Babies Born June 2006 #35

[Smoke Jaguar]

Bath, I read somewhere that in our society we have it all wrong. We hire nanny's and mothers' assistants so that we can do the housework, instead of hiring a cleaner so that we can spend time with our kids. Lately I've been feeling at the end of my tether, too - the house looks a sight (DP hasn't exactly rushed this study rearrangement) and I have considered getting a cleaner in to clean the surfaces I haven't been able to, so that I can spend time with Oscar or study...but not all three i.e. clean, study and be a mummy. DP just doesn't seem to understand that piling a mess in my clean loungeroom, or on my clean table pulls me back to my starting point instead of letting me finish the cleaning so that I can get back to study. He's great in other ways (will pick up the dinner duties or laundry loads), but he definitely leaves the cleaning and tidying to me! So, I thought that if I made the move to a professional cleaner, it would hit him where he'd notice...his pocket. It would somewhat quantify the job I do here, as my study will not have a positive dollar value for some time, and mothering just has no dollar value, even if you hire a nanny! I do realise, however, that you are also craving some time to think with yourself, instead of competing needs from kids and DH, so maybe hiring someone to give you more time with the kids doesn't seem like a good idea. However, if you had time with the kids that didn't involve cleaning, tidying and all that, perhaps you'd get more out of that time than if you spent that time cleaning? I had similarly read that in those uber-progressive Scandinavian countries, mothers assistants are just that, they assist the mother so that the mother can be the mother and the assistant does the other stuff! Whereas here and in the UK, a mothers assistant is hired to take on the kids. Those pesky Scandinavians don't get us at all...and many a time, neither do I!
You know what gets me? My mum comes round, looks around, and says things like "Hija (spanish for 'daughter'), you should spend some time and do the dusting", or "You haven't vacuumed", or "Your kitchen is so messy, you should keep it tidy"...first of all, as if I'm the only person living here, second, as if that's going to help me study, and third...instead of asking why I don't do it, why not give me the gift of doing it for me while she's here? You know, seeing as I'm doing a stand up job raising her grandson instead of sweating the small stuff?? She also then thinks it's appropriate to worry (out loud) about the strength and longevity of DP's and my relationship because I'm so selfish - selfish because I leave things, on purpose, for DP to do. "I never raised you to be so selfish". When she's the one who first taught me the tenet "That which you accept, you teach"! She IS an anomaly, but it still manages to get under my skin and make me think.
So, Bath, I could easily be you in 3 kids' time - head out of the house and show Wade a nice exhibition! I'd think about joining you, too, but I have an osteo appointment again today.
Men can never really understand the forces that pull a woman in competing directions, and the absurdity in the well-meaning advice for us to 'make time to look after yourselves'. Make time? What are the ingredients for this? How do you make time on top of the 24 hours in a day? Oh, and when I DO take the time to just 'sit it out' a bit, and when asked why something didn't get done I get told that I wasted time (either on BB, or in bed or whatever I consider to constitute some 'time out').
Anyway, this is a long post to say, "I hear ya", from someone who also loves a tidy space with everything 'just so'...but can rarely achieve that now...