3. "I just don't know how you do it..."


Really? I mean really? I know that most people mean well when they say this, I suppose it's akin to saying "I respect you for doing something so hard", but sometimes, on those really bad days (the kind of days when I've already eaten my way through an entire box of tunnock's tea cakes only to find they haven't helped) it just makes me want to punch you. I'm sorry. But there it is. Right now, when the kids have just gone to bed, and the husband is about to cook me dinner, I feel bad for ever feeling like that. But usually this is said to me right in one of those really overwhelming moments, when the kids are running riot, and I'm literally juggling or for want of a better analogy 'treading water' and every part of me wants to run away. So when I hear that, what I want to say is "no, neither do I love!".

However, 'do it' I do. Somehow. Some way. I, and they, survive each and every day (almost) in tact. I guess you just rise to it. What other choice do I have? If all those people who have said that to me really thought about it, what is the other option? That I don't do it? That I abandon my kids and hide upstairs and just leave them to it? No. Exactly. The only option I have is to 'do it'. So 'do it' I do.

Some days I do it well, really well in fact.  Other days I do it quite badly.  But I do it. Each and every day.