Balabusted

For the past six weeks, I have been doing a food challenge to try to learn more about nutrition and focus on health and fitness. Along with dietary changes, I have added a daily exercise routine and increased my daily jogs. As the saying goes “Feeling good feels great” and there is nothing truer than that. However, the saying “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” is a lie. I have never actually been “skinny” but I’m still positive that saying can’t be true. I might be able to agree with something like “Nothing tastes so good it’s worth giving up your health” but my Mom can make a lasagna that I would give up the last few weeks of my life for so maybe that’s not true either.

Nonetheless, I have been vigilantly working toward becoming healthier and while it is absolutely worth the effort, it is just that…effort -an enormous, time-consuming, and brain-stressing effort! While all of this has been going on, I have also begun some freelance work from home which has been an overall exciting experience but, like anything, it can be challenging and it requires a lot of time management to fit this in with raising a 2 & 4 year old.

I have also felt inspired to start a website that will be a resource for Moms. It’s still in the developmental stage, but I have some people much smarter than myself who are working on it with me, and I’ll be sure to keep you all in the loop when we’re up and running. I also have this really awesome blog that I’ve been posting now for two months, and I have really enjoyed the opportunity to write and share my Mom experiences. It has been a lot more fun than I expected. I think I’m hooked. Blogger For Life!

So in the past two months, I have added some great experiences into my life by doing this blog, working from home, creating a website, and focusing on my nutrition. It has really kept me busy through these cold Winter months, and it’s hard to believe that only two months ago my days were equally busy and yet none of these things were a part of my life. I kept thinking, “Wow! This is really amazing! I’m so glad to be feeling so productive, but how is this all fitting into my life?” Day after day it seemed I had somehow managed to meet the needs of my husband and children, keep up on laundry, dishes, cooking, focus on nutritional needs, do my workouts and jog, schedule time to work, bring the kids to their appointments and playdates, write my blogs, and even had time to cuddle up and watch a little TV with the hubby some nights. I was impressing myself.

AND THEN…………MY KIDS GOT SICK!!!!

We are currently in day 4 of super sick kids and everything in the world has completely fallen apart – and I will never get it back together again! I am starting to feel a little under the weather myself and I am dismayed. I think that’s the perfect word. I am completely and utterly dismayed.

I am hopeless and helpless and everything I have ever done in all my life has been wrong and has somehow brought me to this horrific, exhausting week of disarray and confusion. I am exhausted because my youngest son doesn’t sleep well when he is sick, and I’m overly concerned for him because he has been acting so out of sorts through this cold that I am stressing myself out on top of my exhaustion. Meanwhile, my oldest son, Landon, has turned 4 years old and we had a little birthday party for him which luckily, despite their sickness and cancellations of guests due to sickness, he still had a wonderful and happy day and didn’t seem to notice the crumbling world around him. My Father-in-law has come to stay with us this week to celebrate Landon’s birthday and I am ever grateful that he has been here to make it special for Landon and fight with me about how he never had vitamins when he was a kid, so I don’t need to give them to my kids. (You know I love you Bill, you should take vitamins, they’re good for you!)

So here I am sitting in my kitchen, there is leftover cake from the party, a box of pizza with its delicious scent wafting my way, a few beautiful bottles of beer calling from the fridge as I hear the distant noise of a discouraged monkey which can only be Corbin’s new cry.
I want to steal this box of pizza and those beers and go to a hotel and run a hot bath and drink beer and eat pizza and cry and then drink more beer, cry more, another slice of pizza, more tears and another beer. I want to throw my hands up in the air and say it’s all too big for me, I just can’t do it all, I quit! I want to sell my house and buy a clean one. I want the magic potion from the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe that would make my kids well. I want to snap my fingers and have a healthy body and still be able to eat whatever I want. I want to blink twice and have a successful career and an abracadabra to give my Husband a giant bank account so he can follow any passions that he can dream of.

I’m snapping and blinking and abracadabraing and nothing is happening. Womp!
This is one of those days where the journey feels long, and the finish line feels like an imaginary place that I will never find. This is one of those days where I remind myself:
“And let us not grow weary in well doing for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.” Galatians 6:9.

Tonight, I say a prayer for my babies that they will feel better, and their little snotty-nosed faces will find big smiles, and that little monkey cry will turn into laughter. I also pray for sleep – real, uninterrupted, drool-inducing sleep – for all of my family, and a brighter tomorrow.

So I guess I won’t take the pizza and run, or move to a cleaner house…despite the world ending and all. I will keep on heading toward my goals and even though I will have to go much slower – and maybe even take a break to kneel and pray – I will carry on.
This tired Momma is going to bed and I make no excuses for being so pathetic over a couple of colds. #Balabusted!