Mom to many, master of none!

Being a mom brings a lot of challenges, trials, heartache and joy. Being the mom to adult kids and toddlers at the same time brings a whole new realm of reality! Sometimes I feel so inadequate to successfully deal with it all. Helping one son write college papers in the midst of dirty diapers is daunting! Discussing the paths of life with another child and explaining why it isn't polite to fart in someone's face to another is confusing. This much can be said, however. Each day dawns bright and new with endless possibilities.

This morning, after a night of little sleep, I woke with the Monday morning blues. All I could think of was the wish that I could go back to sleep. So, little man and I snuggled in my bed till the inevitable happened and I passed out again only to wake a few moments later with a dusting of dry pudding mix sprinkled in my face. I dragged my sleepy self out of bed and began my morning. The house was already destroyed and I decided it could wait to be cleaned up. After changing the dreaded poopy diaper, dressing two bodies and answering a few text messages, the bed kept calling my name. This time I waited till it was nap time for little man, settled him down with me once again in my bed and waited for him to fall asleep before closing my own eyes. He snuggled in tight with a leg thrown over my stomach and a fistfull of hair clenched in his hand. Finally! I could safely close my own eyes to slumber! An hour later, I wake to trampoline-like actions on my belly as he attempts a summersault to wake me up. I peel myself once again from the comforts of my bed only to find that my backside is stuck to the sheets with melted Sugar Babies that had mysteriously found their way under the sheets. Now, if this was all I had to deal with, I could handle it gracefully. Unfortunately, it's only the beginning to the day! Once the other children come home from school, a whole new set of adventures begin. Homework, chores, reading, dinner, and then the big kids step in with their requests for assistence with the bigger issues of college papers, bounced checking accounts, work challenges, emotional demands, etc. Somewhere in there is the house responsibilities, along with work, church jobs, and the extended family tasks. I'm exhausted just thinking about it all!

So how do I do it all and be successful? I don't really have the answers to that. Some days are better than others and I can hold my head up high knowing I did all I could do. Other days I just say "to heck with it" and laze around, accomplishing nothing more than snuggling my babies, big and small.

I really shouldn't complain. After all, I asked for it when we began the adventure of adoption. I know that I never really considered what it would mean to be closer to 50 than I care to admit while still raising little ones, but there is never a dull moment in my life. Sometimes I long for dull moments, but I know that day will eventually come and then I'll be looking back, wishing for the chaos. Until then, all I can really focus on is how to get the fingernail polish off the piano keys and how to correctly type a term paper on ancestoral history.