The Fine Line

There's a fine line between motherhood and housewife.  I know that it might seem to be the same thing but in truth there is a huge difference between the two.

First of all, motherhood is exactly how it sounds... being a mom. But it's more than just tying shoes, wiping butts, and kissing boo boo's. It's truly knowing your kids and spending time with them. I see moms early in the morning at the store with their children all in perfect matching outfits, perfect bows, perfectly clean shoes holding their perfectly tanned, trimmed, and made up mom's hands. I used to long to be like that and it took a few months years to realize that it's not perfection. I desire to be the type of mom that may not appear to be put together but at least I really truly know my children. When someone asks me about Princess Goofy I don't want to be able to just list off her name and age.. I want to be able to tell them who she truly is. She is a dinosaur loving, tinkerbelle wanna be, who has two left feet and truly longs for her daddy's approval. I don't want to spend the hours in a tanning bed or the hair salon that I could spend with her discussing the difference between chocolate ice cream and chocolate shakes. It's like discussing politics but only with more common sense thrown in.

Being a housewife is part of being a mom but more so it's running the show behind the house. Mopping floors, cooking, mending, washing the ever mounting pile of laundry, are just a few of the housewife details. It also means making all dental appointments, calling contractors for working on the house, scheduling the lawn guy (also known as Damion), or being a proffesional landscaper in the spare time.  It's a job that can totally consume you especially when you have four other people in your house to care for. There is always and I mean ALWAYS something that needs to be cleaned or folded. The lists are never ending and there are days that I break my back to try and whittle a few more things off those lists.

So how do you balance the two? That is something that I've been chasing ever since I became a mom. Honestly I don't have the answer. The one thing that I have learned is that I will never get this one day back. It's gone and my kids are another day older. Soon they'll be another year older and not much longer after that we'll be sending them off to an affordable college (right?).  Maybe it means that I have to stay up later or get up earlier (don't count on that) to get housework done so I'll be available for them.  Or maybe it means that if you show up unannounced there will be huge piles of laundry on the couch and dirty dishes crowding the sink.

I'm choosing for now to put motherhood before being a housewife. I plan for a fun summer of pools, nature walks, cuddling on the couch, playdoh, and spending time together. I'll still clean and do what I need to do but consider it a fair warning not to show up unannounced.