As a working mom whose husband also works, I save my PTO for vacations with the family. However, it was the first week of June and I haven’t had a day off since Christmas. Our house was a mess. Between the rain and the warmer weather, we haven’t been spending much time indoors and when we did, the dog and the kids would track mud everywhere. My plan of action, take a day off work and just “straighten up the house”. I scheduled said day to be a Friday. I was giddy with excitement. A full day, just me, to clean the house and get some errands done. I had a lot on my to-do list. So like any other day, I woke up and dropped the kids off at their sitters around 8 am. After arriving back home I decide to make some coffee to start this day. As I sat there drinking my coffee and staring at my list, I contemplated what to start on first. All of a sudden a state of confusion came over me and I suddenly felt lost. My thought for taking the day off was to get something done that I can’t when the kids are here but all the items on my to-do list (dishes, laundry, carpet clean, gardening) were things I’ve been doing for years with the kids around. I started contemplating what my intuition told me to do in that moment. My mind went to a place to ditch my original to-do list and seek out true activities that I can’t do with children or that I simply don’t do with children, like go to the mall. My heart though, led me to another intuition. Go and spend the day with your children.
It’s funny how as moms we always seem to be busy and always seem to have a million things on our to-do list. I always talk about how much I want to get done or need to get done. But what I truly ever want in life is more time with my children. I constantly find myself missing them when I leave them for the day at the sitters or for the night at Grandmas. My mind simply doesn’t know how to switch from cooking dinner with children to cooking dinner without children. My soul feels empty when they are not around and that same task I have to complete with kids feels like a task I physically can’t complete sans kids. Even sleeping, which is weird, is hard for me. My body is so use to my daughter waking me up in the middle of the night that even when she’s not there, I wake up and can’t go back to sleep. God has truly blessed me with these children and I am realizing over time that as hard as it is realizing the limited amount of free time you have as a mom, it’s that job of being a mom is where and when I’m truly the happiest.
My husband came home that day and nothing on my list was done, well except the dishes because I needed a clean sippy cup. The kids and I spent the day at the pool. We brought lunch, played in the sand area and met some new friends. This day was better than anything I could have imagined. Time with my children and time that we both will always cherish. The dishes will eventually get done, the laundry too but the moments you make with your children are the lasting impressions that matter to me.
Do you ever have these moments where you have a large list of to-do’s but all you can think about is making lasting memories with your children? Do you also struggle to complete tasks when the kids aren’t around? For some reason I get less accomplished with them gone than I do with them around. Funny how moms are wired.
