What do you do all day?

The next time your husband or friend without kids ask you this most annoying question, you need to send them this Washington Post article. It is from 2007 but still rings true.

I often lie awake on Sunday nights wondering why being a mom isn’t easier and have finally arrived at an answer. Being a mom is not hard. Being a mom combined with everything else is the challenge.

Here’s an excerpt from the article that finally put into words why I am always so tired. If you have 2 children like me, then times it by 2.5 (because 1 is 1 and 2 is definitely 2.5) and if you have 3, times it by 10. More than 3? I bow down to your feet because you are my she-ro! How do you do it?

The Washington Post
Tell Me About It
By Carolyn Hax
Wednesday, May 23, 2007

When you have young kids, your typical day is: constant attention, from getting them out of bed, fed, clean, dressed; to keeping them out of harm’s way; to answering their coos, cries, questions; to having two arms and carrying one kid, one set of car keys, and supplies for even the quickest trips, including the latest-to-be-declared-essential piece of molded plastic gear; to keeping them from unshelving books at the library; to enforcing rest times; to staying one step ahead of them lest they get too hungry, tired or bored, any one of which produces the kind of checkout-line screaming that gets the checkout line shaking its head. It’s needing 45 minutes to do what takes others 15. It’s constant vigilance, constant touch, constant use of your voice, constant relegation of your needs to the second tier. It’s constant scrutiny and second-guessing from family and friends, well-meaning and otherwise. It’s resisting constant temptation to seek short-term relief at everyone’s long-term expense. It’s doing all this while concurrently teaching virtually everything — language, manners, safety, resourcefulness, discipline, curiosity, creativity. Empathy. Everything. It’s also a choice, yes. And a joy. But if you spent all day, every day, with this brand of joy, and then, when you got your first 10 minutes to yourself, [you] wanted to be alone with your thoughts…