I often find myself in a store, or the car, or a place of any kind wondering…would it have been this way before? Would it have been this hard before? Would I have done this thing at this time before? Sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes the answer is emphatically NO.

No, I would not have taken all three of them shoe and undergarments shopping for a dress I am to wear in my sisters wedding.

No, I would not have drug them all to the grocery store every week, by myself.

No, I wouldn’t stay on said shopping trips when all three of them are melting down and begging for anything in site.

I am tired of the things I do that I would not have done before. I am stronger for those things, but it is those things that give me pause in doing the other things. The days spent at the park or the zoo. The afternoons filled with arts and crafts and baking. I don’t do a lot of the things I know my kids would love and I feel I should because I am tired. The baby naps and I rest or read or write or live in my head for sanity sake. The dinner will need to be made soon enough. I sometimes get so annoyed by the constant begging, berating, and just general chatter… that I can barely stand to be in the same space with my children. Go play. Go be. Go.

I then frequently ask myself…what kind of mother am I? I want them to be happy. I play with them and laugh with them…but I also want them to give me a little space. I am so consumed by them sometimes. Its not a new thing to be consumed by my children. As a stay at home mom this is sort of a thing. And I was that for a couple of years before I became a solo stay at home mom. What is different is that I am only that. I am not a wife also. There isn’t a man who comes home and breaks the never ending banter of children. There isn’t a dad who can take the focus away from me for just a moment. There just isn’t a moment in my day where anyone else sees me.

Although this isn’t always true. As I am now dating someone seriously I do have someone to talk to and call and see when we can. But he has his life, I have mine. We live a distance apart. I am still on call, on duty, all day and all night…everyday. I do work hard to get babysitters so I can do things as an adult and I make trips to the gym so I can spend a little time here and there on my own. But in the end, I feel like I am drowning in the loss of myself some days. And it is hard.

Today I shopped with the kids…some of the aforementioned shopping…and it almost doesn’t phase me how many times I have to ask them to be quiet, stay close, quit fighting, stop touching things, and keep their hands off each other. Inevitably someone will cry out from having taken a stray fist to the face…why, because why not?? They are boys with limited control over the flailing of their bodies, apparently. They need to be in constant motion, apparently. And so when my middlemost cries so loudly it seems he may have been stabbed or taken a stray bullet while causally strolling through the ladies underwear section of the Khol’s department store…I am simply stoic as I turn to his older brother and ask him to restrain from whacking his soon to be Oscar Winning Best-Actor-in-a-Drama younger brother, in the face. And then calmly asking the middlemost to quiet down as I am sure he is not going to die from this encounter. My face I am sure is saying someone will die if this continues, the voices in my head are screaming SHUT THE HELL UP BOTH OF YOU!!!, and my fists are clenched so I don’t join the battle. But I am reserved.

Just then a lovely late middle aged woman perusing the clearance night gown rack turns to me and says he didn’t hit him…I was watching.

Gee thanks! This is just what I need in the way of reinforcements….I do NOT even care what really went down here.

I look at her, smile…at the time I thought it was a smile…looking back it was maybe more of a smirk. More of a look of disdain. I have tried to learn to not allow my true thoughts and feelings to be revealed in my every facial expression…but sadly, I cannot figure out how that works. So, there is a very strong possibility she knew I could not give a rats you know what about what she had to impart on me, on us. I pushed the stroller on. Glaring at the boys as if to say, I don’t want to hear it…just don’t. They didn’t. Ha! There was maybe even thirty seconds where they were quiet and worried. Thats right, thirty whole seconds.

We moved on to the jungle gym, also known as the fitting room, if you are over the age of 10 and more than 70 lbs. HA! Just another day in the life….