When I started this post, I was going to call it "Almost Wordless Wednesday," but since I clearly can't write a post without rambling, that is how this post got its clever title. First off, here is a really cute recent picture of all my kids. And by recent, I mean in the last hour, right after we got home from a play date and lunch with friends. Man, when they are willing to pose, they can certainly turn on the charm. They then asked for me to text this to John. My kids are growing up in a different world than I did.
They are just so cute. I am regularly grateful that I have cute children. I know there are much more important things in life, especially as they get older. But, it does help that they are so stinking adorable. Especially since they do stink fairly often, and they act like little stinkers sometimes.
I've been thinking of doing an FAQ post for a while. I think I will sometime soon - so, if you have any burning questions that you would like for me to answer, fire away. I am sure there are some things I will forget. However, one thing I would like to address in this post is a question that I get pretty frequently.
"How do you do it all?"
You may or may not be surprised by how often this question is posed to me, but I really do hear it a lot. (Along with "Do you really have two sets of twins? That's amazing!) So, I feel the need to come clean out in this public forum about all the things I don't do, and my thoughts about "doing it all."
Let me start by saying that I am flattered by this question, and since I am an achiever type personality who loves to be admired, the fleshly side of me would like to say something like, "Oh - it's not hard. My kids always listen and obey, and I'm great at time management." However, that would be a flat out lie. I do have good kiddos who self-entertain very well, and for that I am grateful. But, they are normal kids, and the babies are normal babies. They require a lot of time and energy, and I am constantly having to remind myself that they are my priority. I stay at home to
be with them, not to make their rooms look cute, not to blog and not to document their every moment with a photograph. God has allowed us this time, and I don't take that for granted, but I do screw it up regularly by wanting to pursue my own agenda, sometimes at their expense. I am continually having to re-evaulate how I spend my time and energy and asking the Lord to direct me appropriately.
Here's a list of a lot of things that I don't do at all, or that I don't do well.
- I don't clean my house. As soon as the twins came home, I hired someone to come every other week. I rarely clean in between those times. As in, about the most I ever do is wipe down our kitchen and sweep under the table.
- I don't bathe my kids super often. I honestly forget to, and then it seems so cumbersome, and before I know it, it has been a week, and the babies' neck rolls reek of curdled formula every time they lift their heads and even then, I sometimes wait another day or two. I use a lot of wipes.
- I don't watch much TV. Though, the girls and I have been pounding recorded episodes of Cupcake Wars in the afternoons when I am feeding the twins. So much so that I have heard Lily "making cupcakes" during nap time saying things like, "It's a chocolate cupcake topped with a strawberry frosting." Awesome.
- I don't change our sheets super often. That will probably gross out a bunch of you, and I do change them at least once a month, but sometimes not more than that.
- This is something that I should just confess though it doesn't necessarily fall into this list - one side of my purse has a CFA sauce that burst inside of it. I have yet to clean it out. I have just been avoiding that side of the purse, and I am only reminded of it when I catch a whiff of that sweet smell that is sadly starting to ferment in this July heat. I need to just get a new purse, since this is the same purse that I have poured Diet Dr. Pepper into on three separate occasions.
- I don't wash and dry my hair that often (like 2-3 times a week max). Dry shampoo is totally a good friend of mine.
- My
meal calendar stops the week after we found out about the babies. It's like when a tornado comes through and the clock stops at just that time. We have had a lot of meals brought to us in the last several months, and we eat CFA for lunch probably 3-4 times a week. The new salads are just about the best things that have happened to me.
As for the stuff I do do. Well, I think that people's perception of what I do and what I actually do are two different things. Everything looks like more when you also take pictures and blog about it, which I happen to like doing and have gotten pretty quick at since I have done it for quite a while now. I love being able to share about our lives, and it has been an amazing outlet for me, but it has the dark side of being able to project a more put together reality than is really the case. I try to balance this out with heart-felt posts that dive deeper into what is going on behind the scenes. Because just like everybody else, we have a lot of mess around our house and in our hearts. Life is messy. People are messy. Living in a family is messy.
My ultimate goal and desire in life is to glorify God and be a faithful steward of all he has entrusted to me. (side note, as I was writing this, I realized that is almost verbatim the CFA corporate purpose statement. I must have really taken it to heart.) I like to use my gifts that God has given me , and hopefully, I am using them to glorify God and not further my own name and agenda. I don't want to succeed in the wrong areas and miss the mark, which I know would happen without the Lord's direction in my life. I have a long way to go, but I am thankful to know that I don't have to do it on my own. Nor could I ever. And there is a lot of stuff that I don't have to do at all.