Less than Ideal

This is a Real Life Post, written so that Emma, Faith, Jane (in 30 years) and anyone else, can read it and know, that,though I LOVE being a mother, there are hard phases and times when I didn't enjoy it. I'm hoping it will make them feel normal.

(in happier times)

Marjorie Pay Hinckley is one of the people I admire most. When I was relatively new to the mothering thing (Emma 3ish, Gabe 1ish), I read the book Glimpses, which is a series of memories and letters that give insight into her life and philosophies. It is uplifting and sweet and real. I highly recommend it.

Anyway, one of the things that stuck with me the most was this sentiment:

"When the kids went back to school at the end of the summer, she cried. She hoarded every minute she could with them."

I wanted to be that kind of mom. The kind of mom that enjoyed free time with her kids so much that she cried when it was over. And I was that kind of mom, really, during the summer of 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008.

And then the Summer of 2009 commenced.

It has not been fun. It has not been enjoyable. It has been stressful and hard and chaotic and out of control and depressing and looooong.

I really tried to keep this from happening:

I don't do well with the chaos of No Schedule, so we have charts that slightly minimize the crazy, but the charts then require Monitoring: "Have you checked off your chart? Let me check the jobs on your chart? Are you lying about reading the Book of Mormon for 10 minutes?"

I have a weekly schedule that includes planned activites we both enjoy (swimming, library time, lessons, art class), but those activities for the big kids, cause missed naps and irritation for the little kids.

There have been days where I had fun with the kids (mostly on vacation). There have been hours where I enjoyed having them near me (right before bed when I'm reading to them, Sundays in the kitchen while they cook with me). There have activities that have been stress relievers (swimming at the Taylors, outings to the parks, library activities).

But mostly, I have too many kids to worry about for too many hours all day, every day. There are SO MANY people at this house and they start at 5:30 (feeding Faith her extra feeding...the only one she does well) and don't end until 10:00 (when Ryan and I are in the basement watching TV, trying not to care that feet are stomping all over the bedrooms upstairs). "Quiet time" consists either of S and F sleeping while I feel guilty that E, J and G are vegging away watching more than the allowed hour of TV time or the big kid "playing outside", and slamming doors while they run in and out to go to the bathroom/get a drink/tell me something NOT that important. And don't even get me started on the omnipresent kitchen mess that results from 5 kids, 3 meals, 1 snack. Hideous.

And to make everything worse, I feel guilty and grouchy that I'm not liking it because I'm falling short of the Marjorie Hinckley ideal.

It's bad.

I realized about 2 weeks ago that the summer was unsalvagable. There's nothing to do but endure.

I just want to know, I guess, is this how it's going to be every summer, now that I have 5 million kids? Is there anyway to regain the Crying When They Go To School of past summers?