So Unbalanced

Posted on November 9, 2011 - Filed Under Homeschool, Mom Stuff, Personal | 3 International Amigos Said

Being a mom is hard. Being a work at home mom is pretty tough, too. Add in homeschooling, special dietary quirks and pregnancy and . . . well, it’s kind of a mess. These days, I feel pretty darn unbalanced when it comes to life/work/mommyhood.

Every day, I wake up, thinking great things will happen today. Today, I WILL shower myself AND the kids and sort wheat and make homemade pizza and get those boys through the addition tables and finish up all my assignments EARLY! And then the nausea hits and I think, “Ok, maybe I’ll work from bed today. Just until this stomach thing calms down.”

And then I open my laptop, as I sit propped up on pillows on the bed and check my email and discover six urgent rewrites to do on projects I thought were finished. On top of the three projects that are due today. And my stomach does a little flip and I look at the stacks of addition paperwork and wonder if I can do it all.

The simple answer? I can’t.

But there are some shortcuts that I can take.

1. I try to grind wheat at night, just before the kids head to bed. Then around 9 pm, I fire up the oven and make something yummy and nutritious like squash or banana or papaya bread. That warms up the house nicely and makes it smell great.

2. I really do try to take nights off. And bits of weekends. Irving and I watch one of our shows or I write on one of my own projects while sorting wheat.

3. We go out sometimes, right in the middle of a work day. Right now, my work days are kinda 8-4 because of a job I’m doing, so I have a lot less freedom than before, but I still get a lunch break! So we head into town and eat at a cheap cafe and talk and have fun and then we come home again, happy to have had the break.

4. I do a lot of printables these days. The boys can sit near me and do these while I’m working and I can keep an eye on them.

5. Meals are simple affairs that don’t need much fussing. Forget food that you actually have to pay attention to! I make pizza dough around 10 am, let it rise while I’m working, then I prepare the ingredients while the dough is toughing it out in the oven. The boys help me add the ingredients (Dante is very particular about how much cheese goes on his pizza, so he can control that himself) and we stick it in the oven while I head back to work. Ta dah! Tasty, healthy lunch and maybe 10 minutes invested. Suppers are frequently soups or beans with tortillas.

6. We make the most of weekends. I have more free time on weekends, since my normal job doesn’t interfere much, so we actually do a lot more school on weekends because it works! That’s when our crafts and science experiments happen and we just let a couple of weekdays serve as time off instead.

Even so, things are pretty nuts right now. I foolishly keep thinking it will all calm down when the baby arrives, but really, who am I kidding? That’s just adding more chaos to the chaos! But at least I won’t be sick to my stomach anymore.