ingrid

Once upon a time we all lived on our little farms in our little villages, or maybe we had miserable little hovels in the middle of huge medieval cities.  Anyway, we lived somewhere in contact with “our people”, and I can’t help but imagine that the world might have been a little easier in some ways.  Raising children for example.

It is bizarre that the only job title that attempts to describe what I do AND that people seem to understand is “stay at home mom”.  It is bizarre because “staying at home” is little of what I actually do.  I wish sometimes that I could stay at home.  Staying at home would be a lot simpler than the crazy racing around that I do.  I often wish that I lived with three generations of family or had my sisters all next door (or one farm over as the case might be).  People who complain about not getting any freedom from their families don’t get a lot of sympathy from me.  I would like to move my parents or Brad’s parents right next door.  Freedom be damned…. I want help.

There is so much to be done and none of the schedules match.  Francis needs to be at school at 8:50am, Inez starts napping right around 9am.  Zephyr goes down for a nap at 1pm and would like to sleep until 3:30pm, but I need to wake him up at 2:45 to get Francis by 3pm.  There are chores, and diapers to be washed, food to be purchased and kids to put to bed.  My work day stretches to 9pm just to finish dishes, (as I have to jump up from the dinner table to put kids to bed).

Child number three really pushed me over the edge in many ways, but it also spurred some very healthy changes.  One change is that I actually take people up on what they offer.  When the neighbor says, “Well I can take Zephyr to the park if you want!” I actually let her.  If someone says, “I’ll walk Francis home from school whenever you need it”, I actually call and arrange that.  I try not to worry about seeming like I am taking advantage of others.  After all, they offered; I’m barely holding on here.  My job is to accept.  

I also try to accept people, rather than being all over-protective and paranoid.  No, I haven’t run criminal background checks on every mother who offers to walk my kid to school, but you know, my gut says it is okay.  My gut says that it is important—- essential to surviving right now.

Along with accepting though comes some complications.  Reciprocity makes life easier in many, many ways, but you have to store so much more in your brain, and my brain is fairly taxed from the demands of my normal life.  This week has been sort of hilarious.  Let me run it down for you:

• Tuesday I had to teach a class at Francis’ school, so I brought the kids to school where another mom watched them while I taught the class.  Bringing the kids involved packing a wagon about a mile high as I needed to bring 20 pounds of clay plus all the stuff that I fired last week.  I pulled the 70 pound wagon 6 blocks to school while carrying Inez on my back.  Ridiculous.
• Wednesday the neighbor walked Francis to school.  This gained me 20 minutes to prepare to drop Zephyr and Inez with the other neighbor for babysitting.  I spent my 4 hours free cleaning the house, washing diapers and doing the grocery shopping.  I picked up Zephyr and Inez at 1pm, then at 3pm, picked up Francis and brought the whole crew to church for religion class.  We were there until 4:45pm.  Luckily I had made dinner at 11am that day and wasn’t too stressed heading into the evening.
• I woke up at 5:30am to try to get some time to work on my teaching classes.  Ha!  I had the poor judgment to think that I could take a shower.  The kids woke up about 10 minutes after I started homework.  At t 8:00am, the neighbor dropped her son over here (she is substitute teaching today).  I walked everyone to school then returned, and tried to put Inez down for a nap.  Yet another neighbor’s 8 year old came over.  I am teaching him art lessons in trade for her putting my kids to bed on Gospel Choir nights.  I worked with him for an hour and a half.  15 minutes before he was to go, my sister came by and dropped her two boys off while she went to a doctor’s appointment.  My friend Angela stopped by to pick Zephyr up for a fun time.  I was to finish my art class, then take Inez plus my two nephews to Omsi to meet up with Zephyr and crew.  Now we are home for a quick breather (I have 5 minutes) and then I go pick up Francis and neighbor boy at school.  I have the neighbor until 4:15pm.
• Tomorrow morning the neighbor walks Francis to school again.  Oh thank God.  
• Next week I babysit for a family down the street in exchange for a future date.  I think this should go well.  My kids are pretty flexible so we are putting everyone down to bed at their house and then I will move mine back home.  All the mess is at her house!  Ha!  And she thinks I am doing her a favor!

 

I couldn’t do this without help.  I am so happy to have a community of people to work with.

Okay, five minutes are up!

In: Current musings, family, General bitchin' | | #