Balance

Hi Everyone! Happy Wednesday!

I have a lot I want to say today and not sure how to start, so I'm just going to kind of dive right in.

I've been struggling for the past few months. There's been:

• A move to a place I don't know and didn't choose (I told my husband we'd go wherever was best for his career), also away from my family and the state I grew up in--the state that feels like home
• My husband stopping his full-time stay-at-home-dad gig and starting a full-time job
• Getting pregnant with our third child (via an FET and all the craziness that entails)

So lots and lots and lots of change.

My days these days, they go like this:

• Up with the kids at 7 AM. Hang out with them until 10:30 or 11
• Work from 10:30 or 11 to 5ish (or whenever the kids get up from their afternoon nap. My mother-in-law, who is living with us, watches the kids while I work)
• Watch kids from 5 to 8 (with some help from my husband, but I'm generally the primary caretaker, and I'm fine with that. He and my mother-in-law do dinner and clean up most nights, which is huge)
• After 8 work more if needed, do any housework that needs to be done, watch some TV/Netflix, or read. Honestly after 8 I am absolutely exhausted

And I'm really feeling like all of a sudden there is no time for me, that my life is kids, work, kids, chores, sleep. And it's made way worse by being so sick in the first trimester of pregnancy (not to mention the exhaustion). Sometimes I can't work from 11 to 5 because I have to lay down and then I have to do nights and weekends to make up for it. I've just started getting a massage every other week, but that's really been it as far as doing anything for myself. And it's my fault, because I have my mother-in-law to help and my husband is great, he says to schedule whatever I want to schedule and he'll watch the kids, he's so awesome. But even though "me time" is being so generously offered, it's so hard to do.

Part of the problem is work, I work as a freelancer and it's supposed to be 20 hours a week (well, right now we are shooting for 30 so I can save some money for a maternity leave), but there is no way to work exactly 20 hours a week as a freelancer. So for a lot of May I wasn't working much at all, which was so nice, but in June I have been working a lot because there are projects and I need to even the hours out. The busy times are so incredibly hard on me, though. It's stressful and exhausting.

Part of the problem is having an enormous TO DO list, and everything but me getting put first. I never feel on top of things. I need to just squeeze in stuff for me. Like today, I have so many work projects it's so easy to work every second of my kid-free time, but my camera hasn't been working and I stopped work to take it to a camera repair place and get it fixed and that was so great, the work will be there tomorrow and I can't tell you how good it feels to do something for me.

The way I see it, there are four things:

1. Kids
2. Work
3. Running the household (everything from laundry to cooking and cleaning to calling the tree guy because our trees don't look that great or the pool cover guy because our pool cover needs adjusting to going to the bank and the post office and etc., all of which I have help with)
4. Me time (which includes time alone with my husband)

The kids are my first priority, and I'm really proud of how well they are taken care of/how much attention they get.

Work gets the attention it needs because I want to make my clients happy (it's a problem, actually, I have no trouble putting their needs before mine), and also if I don't do a good job there won't BE a job and I am extremely grateful to be able to freelance.

The household, my mother-in-law is doing so much, and my husband...I definitely play a role here but it's between the three of us that things get done. I am extraordinarily grateful for the help. Oh and we have a house cleaner every other week. If it were all just up to me, the household would be a complete disaster.

And me...always on the back burner and I think that has a lot to do with me feeling so sad. A lot has changed, the rhythm of our days is totally different than it was when my husband was a stay-at-home-dad and I don't think I've really thought about that and adjusted for it. Before my husband started working again this (not feeling like I have any time for myself) didn't seem to be a problem. Now it is.

So starting with tomorrow's pregnancy update, I'm going to do a "What I've been doing for me" section. And make sure there's something to put there each week. That's my strategy for feeling better. And with the morning sickness that's really complicated this whole thing set to subside soon (in theory at least)--being so sick has made it impossible to want to do anything in time that's not work- or kid-related other than lay down--I think that's a reasonable goal.

XOXO