Rediscovering the “f” word

Recently I reconnected with an old friend who’s immediate response when discovering I had three little people was you must be the funnest mom ever! I snorted at this and made a joke about my kids disagreeing. Later on I kept replaying this exchange over and over like the police do when watching store video footage after a robbery. I knew there was a clue in there somewhere, something bothering me that I was missing on the surface. Days later as I was sweating in the dance class waiting area struggling to prevent my ten month old from eating a lollipop left on the dusty floor and preparing to race my four year old out the door to a playday it hit me. My friend had used the word FUN to describe the me she used to know. The f word adjectives in my current bloodstream were more along the lines of frustrated, furious, or frazzled. FUN. I forgot what that felt like.

The next few days I watched my kids as we jetted between errands, schools, dance classes, horse riding lessons, gymnastics and soccer. I saw their laughter with their friends at these activities but noticed that they became more serious around me as if waiting for the milk to spill off the edge of the table. I suddenly realized that while giving my kids experiences and opportunities was my intention, I had not only run myself to the point of exhaustion but stopped enjoying all the things we were doing. It had all become another facet of my mommy workload.

Many of my friends and I joke about our “Disney dad” husbands. These men are loving hands on dads who bring the fun to our kids with their arrivals. Their first priority is not to vacuum or run the kids out somewhere but to shape their hands into claws becoming the Daddy Monster chasing the kids around at bedtime or giving an extra squirt of ketchup on the fries that don’t fall into the household food pyramid. These Disney dads thrill their kids while frustrating us wives. I often can be heard snapping angerily towards the Daddy Monster that it would be nice if I could just sit and play. When my husbands asks why I don’t just do it, I then launch into the literal laundry list of things to be done while boring myself and him in the process.

Suddenly I wondered, when did I stop having fun? Why can’t I get on the floor and play instead of sweeping it? And why try to create these experiences for my children when I was actually projecting the stress of juggling these activities instead enjoying my time with them? I’ve forgotten all the reasons I became a mom. In doing so I took on all the characteristics of a disgruntled employee: complaining that there isn’t enough time to meet all the demands, Feeling significantly unappreciated, and occasionally wishing for employment elsewhere.
As my job requirements change as the children age and multiply, I feel even less qualified and more multitasked. All of this has added up to an attitude that needs a big time perspective adjustment.

I realized that Disney dads are stressed too but they look at coming home to the kids as an opportunity to rediscover their sense of play and to laugh. Yes my job is the hardest one I’ve ever done and yes I really am seriously under appreciated, but I also get to work with really cute people, make many of my own hours and I can set my own rules instead of worrying what I should be doing.

This much needed perspective adjustment resulted in a day in which the clean laundry was dumped onto the floor in the corner of my bedroom, dishes were left in the sink to harden and a trail of shoes could be followed to the door if a quick escape from insanity was needed. But I found time to laugh, to sit and do crafts with the kids and to allow for a little lapse in the “rules” (seconds on candy anyone?). The interesting thing is… No one really did care that the house was a mess. And I found the kids listened a little better to the smiling woman trying to wrestle them into pajamas. And I felt a little sprinkle of fun back in my life.

Being a parent is hard. Being a parent means having to be responsible and doing things sometimes that are a bit overwhelming. No, not every moment can be fun and there are times things really do need to get done. But finding a way to “f” this job is just as important as finding a match to that missing sock. It teaches our little people that life may be a series of one thing after the other but enjoying it on the in between is what it is about.