Hellobee Boards

I feel like this all the time!

For me, the cure is self-care. Do stuff to take care of myself and I have more enthusiasm for others.

I also pretty much quit doing all the Pinterest stuff, or general "good mom" type stuff.. I have literally nothing exciting planned for Christmas this year. I used to get so into it, but when LO2 was born I just found I could not do it anymore. Big deal for us is having pancakes for dinner instead of the usual rotisserie chicken, haha. I haven't baked in like a year. Sometimes it makes me sad because I actually like baking/crafting, but the cleanup and all that stuff just makes me so stressed, it isn't worth it right now. Instead I try to find "magical" things to do with my child that don't make it harder on me. Simple stuff like taking them out to the park and bringing a picnic (picnic= takeout) or reading 5 books instead of the usual 1 or 2. Or going somewhere fun, or giving them choice when usually I would dictate the choice. Or really simple projects like baking soda volcano or homemade apple sauce. Or letting kiddo help with dinner. But until mine are a little older, anything extra special is just out.

I find I cannot engineer the "happy" moments anymore, but when I focus on self-care and not getting too overwhelmed, they can happen when I least expect it. Last weekend we went to an SEC football game and had a fantastic time. With two kids the likelihood of that happening was slim, but we had gutter-low expectations, didn't stay long, didn't give ourselves a hard time for eating soft pretzels as a legitimate meal, anticipated all the meltdowns ahead of time so that it wasn't as difficult to deal with in the moment (we had at least one tantrum), etc.