A Little Frazzled*

I’ve been feeling a little frazzled lately.

Ruby has been a little under the weather for the past few days. I don’t think it was anything serious, but she had a bit of a fever and she was very snuggly. My poor little bean was either on my lap or on my heels for much of the last 48 hours.  Hank has also been up quite a bit at night as he just cut his second tooth, so my lack of sleep + their neediness during the day has left me feeling a bit frayed around the edges.

My house also seems to be in a perpetual state of chaos now that I have two tornadoes whirling around behind me. Hank started crawling last week, and he went from tentatively moving a foot or two to check out a different toy, to shooting across the entire living room like a torpedo in two seconds flat. Today my entire house looked like a write-off by 9am, and I could feel my tension rising as I faced disasters on all fronts.

The mess, and the lack of me-time (aka: sanity time) I’ve had in the last few days has been hard. I could feel myself start snapping at the kids, so I decided to drop everything and just close the door. I took the kids out for a walk, and it was exactly what I needed to let go of some of my anxiety. For 40 glorious minutes I pretended that the mess wasn’t there.

When we got home, I quickly made lunch and had both kids down for nap by noon. Hank only naps for 30 minutes, so even though I desperately wanted to veg on the couch, I grit my teeth and began cleaning.

Sure enough, I wasn’t even finished cleaning the kitchen or making my lunch before he woke up, but I put him in our jumper and kept at it. Slowly but surely my floors reappeared from under the carpet of toys. I was feeling a bit better about the state of the house, but I had an itch to really organize and fix something. I tore apart my front closet, and before long I had a bag of things to donate.

It’s amazing how something as simple as organizing a closet can soothe my soul. I don’t deal well in a chaotic house, and it seems like that’s just an inevitability with a toddler and baby in the house. As soon as I put one thing away, seven more things are strewn out of place behind me. It’s a constant battle to try and weave housework into the kids schedules, all while trying to find those elusive moments for myself to preserve my sanity.

I know I’ll figure out, and that this phase passes. For the most part I can simply tune it out and ignore the mess until I can deal with it. But for days like today when my nerves are a little raw… I’ll walk it out, and tackle a closet.

And hopefully no one drops in for a surprise visit. haha