Encouragement

Sometimes I feel like I am in a little bit of a rut, or a funk. Our evenings are never long enough to get everything done, there are piles of laundry to be washed, the sink is usually full of dishes waiting on the dishes in the dishwasher to finish, I have to remember to wash all my pump parts and figure out about his bottles for the next day and on and on. While the baby is still up, playing with him and working on dinner are usually our priorities, and then the other stuff gets done (or not) after he goes to bed. The side effect of all this is that I feel like I have little or no time to be myself, I like to cook, to mess around with sewing, to read, to work in the yard, but I almost never have time (or energy) for any of my normal creative outlets. I feel this tension between what is urgent and what is important. Actually, nursing is good for keeping my priorities straight, it forces me to stop in the midst of the mess and sit on the couch with my baby and just focus on taking care of him for 20 min or so, his hungry tummy doesn't care that there might be laundry that needs folding, or floors that need sweeping.

In the midst of all this, it is encouraging to read blogs like this http://wendolonia.com/blog/category/bentos/ and see another working mom trying to make thoughtful choices for her son's lunches. These lunches are so pretty and are such a cool way to be creative, while taking care of the practical need to send a lunch to preschool for her son. I want to try to make thoughtful decisions like this in my life, and to find ways like this to express my personality and be myself in my new life without looking back or regretting my old life because I would never, ever want to go back to my life pre-baby.