Balance, What Balance?

In this post I ask for your help. I am truly, desperately in need of some advice.

I have two children. You can see their smiling faces in my header picture. I love my children, I truly do. But did you know that my children possess an evil super power? It's true.

My children possess the power to manipulate time. They can take a normal day with 24 hours in it and make all of those 24 hours all about them. Now they may leave me a spare 5 minutes here or there to go to the bathroom, but more often than not they don't.

I have told my husband of their evil time manipulation but he does not believe me. "Honey, there are still 24 hours in the day. No one can change it" he tells me.

"No you don't understand," I argue. "We woke up and I was going to do some laundry. We some how ended up in the car and there was some screaming and hitting. Every time I turned around there was a child at my hip looking at me with a evil smile and laughing. Before I know it it's 11:30 at night and I haven't showered in 2 days. They are doing something to me I just know it. They are stealing time."

Even when I can grab a few spare minutes for myself to write this post, I can hear my son laughing an evil laugh and throwing things in the sink. I think he may have even thrown the cat in the sink.

So here is my desperate plea, I need some advice on how to steal the time back from my children. I have looked in all the places where they normally hide things and it is not there.

How do you get things done? How do you find time for yourself? How do you find time to shower?

And if its hopeless, please lie to me. Please I beg of you.

Seven AM

It is ridiculous to control time. It is a fools errand. Time is fast. Time is fluid. Time is an artificial construct created as a measure for humans.

How long is 60 million years? 39 years? 11 years? 3 years? Yesterday? Today? One hour? 5 minutes ago? 3:30? 7 am?

In reality none of it means anything. Those numbers are just a measure for marking the passage of time.

But I try to control time. I try to set schedules. I try to hold on to some semblance of order. If I am master of the clock, then I am master of my life. It is not true but I try to believe it nonetheless.

Things must happen at a certain time. We must get up, we must eat breakfast. Mommy must shower. We leave the house. We return. We eat lunch. We nap. We wake. We play. We make dinner, we eat dinner. We play. We bathe. We sleep.

This is the routine that makes up our lives for better or for worse. This routine is dictated by the clock. Or at least I would like it to be. Other members of my family have other ideas.

They (she) pushes sleep until the last possible second, until eyelids cannot remain open any longer. They (she) wakes with the sun no matter what time the eyelids were shut.

I fight the good fight every day but I cannot control time. I cannot control her interpretation of time, her interpretation of when it is appropriate to sleep and to wake.

But I can control one thing. We do not under any circumstances go downstairs before 7:00 AM. Regardless of when she wakes, 6, 6:15 or 6:30, I gather her up all warm from sleep. I bring her to my bed. We snuggle. I try to ignore her requests to play. I try to teach her to read the digital clock. I try to control time for just one fleeting moment.