Confessions of a Grump

I haven't been very fun to live with lately. I finally have a couple of weeks to enjoy with my family, and I'm finding that it's hard to learn to slow down. The result. I'm a grump.

I try to blame the four foot by five foot holes in my walls (Brandon just finished my beautiful laundry room cupboards, and now he is itching for more sawdust. So, we're getting new windows. I should be happy, but I can't use my bathroom because it's covered in sheet rock, and he didn't even move the clean laundry before he began attacking my wall!). Yeah, I could blame that, but I think it's me.

I think that I have allowed the pace of life to become so extraordinary that I get antsy when I have a day just for rest. I see all of the things I need to catch up with, and I know I can't fit them all in. How do women prioritize? Because I couldn't decide where to start I reverted to my old coping mechanism and READ. I gave myself permission to read a 972 page novel since all I've been reading lately are research studies. That won't happen again. I completely ignored my family. It's a wonder I bathed before I finished it. Next, I organized my closet. But I got distracted before I finished, so we're worse off than we started. I baked cookies. That was fun. But Anali couldn't help me because she wouldn't clean her peas off the floor.

Today, I put Anali in a timeout four times before I realized how completely ineffective I was being and how she is two, and of course she doesn't want to pick up the thirty peas she poured on the kitchen floor because her dollhouse is calling, and she wants me to read her a book. Then, I stopped and looked at her and realized that I had been with her all day but not with her. Asher, too. I tended to Asher's needs and tried to get him to smile every hour, but I wasn't making him a priority. I was waiting for nap time.

As I was putting my babies to bed tonight, I got it. I miss them. I miss being with them without listing in my head all of the things I'm supposed to be doing.

I'm grumpy because I've forgotten how to just be. I've been plowing through each day in survival mode, and I've forgotten how to look at my husband and appreciate that he thinks our bathroom needs more light. And I've forgotten how to hold my tongue (Let's pretend I once knew!), so I speak my mind, and I'm not often thoughtful enough about what he is doing right.

Maybe this is normal for mothers. I think it must be. To become so caught up in seeing to basic needs that we don't see to those other equally important needs. To see the crumbs on the counter and not the flowers in the vase. And get grumpy.

Well, cut it out for crying out loud! The whiny-bed-wetter-nag-woman stops here!

I love being a mother. And I love being a wife (Six years next Sunday!). So I'd better stop being a grump or saying "I love you" to my family won't mean much. I'm going to practice slowing down and loving well. Ask me how it's going.