Sunday, August 17, 2008

Me time, Family time

As I said, I haven't been travelling well. I've been bored, lonely, generally pretty depressed and teary. I love Widget to bits, but painting pictures of frogs or horses or playing with playdough gets pretty boring and it's been too cold to go outside. I'm also a pretty feedback oriented person (aren't we all?) and I've not been getting any through the business, and Widget and Midget are a bit young for it. I know the standard remedy seems to be me time, but to get that I have to stay up late, which means less sleep, which just makes everything worse.

So I had a cry to DH a few nights ago (yeah, less sleep!). He already knew something was wrong, but he spent a couple of days trying to organise things to cheer me up. What I really needed, apart from sleep, was some fun family time. Me time is great, but I was still stuck in a negative headset and was carrying it with me. So instead of enjoying being on my own, I was finding more things to be negative about.

I've had a great weekend re-discovering that the girls are fun to be around. Rather than looking at it as my job to play with them, I've been hovering around the edges while DH plays with them, and we've been rolling around on the bed, taking silly photos and just doing fun things. It's been so nice to have someone else taking the responsibility of entertaining them and letting me enjoy it rather than "working."

I'm sure this week will be hard again, but at least I'm feeling good about it rather than dreading being left on my own.

2 comments:

Michelle M said...

You really seem to have hit on something there - family time where you're NOT responsible for the kids is a great idea. I can't say that I've ever really been in a bad rut, but I do sometimes get sick of being the one to take responsibility all the time. I guess because I spend the most time with DD, I know what she needs and when. How is it that I'm the only one who can figure out that she needs new trousers? Isn't the huge gap between the bottom of the trousers and her ankles visible to anyone else?

Anyway, I hope this week is easier for you - you sound like a great Mum to me! Have you got any large boxes laying around? DD is loving using our microwave box as a house at the moment. And she shuts herself in there for what seems like minutes at a time (probably only 30 seconds but silence is golden!)

Deb said...

Thanks Michelle, today (Monday) was much better, so something over the weekend obviously worked! Widget adores her tent at the moment, but I have to get in there with her. I put a sheet over a work table, but it's not quite high enough for me to move around easily. We sit in there and play dominoes :)