I'm a MOM....What's Your Superpower?

As mothers how often do we tease our children by telling them we have eyes in the back of our head...How often do we "hear" our children doing something rotten, before we actually "see" them doing it? It takes skill to catch vomit in our hands and not gag or throw up while doing it.  To take our kids chewed up gum and plop it in our mouths, because there isn't a garbage can at the ready.  To cook, clean or read to toddlers while holding a cranky baby.  To scale windows, when our little ones lock us out of the house for the hundredth time and we forgot to take our keys with us.  To soothe a colicky baby to sleep, to walk the halls late at night...stay up with a sick child...wash pukey or peed on sheets at 3 a.m. and still manage to wake up on time and get on with our days.

We joke that we're "powered by coffee or caffeine".  We survive on little sleep.  We are moms and it's all part of the job.  Whether we stay at home or work full time.   It's life...our life.   And most of us wouldn't have it any other way.  But lately, I have been feeling like a bad mom.  I usually only work 2 days a week, it's what I'm used to...I can do all the things I need to and still enjoy life when I work two days instead of full time.  I would love to be able to stay home full time like I used to, but right now, I just can't...and I guess I'm lucky that I only have to work the two days.  But the situation at my job place changed.  I work afternoon shift, and there are only two part time people that work afternoon shift and I'm one of them.  The other one can only work weekends, so I get stuck working weekdays and weekends...where ever they have a position to fill...I get stuck working it.  And with summer vacations happening, instead of my usual two days a week, I'm getting 3, 4 and sometimes 5.  I feel like I'm missing summer.  My garden is dying, because no one remembers to water it.  My kids miss the crap (well, at least the younger ones do) out of me.  The other day, Nathan practically chased my van down the street.  It was a good thing I saw him running or I might have hit him.  It was pathetic seeing those huge tears rolling down his face.  I cried all the way to work and still want to cry thinking about it. 

I feel sleep deprived and I'm grouchy, bitchy, irritated.  I don't feel like cooking or baking...and my kids (and Rich) have been missing out.  And I'm missing so many things.  I've missed baseball games and parties and picnics.  It just sucks!  I realize that that's life and millions of other moms are missing the same things and feeling the same way.  I realize that I should just suck it up and deal with it.  But, I still feel miserable all the same...and guilty for feeling this way too.

When I was a little girl, super heroes were all the rage.  There were cartoons, action figures, underoos, even tv shows.  We pretended to be super heroes at play.  Since I had a twin brother, I really loved the "Wonder Twins."  Wonder twin power activate - form of a......I wished that I could turn myself into a thousand objects and more than once wished that I could be invisible (especially during those awkward pre-teen years).  Lately, all I've been wishing for is a way to multiply myself, so that I can still work and get to enjoy all the things that life has to offer and be the kind of mother I love being to my kids.

I hate that I have morphed into this screaming, yelling monster.  I have no patience left for my family.   I feel like a terrible wife and mother...my house is absolutely disgusting, it's embarrasing.  I ask the kids to help out and keep what I clean - clean...but that goes in one ear and out the other.  I clean before I go to work and come home to a huge mess.  I get sick to my stomach when I have to leave for work, worrying about whether I will get mandated for midnight shift (which is also short staffed right now) and I worry about when I walk back through my door at night about the mess I'm coming home to.  I have been finding dishes randomly shoved under couches and beds.  And dishes in the kitchen sick are overflowed onto the counters.  Don't even get me started on the laundry.  I feel bad for complaining...I'm sure there has to be a way to do it all, but I certainly haven't figured it out yet, have you?

We all need to believe in a superhero now and again...to believe we have superpowers and can do it all and when we can't, what do we believe in then.  I have to believe that somehow God is listening and he hears my pleads and some how, some way things will ease up and I'll feel a little less stressed and a little more peace.  That my family will see my tears and stress not as a weakness, but as a strength...what helps me become a stronger person and a better mother.   I can do anything, if I believe, that's my superpower...what's yours?

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