Motherhood - or - Forgetting your deodorant and saying shit a lot

Motherhood has been messy lately.  And I don't mean that in some emotionally frilly way - I mean it quite literally.  It feels like every ten minutes of every single day I am busy cleaning up something.  And I have to admit, it's hard not to loose my cool after mess #8, because there are only so many spills or accidents I can take before it gets to me.  The diapers, the "leak-proof" sippy cups that make milk puddles on my carpet, and runny noses and picking up dirty socks for the millionth time.

Jacob threw his plate on the floor with great force this week.  Some nights, dinner is great and he eats and laughs and is a complete joy.  Others, he only eats ketchup, screams at me, and throws his mashed potatoes on the floor to emphasize how displeased he is with both me and my dinner selection.

Tommy somehow had an accident with his applesauce that somehow resulted in my hall closet door being covered with it.  I don't even know how this happened.  Also, stepping in applesauce is a real treat for your toes.

Jacob ripped up daddy's Hunter's Almanac because I had the nerve to go to the bathroom and didn't see he had it.  And there I was all giddy that I was peeing alone.  Silly me.

For some reason, I take pictures of these things.  I even add a filter for who-knows-why.  Maybe it's so I can remember that I lived through them.  Or so I can remember that this season of life was always so much more than smiley boys and Chuck E. Cheese outings.  And probably in all of my memory-keeping and tucking away of moments, I want to remember the hard things just as much as the good.

We have been attempting to get in some kind of new groove the last few weeks, but I can't exactly say it's going well.  With my new schedule, I go in to work earlier (hello 5:30am wake up call!), but I am off when Tommy gets out of school.  That was something I always desired when I had kids - to be home when they were done with school.  Our time in the afternoon is now filled with homework of mostly reading and writing and trying to entertain Jacob at the same time that I'm giving instructions on how to properly make the humps in the letter "m" or that the number "6" doesn't have any straight lines.  I've attempted to clean my bathrooms or fold some laundry some days, but that has seemed senseless when there are applesauce accidents and and 18-month old who you have to constantly remind that Legos or foam darts or leftover food from the dining room that mommy hasn't picked up yet are things he shouldn't be trying to eat.

This morning as I left with Jacob on my hip to drop him off at his daycare place, I was thinking I had something together.  I remembered his bag and diapers and he had milk and his blanket.  I had my lunch packed and super healthy breakfast smoothie made.  I grabbed my bills to be dropped in the mail and was feeling organized and on top of things because I had somehow remembered everything and packed everything and made it out of the door on time.  I was maybe getting the hang of all of this.

It was then I realized I totally forgot to put deodorant on.  Shit.

I know I should give myself a break, and I do most of the time.  But some days I am a mess.  Some days, like this one, I say shit more than others.  I get discouraged by my inability to do it all as well as I'd like to.  There is little time for me to sit and write and or talk to God and read and pray and I wonder how on earth I am supposed to keep pouring out when there is so little being poured back in to my own heart and soul.  Some days I feel overwhelmed with my role, as if I am going to be consumed by motherhood.  I get lost in it.  And most days, especially lately, I feel like I'm sucking at it because I lose my shit in front of the boys time and again and I'm having to constantly go back on a daily basis to Tommy and apologize to him for losing my shit. Except I don't see shit.

Like any bad day, I know this will pass.  Things will even out and we will get used to homework and applesauce spills and perhaps I will make peace with all that is left undone and in a mess around me.  But today isn't that day. 

Today I am overwhelmed.  And I'm starting to smell.