Balancing Act

Blogging is the last thing I need to be doing right now, but I just need to take a minute to clear my head. 

I have issues.  I have a horrible need for perfection.  I am (or should I say, was) a bit OCD when it comes to things.  I desperately want a clean house.  I want everything to be in the specific space I designated for it.  I want to make gourmet meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  I want to sit down once a week and plan out menus and go to the grocery store and get everything on my list.  I want to have a perfectly manicured lawn with beautiful flowers that I remember to water every day. Oh and a vegetable garden would be perfect too.  I want to leave the house looking like a real human.  I want to take a shower every morning, put on clean clothes, and do my hair and makeup.  I want to scrapbook beautiful scrapbooks of my beautiful baby, so I can have perfectly documented evidence of my wonderful life.  I want to do things with real people, and go real places and have real human interaction.  I want the baby to go to bed at a reasonable bed time so I can spend some quality time relaxing with my husband.  I want to work out every day and have a smokin' hot body.  Most of all, I want to be the best damn mommy that ever walked the face of the earth.

I am really falling short of all of my expectations.

My house isn't even close to clean.  Our back yard?  Hasn't been mowed in like 2 weeks (or longer).  The one basket of flowers I have is pretty much dead because I've remembered to water it like twice.  Our vegetable garden is non-existent.  I'm lucky to get a shower every day.  If I do, it's rarely before noon.  And if it's before noon, it's with a baby in the shower with me, clinging to my leg, or outside of the shower door tearing the bathroom apart or crying.  When I leave the house, I am not put together, my hair is thrown back in a pony tail and I have just enough makeup on to try to cover the bags under my eyes and enough mascara on to hopefully make my eyes look somewhat awake.  I don't have any scrapbooks (or even regular photo albums) started of Lyla, and she is 16 months old (thank goodness I have millions of pictures, because EVENTUALLY I will get to that).  I've worked out maybe 7 times since Lyla was born.  My body?  Obviously NOT smokin' hot.  I grocery shop every few weeks, when I can muster up the courage to take busy-body Lyla to the store with me.  I don't have a meal plan, my list is a few scribbles on the back of an old receipt that I quickly made in the parking lot, and I run through the store grabbing the first few things I see and quickly get out of the store before Lyla can throw the eggs out of the cart and create a scene.  Our meals are whatever I can hurriedly throw together while Lyla is clinging to my leg, tearing the kitchen apart, or crying.  Lyla doesn't go to bed at a reasonable hour and there is rarely quiet quality time spent with my husband because he is a farmer.  He works sun up to sundown 7 days a week. 

I get it.  I'm a mom now, things are not going to be perfect.  Not even close to perfect.  But really?  I swear other people are managing better than this.  I see beautifully written blogs (or quick facebook posts) about how other stay at home moms are doing it.  They make real meals!  They do fun things with their kids!  They scrapbook!  And workout!!!  They get to see their husbands after normal business hours!  They do family things together on the weekends! 

Yes, I'm jealous, and no, I'm not trying to throw a pity party.  But today was a bad day.  I felt like I was dangerously teetering on the edge of sanity.  I won't go into details, but I certainly didn't do anything crazy and no one was hurt.  But I definitely don't like the way it felt.

Yesterday Lyla had a 15 minute car nap all day, and today I was determined that she would take a good nap at home, and I would get real stuff done during that time.  That meant we weren't leaving the house until after her nap today.  By the time 3 o'clock rolled around, and Lyla hadn't napped yet (refused to nap, I should say), and I hadn't brushed my teeth or showered all day (gross), I decided that if I didn't shower and brush my teeth at that EXACT second I would lose my mind.  So that's exactly what I did.  I jumped in the shower and took a lightning-quick shower while Lyla cried outside the shower door, and of course I cried even harder while I took my shower.  So that's what it came to.  I was finally clean, but I felt far from better.  I felt like the worst mommy in the world.  

I got out of the shower, scooped her up and gave her a million kisses and she collapsed in my arms and fell asleep.

So here I am.   Bad mommy of the world.  I have a bazillion things to do while she naps but here I am blogging about being a bad mommy. 

I love my job as a (mostly) stay at home mom.  I love my child more than anything in the world.  And I'm managing the best I can.

But I'm really interested to know how others are managing better than me.  Please advise.