Mothering frustrations...

I recently read this post about loosing the joy in mothering and it really hit home for me. I have been feeling that lately. I get so frustrated sometimes because I feel like things don't get done because I have been chasing after the boys all day cleaning up the stuff they manage to get into. For instance, literally 10 minutes ago I was on the phone with my friend Tami talking about yard sale stuff and I wasn't on the phone with her but maybe 5 minutes and I here Bo say "Oh NOOoooo" I get off the phone and walk into the kitchen and Joel had taken the box of tea bags I had in the pantry and opened them all up and there is Bo with my swiffer mop trying to mop it up without a pad on it. So now I have wet sticky tea and tea bags all over my kitchen floor. I tell the boys to go sit on the couch while I swept the mess up and then ran the mop to clean up any excess cleaner. It took me maybe 5 minutes to get it all cleaned up. I go back into the living room to "Chat" with the boys and there they were sitting in a huge pile of Cheezit crackers....Yup they took the box and dumped it on the living room floor, where sitting in the pile and breaking the crackers up. I just sat on the couch and started crying. It was all so overwhelming.

Things like this happen allllllll the time and I do not know how to get in control of it. I have tried every trick in the book and nothing seems to work. They do this with everything...my make-up, fresh fruit, bread, games, movies, things in the pantry and even their dresser drawers. Now some of you may be thinking that I should put these things away and keep them out of reach of the boys. Well, I do. My make up is in a trunk on my bathroom counter, Fruit and bread are in containers on the kitchen counters, they open their dresser drawers and just pull clothes and blankets out (why? I have no idea) Movies are in a Cd type case in a drawer in the living room and yet they still seem to get into everything. When things like this happen, I get overwhelmed and once I fall behind in keeping things picked up I get even more overwhelmed and then don't know where to start with the mess and I just shut down. I know that shutting down doesn't help anything...When that happens is where I need to stop and deal with that selfishness. I struggle with that for sure and sometimes don't know how to move forward...Only by the Grace of God do I move forward and eventually pick things up again.

I do love being a stay at home mom, I just wish I knew how to manage and deal with the chaos when things like this happen, because I KNOW they are GOING to happen. It is just a matter of being prepared, patient and staying ahead of the game.