The one constant about parenting, is that your life/goals/challenges/successes/failures are always changing. Life for a parent ebbs and flows as your children learn new skills, tackle new problems, and generally change as human beings. So as parents, we’ve all experienced the mountain peaks of joy as well as the valleys of despair….but what about life in the middle?
I’ve been stuck in a rut in the middle for a few months now. I’m not complaining about my life, it’s going along fairly well with the usual bumps. As a parent right now, I’m feeling so uninspired.
But I’ve got nothing! I don’t have any fun new project to talk about because, honestly, all of my projects around the house have been eating me alive for about six months now. I still have my Christmas candles and throw pillows around the house in mid-April. I can’t seem to finish anything that I start. I don’t have a fun new approach to handling my difficult child because I’m barely maintaining the day-to-day peace around here. The sibling bickering is getting to my very soul and driving me nearly insane. I feel like a brittle twig ready to snap at the next “She hit me!”
I don’t have any fun new artsy craftsy idea that my kids are loving because, seriously, the artist inside me had a stroke when the kids took markers to the furniture a few months ago. I don’t have any fun cleaning hacks, the dust bunnies are taking over and life with children has turned my walls a lovable gray. I haven’t discovered any fun new local places to go with my children because the thought of dragging three children somewhere unknown and it being an utter failure is too overwhelming to me. As a result, I’m so fatigued with the thought of hunger complaints, public tantrums and vomit, that I’ve currently lost the ability to be an explorer. So we just go to the Aquarium or the Library every…single…week. I’ve become so blah.
I’m still doing all the good parenting work of feeding the people, playing with the people and shuttling the people to their activities and hosting playdates. We are a (mostly) happy family and we’ve thoroughly enjoyed our winter together as a snow-loving ski family. There’s simply no creativity in my parenting rut right now. We eat the same foods, go to the same restaurants, watch the same movies….it’s all just boring status quo lately. I have nothing interesting to blog about!
And I’ve decided that all of this is okay! It’s okay to be status quo and surviving every day life with children. At the end of the day, they are still alive and they know they are loved. I used to be imaginative and fun! So I know it’s in there! Life will circle back around, I’ll find inspiration one day and we’ll do some epic art projects. I’ll find the time to tick off some household projects and feel less buried by piles of crap around the house.
One beautiful day, we will be explorers again who are ready to try new things as a family! Just not today. Probably not this week. But it will happen. I have faith in the ebb and flow of parent life. The kids will grow older, learn better ways of getting along, and I will be less on edge. I hope to all that is mighty in the universe, my middle one will grow a stomach of steel and stop vomiting on anything that moves.
For now though, I think that in an effort to embrace my uninspired self, I’m going to try to read my book and take a nap on the couch, while the children launch Duplos at each other and color on the walls. Maybe it will get better now that Spring is here?
