Fantastic or Fraud??

I AM A FRAUD! 

This revelation finally hit me this week when on a play date with one of Kanin's school friends, the mom, JoAnna, kept saying things like, "I can't keep up with you" and "I don't know how you do it".  Then, later when I got home I saw that she had written a really nice blog about some of the different things that I've been doing and called it Inspiration.  That little blog was what made me want to
come clean.

On one hand, I guess I should be proud that I have made it look like I have everything together and still have time for other stuff (working out, 2 blogs, taking kids all around the city) but, in reality, when I do these things it takes away from other stuff that I should be doing like:
  -Laundry (washing, drying, folding, putting away.  Repeat)
  -Vacuuming the house (that takes a good 30-45 minutes)
  -Cleaning the kitchen/mopping the floors/cleaning out the refrigerator/unloading the dishwasher/loading the dishwasher
  -Making my bed (this never happens anymore)
  -Cleaning the bathrooms
  -Wiping down the baseboards
  -Cleaning the basement (this WILL be on my Clean House Project)
 
Then, there are other things that I need to do, as well:
  -Painting the kitchen, laundry room, stairwell and all rooms upstairs (the only rooms that have been painted since we moved in here are the office, dining room, family room and foyer)
  -Buying or finding curtains for EVERY room in the house except for the dining room
  -Putting pictures and other decorative items up on the walls (I'm just not good at this stuff)
  -Pulling weeds in front of the house

I haven't even gotten started on cleaning out closets, pricing stuff for a garage sale, organizing photos and putting them into albums, etc etc etc

Believe me, if you were to walk into my house on any day of the week (except for one when my parents come over to clean), my house is destroyed.  There are toys everywhere, dirty dishes in the sink, dishwasher/washer and dryer going, folded clothes waiting in a laundry basket to be carried upstairs so they can be put away, mail that needs to be sifted through, sippy cups that have been left in the middle of the floor, laundry baskets overflowing with clothes that need to be taken down to the laundry room, a playpen/bouncy seat and jump-a-roo taking up 1/4 of the family room, leftovers crammed into the refrigerator, a kitchen table that desperately needs to be wiped down and, once again, this list could go on and on.

When I worked outside of the home I had a motto "I work around my life, not live around my work".  I was never one of those super dedicated, over-achiever, give everything up for the company kind of people.  I did my job, I was proficient and gave it my best but if I had to choose between leaving on time to go be with my family and putting in an extra 30 minutes or hour for the company, the choice was easy.

I've carried this philosphy, I guess, into my new job of being a stay-at-home mom.  I don't want to be so up-in-arms about having a spotless house, perfectly manicured lawn and robot-like children that I forget about actually living and having fun and enjoying each day. 

I do still get annoyed when I spend an hour or so cleaning and look around the house and realize that I could have done absolutely nothing and the house would look the exact same way.  But, I am trying to remember that even though I am at home I still need to "Work around my life and not live around my work".  It's a lesson that I have to re-teach myself over and over.

So now that my lie is out there and I have confessed that I do not have my act together, everyone will realize that YOU are actually the Super Women out there and I am just skating by!!