Some Days Are Better Than Others

Sometimes I feel like I am completely on my game. The house is picked up. - I've planned a healthy weekly menus for the family.- I get outside with the boys to exercise. - Work is exhausting but fulfilling and I leave on time knowing that I've finished my list for the day. These days are rare, but they do exist, somewhere.

Most of the time for me in my little world I'm pretty good at doing some of the above items. The last few weeks with work have been particularly stressful as we are down a manager and I'm doing double duty. But since my kitchen remodel is 95% complete I've been spending lots of time cooking. I love spending time in the kitchen. I found this amazing blog a few weeks ago and this past weekend made some wonderful cream biscuits and some amazing sweet potato pound cake that we're still munching on. So work is a little crappy but I'm on a roll in the kitchen. Somehow these things seem to even themselves out.

My children, on the other hand, aren't so simple to figure out. Some times they are the sweetest things in the world and make me laugh and smile constantly. Other days, they seem to test me at every turn. I'm having one of the ladder weeks with them so far. For example, tonight Owen asked to take a bath and I let him. I am trying to give him a little bit of freedom and when I go back into the bathroom to check on him he has filled the tub almost to the point of over flowing. (What's that old say, "when you give them an inch and they'll take a mile"?) Ellis has adopted the very annoying habit of meowing like a cat every time he sees me. Yes, I'll admit it was cute the first 50 times he did it, but now when he wakes up in the morning I would really just like a good morning kiss and not a meow and a lick on my cheek.

I know this all sounds silly, and to some degree it is. I'm thankful that I don't have bigger issues to worry about with my boys, but honestly, they are exhausting. I feel like between the two of them I am constantly fussing at someone for misbehaving. I write this now because I feel like I read so many happy comments from parents about childhood. Even the bits I've read where the parents are annoyed with their children they somehow turn the story into a sit com bit and the humor masks the underlying frustration.

So, here it is out there for everyone to read. I'll admit that some days, being a parent and a wife is really hard and I wish I didn't have this much pressure and responsibility. Yes, this is the life I have chosen to live, but sometimes it's hard, and sometimes I wonder what the hell I was thinking. And so, I confess, some days are better than others.