Overwhelmed

This month marks my two year "anniversary" of being a stay at home mom.

Happy anniversary to meee!

I've often written about how much I love being here for the children and caring for them and Ian, cooking and that I don't mind housework.

GASP!! Did I admit that??

Ok, you got me. The housework part was a bit of a white lie.

Anyway, my point is that I'm happy here. But yesterday? Not so much.

Having a puppy is like having a baby. A really demanding, extremely small bladder-ed, whimpering, and chewing baby. We were not surprised by this. We knew that these first few months would stretch us.

For the first week Willow was home with us we let him sleep in our bed because we figured he'd be scared and lonely for his Mama. He was quite happy to sleep right between us and would wake me around 4am by chewing on my hair or my arm.

Do you know how wild your dreams can turn when there is an outside force chewing on you? Oh yeah, they go wild pretty fast. Then when I would be in that half asleep/half awake state I would think something was eating me. I might have even shouted "Something's eating me!" once or twice. Yeah, so we've evicted him from our bed and now crate him at night. But his whimpering and barking wakes the baby, so now we're tag-teaming between baby-duty and puppy-duty.

Dudes...we are tired.

All that to say that yesterday I did not enjoy my stay-at-home life. Yesterday I was resentful about having to pick up after people who leave their things around with the expectation that someone (ME!) would pick them up. I get that it's my job to clean and maintain the house, but Mama ain't nobody's maid. I was tired of hearing the children bickering, the puppy piddling, the baby screeching, laundry procreating constantly, etc...etc...

I had reached my limit.

So, one mischievous puppy, one active toddler + two school aged children bickering = one crabby Mama. I was feeling so cross that I took Willow out and we sat on the porch.

Yep. I put myself in Time-Out. Trust me...it was necessary.

I was sitting there, Willow curled around my feet, my head hanging and tears threatening to fall.

Then she came along.

She being "J". She was just walking around the neighbourhood, not having been up to my end of the street since she'd moved in. She said hello and came up to my porch to pet Willow. We introduced ourselves and I invited her to sit down. We ended up talking for about 40 minutes.

I cannot tell you what this was like for me. I don't do small talk. I don't really engage in conversation with my neighbours all that much. I was out there, trying to cool off before losing it on everyone still inside...and she came along like a gift.

When she was leaving, she said she never does this, she never makes small talk because she just can't do it, but she really felt prompted to stop and talk to me. I told her she was a true blessing for me that night. I almost hugged her, but I figured that I probably talked her ear off because I was so grateful for adult conversation, so I spared her from my creepy grateful affection.

Between that and a trip to Michaels with Julie, yesterday ended pretty well.

Jordan wouldn't stay asleep last night and I had to hold her in order for her to sleep. It was 4am before I was able to leave her in her crib and go to bed.

Still tired, still overwhelmed, and still thankful to be here.

It was like everything aligned today at 12:01pm. Jordan fell asleep, Willow fell asleep, and you guessed it...I fell asleep. Sweet.

I woke up to see Jordan looking at me from her playpen, she grinned at me then dragged her hand across her neck in the you're dead motion, and laughed.

Love her.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to bake something to take over to my new neighbour-friend.