Throwing my "schedule" out the window

I wrote this a few weeks ago (last week of december) but never posted it.

Yesterday I was cooking dinner, I started around 3:30, after I fed Aowyn and before Tayton woke up from his nap, I needed to use this time to focus on dinner or dinner might not happen, I knew that it was going to take about an hour to cook in the oven and so we would eat by five. I figured we would be done eating around 5:45ish and then they boys could play for about an hour before we did the pajamas, teeth brushing, scriputer, prayer routine. I have been having to put Tayton down to bed and then feed Aowyn and then put Braddoc and Landon to bed, so this means that If we are done with all the bedtime routine stuff by 7:15 that the boys can watch a movie till around 8 when I can put them to bed. 

So anyway I am standing there with my hands in meat and I had an epiphany about me and my "new" life. I am an organizer by nature, I organize all the time and being a mother for me has been no different, the more organized mom I am the better, and of course when things dont go according to plan Im not such a great mom because I feel like everything around me is falling apart when in reality nothing but my "plan" is falling apart. So my epiphany was (now Im sure you will laugh because its kind of a no brainer, but for me its something Ive thought about but has never really been emotionally part of me,) You cant organize your kids, or plan your day to day life with kids.

 Now of course I have to plan appointments and school and things like that, but if bath time happens the next morning instead of that night, or dinner is cereal because I fell asleep on the couch while cuddling a baby, or the living room is not clean when the boys go to bed because we built a huge fort city and lost track of time, then its okay. Im raising kids, and its going by too fast, some day all my organized plans will stick and I will miss those beautiful little kids who "destroyed" them not many years before.

 Now Ive heard this said a million times before, but always thought, "well, to be a good mom I still need to cook a nice big dinner every night, and keep a super organized house, all the rest can wait." Each kid of course has relaxed me a bit more and I look at all my friends with just one kid and smile to myself when they talk about their plans, and how together they have it, because I too was there once. I had my house spotless every night, dinner on the table by 5 with my 4-6 beautiful scrapbook pages done during nap time, waiting on the table for hubby to see. With each new beautiful addition to our home, I have lost a little bit more me time, a lot more sanity and my house is not so spotless. But who is to say those are requirements to being a good mom?

 Aowyn has brought a whole new dynamic to our home, a beautiful new spirit and a lot of much needed laidbackness (is that a word?) to this mom. I marvel in awe at the beauty of my children, I wonder how and why I ever got upset about forts being built right before we left the house. I realized that I need to let my kids be more of kids, instead of creating a house of organization I need to create a house of order, there is a big difference. I love watching my boys love on each other and take care of each other, and I now know that each fight they have and they solve, brings them close to each other and closer to the people they will some day be. Life has gone much smoother since Aowyn joined us. I was worried a fourth kid was going to bring more craziness and more stress to our home, when it however has done quite the opposite, it has made me a better mom. 

As I sit here typing this a little set of 3 year old hands discovers the bag of marshmellows left out by his five year older brother and proceeds to try and get into them which results in the whole bag being dumped all over my feet, at the same time Aowyn and Tayton both start fussing (about an hour ahead of "schedule"), lucky for me we have no where to be tonight and so my evening agenda gets thrown off a little, and old me would have gotten rather upset, but new me laughs it off and sits down amidst the crying to help my distraught 3 year old clean up the mess, because after all mothering him (and his siblings) is the most important thing I will do all day, all week, all year, and hopefully for the rest of my life.