A Working Mama's Whine

What came first? The (working) mom or the messy house?

I'm really trying to find balance in my homemaking role, and it's hard. I work full time, and my son works his little diaper-clad butt off each day in school (he uses up SO much energy just doing daily things, let alone his multiple therapy sessions). When we get home, it's time for dinner and then a few hours of together time. For me, this time is best spent with my child because I don't see him during the day.

But I'm tired. He's tired. We both just want to hang.

Sure, we go to the park or take a bike ride. We play outside. We work on colors or shapes. At least once a week we head over to the botanical gardens or a much cooler park. But the honest truth is that my son really just wants my complete attention while he winds down. This can be while watching his music show or while he is playing with kitchen utensils or walking backwards a la Michael Jackson. But the key is that he wants my attention.

I know my 2.5 year old should be more independent than he is. He's not crippled by needing me, but he certainly is attention-spoiled and would like to keep it that way. I like spending time with him, I like being wanted and needed.

But I don't like the fact that I can't easily even think about fold a load of laundry or do the dishes or mop the floor until after 8:30 pm.

Because I'll be honest, after working all day and being a bit on the lazy side, at that point I am not feeling it.

Being a working mama is hard. Not to say being a stay at home mom isn't just as hard, but being a mother in general seems to be a challenging position. However, from my working mom position, I try to spend all the limited time I have with my boy doing things that will be good for him and good for us. I'm trying very hard to make our time together more and more substantial now that he is getting older and more aware. Appa travels during the week, so it's not like I can tag team with anyone. It's all up to moi.

Once he goes to bed, I want MY time. I need my time to stay sane. To surf the web and connect with friends, to write and read, to do adoption paperwork, to veg. The last thing I want to do with my time is clean late at night, so I usually don't.

But shocker, no one else does it for me.

Having a messy house does weird things to my head. In the summer we can get out in the evening so I can pretend there isn't a large family of dust bunnies living in our corners and something sticky underneath my table. We all have clean underwear somewhere....right?

I'm actually hiring someone to do some light cleaning for us a couple times a month, but I need to get better about figuring out a way to convince Little Bug to play nicely long enough for me to do some housekeeping things during a time when I am actually motivated to do so.

I don't want to be supermom (well, I actually would love that), but I do want to get better about balancing all the aspects of motherhood and homemaker that I have taken on in our home. My poor husband works his butt off, and I feel horrible when he comes home after a long week to loads of dirty laundry and dishes...even though his son and wife are happy. I'd like to feel a bit more balanced.

How? No idea. That's why this was a whine......