-hearted post I'd half-written in my head earlier today now. It's been a long damn day. Husband had to leave the house for something work-related at 7:00 am this morning. He returned for 45 minutes this afternoon--long enough for me to make a solo trip to the grocery store--and then was back out again til 9:30 tonight. When he got home, the goddamn dog woke both the baby and Bean up with his shrill little miniature Schnauzer yapping and I could have thrown him across the room. Sweet P has just, just fallen back to sleep after screaming for the last hour. Stupid frigging dog.

So anyways.

Remember how I wrote about real life, wanting to live a real life, something...what the hell did I say about real life? 'Cause all this doing real life stuff is tiring! Here's a list of real stuff I've been doing since my last post:

1. Repainting my downstairs bathroom. A room probably 10 square feet has taken me most of last week to (almost) finish painting during naptimes. Why am I doing this? Is a turquoise bathroom really worth it?

2. Dealing with Bean's mysterious, horrible spider bite. She woke up yesterday morning with a hugely swollen ankle and 2 tiny pus-y (um, how do you spell the adjective describing something containing pus...?) fang marks in the middle of it. She's on a course of antibiotics now because it was already getting infected. We're supposed to be looking out for necrosis. That's dying tissue that will have to be removed via surgery, for you spider bite neophytes.

3. Running naked in a thunderstorm with some college girlfriends and drinking entirely too much wine. Yes, this really happened! I'm too old to be drinking that much wine, though, and my liver hates me now.

4. Hmmm, can't think of much else just now besides changing a lot of diapers, nursing, and cleaning up a lot of poop and pee, of both the child and animal variety. Do any of you other moms feel like most of your day consists of wiping someone's butt?

5. Did I mention that Sweet P can crawl as of last week? It's a whole new world for both of us. She's interested in all kinds of things now--delicious bathroom trash, dog ears, the compost bucket, dust bunnies, electrical cords. I forgot about this dashing around to protect my infant from all things disgusting part of baby-mamahood, I must confess.

Off to bed now. It's late for this mama and both the big girls were demanding to do "something fun" tomorrow before they went to bed. And I get the sense that it better be something real, too. None of this "Let's just hang out!" stuff I've been trying to get by them lately.

Crisp around the edges

Husband has taken all three girls and the dog out for an evening's walk around the neighborhood. I am grateful, if all too aware how quickly this little piece of quiet will last.

I am burnt out, I think. Short-tempered with everyone, sleep-deprived, and having dreams about how I fail at trying to fix things or make them better. Husband told me the other night that my overreacting to Bean's nightly ruining of dinner is in fact ruining EVERYONE'S dinner. I've decided that ignoring my middle daughter at dinner is my best strategy, but I can't just ignore everyone all the time.

Actually, I don't know what the hell I need to make this better. I mean, I THINK I know what I need, but it's so unlikely that I'm going to get it anytime soon that it seems pointless to try and do much. I need to be able to sleep nights for at least one long chunk of time. I need to be not the only one maintaining the house on a daily basis. I need someone to fix shit that's broken around here. I need some time daily to do a little something for myself--just an hour or so would do. And I don't want to make it the very last thing in my day after the dishes are done and the mess picked up and the trash taken out and the laundry folded.

And while I'm making a list of things that I'd get in my ideal world, I'd like for kids not to scream back or sigh dramatically or glower sullenly at me if I ask them to do something they're not particularly fond of. I'd like people to remember the things that I tell them or request of them for longer than the day that I tell or request them. I'd like my mother to be involved more in my kids' lives and, like, keep them at her house sometimes. I'd like to have no t.v. I'd like to chuck the computer out the window and go live in a big, ancient farmhouse somewhere out in the country where there was a pond and animals and a huge garden and quiet and you could still see the stars at night.

All that stuff I want. Anyone else feel like joining me?

7 of 11

7 of 11, originally uploaded by Secretsugar.

It's so hard to get a group kid photo when there are 11 kids to corral and one of them REFUSES to leave my arms for any reason. This is as close as I've gotten this year--7 of the assorted cousins, including 2 kids of my own, snapped while they're eating and quiet for a change. They're chatting to themselves, but it's not the utter mayhem that has otherwise been their mode this year.

I've hardly seen Sister at all this week because she's suddenly old enough to not make a nuisance of herself among her teenage cousins. She's hanging out with them and they're not annoyed by her presence. She's also old enough to be responsible, not get lost on beach walks, stay hydrated, not drown, etc. I'm sorry to say that what interaction I've had with her has been mighty sassy on her part. Trying to save face in front of these same teenage cousins, I guess.

Bean has needed, as usual, a lot of entertainment and Sweet P has needed me. A lot. Like, nursing half the night and miserable whenever I put her down during the day. I am exhausted. On vacation!

This is one beach trip I won't be sorry to see over, however much cat barf there is to clean up or laundry to do at home when we return.

Beach quickie

I'm sneaking in a quick blog post here while I nurse the baby (to sleep, I hope!) and supervise Bean's settling in for a nap (which isn't looking very settled at the moment). We're all three in our shared beach house bedroom on Topsail Island, NC for our annual clan convergence. Ratio of children to adults--11:6.

It's a chocolate chip cookie snarfing, hot tub splashing, thunderous overhead porch stomping, sandy pocket emptying, no-more-than-2-sodas-a-day-please saying, giant lunch cooking, wet floor wiping, shrimp peeling, watermelon seed spitting, close-that-door! shouting, I-SAID-no-more-than-2-sodas! reminding, wet towel hanging, kid skin sunscreening kind of vacation.

Pictures to come, I hope, if I can remember where I packed that damn USB cable...