Feeling Tired and Inadequate

I LOVE being a mom. I've wanted to be a mom ever since I was really little. I distinctly remember telling my family that I wanted to have twelve kids. At the same time, my sister and my best friend were scheming about how they were going to become multi-billionaires. I happily took their joshing about how I was going to live next door in a "little white house with a white picket fence." That's really all I wanted.

Still is.

But life gets so BUSY. Sometimes I feel like I'm not doing a very good job. Cause there are too many JOBS!

I go from play practice. To soccer. To church. To preschool. To basketball. Somewhere in there I homeschool. Teach kids' classes. Teach continuing ed for teachers.

And all my littlest boy really wants to do is to sit on the couch and read a book with me. Or two. Or five. Or twenty.

You'll laugh when you hear about where the most effective homeschooling is going on for my 8yo right now. In a parking lot. At preschool. Two mornings a week, we are both captured in the minivan for 2.5 hours while the little guy is at preschool. So we intensely do schoolwork. No computers. No cell phones. No interruptions except for a 10 minute recess break with the preschoolers when it's not otherwise raining.

I'm doing what I always wanted to do.

Serious. So serious.

But I feel tired and inadequate.

Anyone else?

This job ain't for sissies.

P.S. I'm reading Katie Funk Wiebe's book, You Never Game Me a Name: One Mennonite Woman's Story. In it, she talks about the struggle between traditional woman's work and work outside the home. Just after I finished writing this blog entry, I read "In the decades after World War II, stay-at-home moms (and there weren't many of the other kind) were encouraged to clean, polish, and launder with a different product for each task. I had extra time after I finished my housecleaning duties, but that extra time, according to popular thinking, should be used in the home in some way, cleaning and re-cleaning and re-laundering something even if it wasn't dirty."

Just want to say... lately I don't have time to clean something once, let alone twice. And I'm very happy that I DO have the option to do all these varied tasks. Nothing like a little reminder about how few choices there once were to remind me how grateful I am to be busy. If tired. And inadequate. ;)