Barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen

I’m feeling pressure to blog something again, because it’s the last day of August!  The whole summer has just zipped by!  I will “try” to catch up on some of the fun details (our vacation) and not so fun details (the move) later, but for now, I feel like I should focus on the present.  I’m hoping the next 2 months of my life will be titled “barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.”  (after I finish unpacking anyway…).  That’s right, I’m going to revel in my new found domestic role, a role I’ve never really played before, at least in the solo form. 

I feel really lucky actually, to be able to take a few months away from work.  I feel like I’ve never had that option before, that I’ve rushed from one experience to the next to the next (sometimes overlapping experiences like going back to work when Asher was just 2 weeks old).  But the truth is that all of those things were my choice, and now I recognize I have (and have always had) the ability to make changes, it just doesn’t happen overnight!  So I am lucky that my husband was willing to support me in this endeavor to stay at home for several months and really get to be a mom and a wife.

Something I’ve realized already is that I’m not particularly good at it (the domestic thing), and so it is going to require some effort on my part.  It is sort of a scheduling nightmare to get everyone where they are supposed to be on time, appropriately dressed and groomed and with the right homework and such.  Also, everyone needs to be fed at what seems like a constant pace, requiring repeated meal preparation and clean up.  Then there is the mess making, sibling fighting, and general “kid issues” that take place.  And cap it off with laundry, which there is always more of every day!   So there are all of these demands laid on top of a fairly wide open schedule (which gives the illusion that it should be easy to fit it all in) but in reality there is very little free time.  Put on top of all of that my own emotional baggage and fatigue and all that and most days I’m happy to make it to the end!

 

So now that sounds kind of bad, like again I don’t have a choice, but I’m realizing each day I DO have a choice and I just have to exercise it more.  I’m working on getting our schedule more organized so less time is wasted so that I can carve out my own free time.  And I’m also trying to find some tasks that fill more than one need at a time (I enjoy baking and cooking so I’m trying to use this as an opportunity to try new recipes and stuff).  Today, for example, I experienced the joy of blanching, peeling and chopping fresh peaches for my plan to make little individual peach pies that I can put in everyone’s lunch.  It was actually fun, and while I’m not sure that my kids really understand that making little pies from scratch is a way to show I love and care about them, at least it will fulfill one of the many times a day that they require food.

I’m looking at the whole thing as a fun little experiment.  Sadly one without a paycheck.  Hopefully I won’t forget how to be a doctor, and maybe, if I’m lucky I can learn to be a better mom.