Sanity

Mine is slowly seeping away. Seriously. I am just about to throw in the towel. My house is an absolute disaster. The laundry is never ending. The “to-do” list has about 8,539 items on it and we can’t seem to get any of it done.

We are not the only ones with 2 young children. And I know that my friends’ houses don’t look like mine. How do you all do it? By the time I get home in the evenings and get the kids fed, bathed and off to bed, I am exhausted. Brian and I usually eat some kind of crappy fast food and then I fall asleep on the couch while we try to watch TV. We can’t seem to get anything done on the weekends either. If anything, one of us can do a little chore here and there as long as both kids don’t need attention. We try to get Rylie out of the house at least for a little bit both days and do something fun with her. Because even though the mess in my house drives me crazy, spending quality time with my children is way more important to me. Unfortunately their nap times never seem to coincide, so we both can’t even work then. Thank goodness I have someone that cleans my house every 2 weeks, so at least the showers, toilets, etc. stay clean!

I’m embarrassed to have anyone come to the house. The dining room table is piled high with bags from recent shopping trips, toys from Rylie’s birthday party that I want to put away for a few months for when she gets bored with everything she has now, and whatever happens to get thrown on it when we walk in the front door. There are toys everywhere, but that I can deal with. We have kids, I’ll live with the toys all over the house. The guest room is full of tubs of Rylie’s old clothes, baby stuff that Bryce isn’t quite ready for, boxes of stuff that could possibly be sold in a yard sale if we were somehow able to find time to ever have one, and whatever else we need “hidden” in there. All of the Christmas decorations still sit in the game room, along with the pool table that we REALLY need to get rid of (is anyone interested????). Even if I had time to start working on the house I wouldn’t know where to begin.

We don’t have time to really cook in the evenings. Hell, we don’t even have time to get to the grocery store on a regular basis. Some nights we make spaghetti (Rylie’s new favorite dinner) or get a rotisserie chicken and cook up some vegetables. On those nights we all eat together. Other nights we cook something up for Rylie like fish sticks, chicken nuggets, mac n cheese, etc. and we eat after the kids go to bed. I really need some meal ideas because Brian and I are getting way too fat, and Rylie needs more of a variety. She doesn’t eat much at night, but the nights that we all eat together she definitely eats more, so I really want to make family dinner something we do every night.

And then there’s the computer. Thank goodness for my phone or I would never be able to email anyone or feed my Facebook addiction. The only time I really have to write here is during my lunch at work. I used to visit a message board about toddlers, but I haven’t looked at it in a while because I finally realized how immature most of it was and all it did was annoy me. But I would see these stay at home moms on there ALL.DAY.LONG. I always wondered how they were home with a kid or two or three and were able to be on the computer so much. Do these women put their kids behind a gate and just let them entertain themselves all day while they play high school games on a message board? (But somehow I bet their houses don’t look like a tornado came through like mine does!) And the working moms seemed to be on all evening long after they get home from work. Do they not spend any time with their kids? When I am home with my kids, there is no way I am able to get online. I might respond to a status update on Facebook through my phone here and there, or reply quickly to an email, but that is it.

And not only are there the things I NEED to do, there are things I WANT to do also. Like catch up on the kids’ baby books, get some pictures up around the house of our wedding and the kids, and paint some rooms so the house isn’t “primer white” anymore. Oh yeah, and I need to lose like 40 pounds too. If only there were about 10 more hours in each day, maybe I could carve out some time to exercise.

I just don’t know what to do anymore. Do I just give up and let this stuff go for the next couple of years until my kids are old enough to play unattended for a little bit? Because I’m at the end of my rope. Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids and we have an awesome life. I wouldn’t trade my life for anyone else’s. It is just this stuff that is driving me crazy. It feels good to get this out, and hopefully some of you can tell me how you manage it all. I am open to comments, emails, FB messages, whatever, if anyone has any helpful suggestions for me. And thanks for reading this. I promise I won’t have many posts like this. I’ll be back to my regularly scheduled blogging about the kids tomorrow.