Balance, or the lack thereof

This mom thing, it's kicking my butt.

You know, there are some moments where I feel like I have everything under control. Like my girls might actually be learning things and my toddlers might survive another week without major bloodshed.

But they are mere moments. Blips on the screen.

Lately it seems like those moments, the good ones where I actually feel like a competent human being, are ever so quickly usurped by crying children. Or bleeding children. Or children with fevers, babies who shriek loudly for no apparent reason, children who stomp their feet and throw giant tantrums because they don't want to pratice their musical instrument, or children who don't belong to me but who need me to teach them a violin lesson.

I feel most days as if I'm walking a tightrope, balancing all the different parts and pieces of me, all the people who depend on me or expect things from me, and all my duties and responsibilities.

I wonder, most days, if it is really possible to balance everything. To give every part of my life, every person who is important to me, and every responsibility that is mine equal and appropriate amounts of love and TLC.  I don't think it is. Or I at least hope it isn't, because if it is, I'm failing miserably.

It just seems that if we're having a wonderful school day with my girls, that my house will inevitably look like a bomb exploded. If I'm paying bills and answering emails and trying to do all those adult things that keep my household functioning and running, babies will cry, or siblings will argue or the phone will ring or the dinner will burn, or someone (or multiple someones) will be crying. And some days, if I attempt to do anything at all, the baby will shriek his ear piercing shriek at the top of his lungs for no reason, and I will have no choice but to hold him, and nurse him, and chase him around the house chanting "Run, run, run, I'm going to get you!" just to get him to laugh and stop screaming for one blessed minute.

I am well aware that I chose this. All of it. The violin teaching, the homeschooling, the parenting. I am working towards loving my choice.

But damn if it isn't hard. When the baby cuts his finger, is bleeding everywhere and we can't decide if he need stitches or not, when the kids are all yelling at each other and I've been teaching all day and am exhausted because of the boys waking up at an unholy hour due to the *&%$ time change, when the two year old throws a toy and breaks a plate, and Dad is leaving on church business while 3 out of 4 kids are crying, it's hard not to throw in the towel and run away screaming.

So I'm going to bed, friends. And I'm going to try again tomorrow. For balance, for serenity, for less yelling, more laughing, less chaos and more sleep.