Growing roses sure can be exhausting…

I don’t think I really knew the meaning of “tired” or “busy” until I had the two babies (11 months apart). Before, yeah I was tired, but when I reached the end of the day I wasn’t so tired my whole body ached and I couldn’t actually hold a coherent conversation. I was busy, but not so busy that every second of my day required some form of my attention.

I can cope with the busyness. What I find hard is when both babies urgently need my attention and I only have a limited supply of hands, arms and laps. Like the first day that my husband went back to work and Little Rose needed feeding badly, at the same time as my Big Rose hit her head on the corner of the couch toddling around to get something. I had my first thought of total and utter helplessness. What do I do now?

Since then my coping and multitasking skills (as well as my arm muscles) have got considerably stronger. So much that it isn’t any where near as bad as I thought. Its actually really nice. I enjoy the literal baby juggling. Even if some days they are totally out of sync and the only way of getting 5 minutes to myself is to put them both in their cots grizzling. Prioritising is key. I start a list at the start of the week of all that I want to accomplish by the end of the week (including things I want to do, like go for a walk, write a blog or go to mass) and if I can get most of it done by the Friday then I am happy. So sitting and writing a blog (like now) is crossing one thing off my list when I could be crossing off something else like folding that massive heap of washing sitting in our room. But oh well, happy kids and happy mum but mess in certain areas of the house.

I’m not the busiest person in the world by any means. I think that some of the true heroes of the past are the mothers. If we think we are busy now, imagine the mothers of the past who didn’t have dishwashers, washing machines, vacuum cleaners or microwaves. Who had to do washing by hand, as well as the dishes and keep the house clean, and have dinner on the table. Not only that but they had perhaps half a dozen children running around with no television to plonk them in front of for entertainment. And they didn’t have a supermarket they could run down to to grab any food item imaginable.

So really, I consider myself quite privileged to be able to experience what it is like to be a stay at home mum with two close together babies.

My husband and I have medals around our necks that were made for our wedding. On the back is engraved a Mother Theresa quote:

For love to be real it must empty us of self.

I hope to be able to live that each day, emptying myself for the love of my family.

The proof of love is in the works. Where love exists, it works great things. But when it ceases to act, it ceases to exist.

Pope St. Gregory the Great