I’ve been getting on my parental high horse lately when reading the status updates of facebook ‘friends’ (i.e. people I’ve added that I went to school with but rarely ever speak to). There seems to be an epidemic of young women with children, some single some not that have a wickedly active social life. One in particular seems to be out clubbing, at music festivals, on cruises doing dinner with friends etc every weekend. And the children in question are young, I’m talking preschool age.
I find myself getting rather judgemental saying things to Big Daddy like, ‘when does she ever actually spend time with her kids’ ‘how is she coping with them when she’s hung over?’ etc, etc. Over the last week I had a revelation though (I seem to be having a few of them lately). I’m a little bit jealous...I have no life...and it’s not because I have young children it’s because I’ve gotten lazy. While I still don’t agree with going out every weekend and getting trashed and I love spending time with my kids I realise that I’m resentful of the fact that she identifies herself as herself first whereas I identify myself as mum first, fiancé/wife second, and as me last. I realised that I do nothing for myself! I mean nothing *warning TMI moment ahead* my youngest is 5 months old and I am yet to book myself back into the beautician for waxing, most mornings I don’t bother to do anything more than put my hair into a messy pony tail with my growing out fringe sprouting from every angle, I’m always in ‘house clothes’ with no makeup, even the most basic of things like my nightly skin care regime has gone out the window all because I tell myself I’m too tired and just want to go straight to bed. I rarely fall asleep within the first half hour anyway so what is 10-15 mins to moisturise etc going to hurt? Any reading I do is directly related to parenting in some way shape or form, in fact the more I type the more I realise how ridiculously boring I’ve become. Big Daddy claims not to care and believes its all part and parcel of having children but surely it doesn’t have to be. Surely he must be feeling slightly ripped off, the 19 year old girl he met and proposed to nearly 6 years ago was actually an interesting multifaceted person, she was halfway through her uni studies she had an awesome social life she was energetic and fun and she was hot! Tanned toned and terrific. Fast forward 6 years and she’s now me, 20-30kg heavier, tired, grumpy and boring. Well it stops here! I’m going to make a series of small changes overtime starting with every morning I am going to dress in something that I would be happy to wear to the shops and not be embarrassed if I ran into an ex flame or old friend, my sloppiest house clothes are now reserved for housework day only. I am going to do my hair so that it doesn’t look like I have a family of swallows nesting in the front. I’m reclaiming my bedtime skin care regime and I’m going to commit to updating this blog once a week in order to keep myself accountable. Over time I will add more things but these are the changes I’m Implementing this week, and believe it or not even though I’ve added these things to my already busy day I seem to have found more time and motivation to complete my other tasks. The house has been tidy enough for visits from the In-laws every day this week and I seem to have found an few extra ounces of patience to deal with toilet training the Mighty Midget while still breastfeeding the Chunky Monkey, I’ve even managed to cook dinner a few nights this week.
Now that I’ve made these changes I find myself getting to the end of the day thinking ‘why was this so hard before?’ In my case I think lack of time and exhaustion is a state of mind, if I let myself think about how hard it is, it becomes harder so now I’m going to be a poster child for positive thinking. Woo! I can’t wait to think my way into having a social life again! Although I still think I’ll leave the weekly clubbing and festivals to those without kids, my little miracles are just far too cute to spend that much time away
