Whew! Find the Balance....Breathe.

This Spring has been crazy and shows no signs of letting up for summer.  Parker is getting big so fast, I just want to freeze time before it all goes flying by.  We are so very much enjoying the warm weather-- though it is about to leave us again for a few days.  We are excited for the summer when the threat of being cold is out of our minds for a while.

This school year has been especially hard in terms of balancing family and work responsibilities.  I have found myself struggling with being great at either one, which is a hard pill to swallow for me.  For some reason, I have been under the impression that as Parker gets older, his appointments and checkups will decrease, and that has just not been the case for us.  While I love being in Chicago, which sometimes feels like the expert doctor hub of the region, we have found that the doctors around her often travel from hospital to hospital around the area, and are therefore only at hospitals near enough to Parker's daycare once or twice every few weeks.  This ends up meaning a new appointment on a new day every time we have a checkup-- even if the appointments are at the same location.  Matt is having a hard time with this with his new job, and I have maxed out on my sick time at work-- unfortunately, my job does not allow me to leave an hour early one day and stay an hour later the next.

We have accepted the fact that we still have ugly curtains up in the living room that were here when we moved in, have weeds overgrowing our back flower beds, and have the long lawn of shame in the neighborhood.  We try to keep up appearances, go out with friends/family, work out (ha!), etc., but sometimes just fail at doing what we "should" be doing.  There are some nights when the anxiety of not doing enough for Parker is suffocating--- the "I should have..." or "I need to..." thoughts are so overwhelming.  We are trying the best we can to keep up, but some days just result in lazy couch evenings, or on tough days, some tears and a good book to escape a bit.  Parker is such a good model for us-- he is so resilient, even when the appointments we go to cause him discomfort or pain.

At this point, we are trying to determine what we can take off our own plates to keep life manageable.  Do we hire a lawn service? Do we try a cleaning service?  Who knows.

It is also no secret that I have always been looking forward to becoming a mother, and get a strong baby fever, which set in a few months ago.  After the past few months of strain and appointments, we have decided to hold off another year on baby #2, as much as it hurts and is scary genetically to wait.  We feel like emotionally, we are barely getting by, and have some work to do to re-prioritize our lives to remove some of the stressors.

Needless to day, I can't wait for my 5.5 weeks off this summer (I agreed to work 4 weeks of summer!).