Mothering two

If you are a follower of my blog, you must thank my mother, who is my greatest cheerleader when it comes to writing in this forum.  She is increasingly impressed by my writing and is convinced I need to write a book about staying at home, raising children, and bilingual education (this is from the same person who would read my emails while in college with a pen and paper and correct my grammar, then email me back with all her "suggestions").  All this to say, her words are a huge compliment.  Thanks momma! 

On that note, in response to her encouragement, thought I would spend some time again writing about what life is like these days in our household.  

I'll start off with this -- life is much, much better than last time I wrote on this topic.  Still hard, but much better.

My day normally starts off with LB waking up around 6:30 am.  I nurse him, and depending on how ambitious I am feeling, I either keep him up until his morning nap, or put him back to sleep.  Emma gets out of bed at 7:15 am, thanks to this light-clock-- the greatest invention EVER!

Breakfast, along with it's huge mess-- including peanut putter all over the table and chair, and crumbs all over the floor-- is finished.  We say bye-bye to daddy and soon after is LB's morning nap.  Put him to sleep and Emma begins her "beep beep time"-- which is 30 minutes of quiet time in her room while mommy takes a shower and gets ready.  It's called "beep beep time" because she knows it ends when the iPad timer goes off, making a "beep beep" sound.  As a reward to this time, she gets to watch 30 minutes of a cartoon.  All in all, this gives me one hour of down time to get ready, clean the kitchen, put a load in the laundry, and have my quiet time if I haven't had it earlier that morning.  

One of the things I have slowly had to learn since becoming a mother of two is that I need to have priorities.  What is more important -- the get out of the house and go places, or for my children to nap together and thus have some down time?  I quickly learned that I cannot do both, so I have opted to stay home all day unless something "social" comes our way (lunch with friends on Fridays, or playdates).  Otherwise, the only time I now allow myself to get out of the house is in the afternoons after nap time, which is almost every afternoon, unless it's raining or one of the children is having the meltdown of a lifetime (which happens more often than not).

Being a mother of two, all while staying sane all at the same time, is an art!  Getting your children to nap together should be an olympic sport.  Bed time routine a one-hour ordeal.

I do get discouraged, and more often than not, much to my husband's disappointment, I feel like walking out on it all-- to take a vacation of all my duties for just a week, one week!-- the laundry, the folding, the cooking, the shopping, the cleaning, the breastfeeding, the potty-going, the diaper-changing, the spit-up cleaning, the doctor-calling, the household-running...

...This is why I've been reading so much since Byron's birth (and thus neglecting this blog) -- I think I've read a dozen books since his birth.  Reading allows me to escape and enter a different world.  Whatever free time I have is oftentimes spent with my nose in a book.  Don't get me wrong, I love it, and it certainly helps me cope with the mundane!  But I do certainly hope the rest of my life is not spent "running away" from my life.

I told my sister the other day that one of my greatest fears in life is to not make my children my priority.  The fear of choosing my success, my interests and my comfort over their simplest of needs. Learning to live in spite of that fear, yet being motivated by it without it becoming an idol, is what I am trying to learn to do...