Showering

My life has become all about how long I can stay in the shower before someone needs me.  I don't dare shower while I'm home alone with the kids.  Any mother who is home alone nightly with small children will tell you that you cannot shower while they are running around the house.  In the time that it takes me to shower, my children would ransack the toy room, draw all over the computer monitor, feed the dogs 20 milkbones a piece, and eat every last chocolate chip cookie in the kitchen.  So I wait until they are asleep to shower.  But this plan still doesn't always work - invariable I will be all soapy and warm and hear a heart-wrenching "Mooooommmmmmm!!!!" only to hurry up and half rinse off, grab my robe, run upstairs...and find that they're already back to sleep.  And tonight, as I was finishing up my shower, I heard someone pushing on the bathroom door.  Of course, my mind immediately leaps to the serial killer that I just know is out there.  I calm down, reassuring myself that if someone came in the house the dogs would bark.  The dogs bark if someone walks down the sidewalk and looks at the house, so I'm pretty sure they'd bark if someone actually came inside.  So I finish my shower, get out, and open the door...only to discover that it's the dog that wants in the bathroom.  So even when the kids manage to sleep all of the way through my shower, the dog apparently can't.  That's when I realized that my life has been reduced to seeing how long I can actually take an uninterrupted shower.  And maybe, someday, I'll actually be able to take a nice, long, relaxing bath.  Hey, a mom can dream, right?

Messy house, happy kids

I used to take a lot of grief from my husband’s mother about the fact that they would come over and my house would be messy, there would be dishes in the sink, etc.  I don’t take grief about it anymore because they don’t come over much and if they do have anything to say about it I just say that it’s none of their business and won’t listen to it.  But I don’t understand why their house was never messy when the kids were growing up.  My house is messy because I like to spend time doing things with my kids.  For example, this summer we would eat supper outside a lot and then they would want me to push them on the swings or play on the trampoline with them.  According to my mother-on-law’s thinking I should clean up the patio, go inside and do the dishes, clean the stove, etc. first.  By the time I would finish with all of that there would be no time left to play with the kids.  So how can I say no to my kids?  When the kids want me to lay in their beds with them and read another book or three to them when I should be downstairs cleaning the house – how can I say no?  I truthfully believe that when the kids are older they won’t remember if the dishes were done or if the floor was swept, but they will remember that their mom took the time to play with them, to read to them, or to just spend time with them.  They will remember that they were important to me, and I believe that is the most important thing of all.