A Slice of My Insanity!

A little bit about the insanity that has become my life. Here's what a typical Wednesday looks like lately:

7:00am- Woken up by Marshal coming in my room to snuggle in bed.
8:00- Beaten up by Marshal's tossing, turning and kicking
8:15- Begrudgingly roll out of bed to act like a responsible mother...
8:30- Cohen wakes up (if he hasn't already)
8:30- Feed the little monsters breakfast which includes a ridiculous amount of yogurt, cereal and scrambled eggs (what the heck am I going to do when they're teenage boys?)
9:00-Wash Marshal off (a hose down would work nicely)
9:05- Wash Cohen off (more hosing required)
9:10- Sweep the floors
9:12- "Mop" the floors (thank goodness for my Rubbermaid easy spray "mop" which I use about 20 times a day!)
9:15- Change the nighttime diapers
9:20- Wrestle the children while attempting to clothe them for the day. This usually includes showing Marshal every shirt and pair of pants in his closet while he rejects each and every one of them and then simply forcing him to put something on while I threaten to leave the house without him to run errands (I know that's horrible right! Sometimes I just lose my patience!)
9:30- Plop the kids in front of The Cat in The Hat while I take a shower (again more evidence of being a bad mother but how else am I supposed to keep them in one room while I shower?)
9:45- Do my hair and makeup so I feel somewhat like a human being
10:00- Wash the dishes, maybe clean the counters (if I'm lucky)
10:15- Attempt to turn off the tv while Marshal screams and tells me not too.
10:30- Get out the door to go for a walk
11:30- Return to the house with yet another unwilling Marshal because he would rather stay and watch the diggers all day (do you see a pattern here- this kid is seriously giving me a run for my money!)
11:45- Try to throw together some sort of a lunch
12:00- Feed the kids (potentially, and fingers crossed Cohen is napping as a result of the walk)
12:30- Clean Marshal off
12:35- Sweep the kitchen and mop the floors again
12:40- Try to do some emails (personal, work, church and business) Marshal usually plays in the playroom while I work.
1:00- Try to think about what I need to teach at dance tonight. Marshal still playing in the playroom. Cohen wakes up.
1:30- Do choreography for classes (if necessary) Marshal and Cohen play, Marshal and Cohen fight!
2:00- Try to be a good mother and interact with my children.
2:30- Realize I need to do some laundry and throw in a  load.
2:45- Put together some sort of a dinner (casserole or if I was smart I already did a crockpot in the am)
3:00- Try to clean up some of the disaster that has befallen our entire house
3:30- Pack up my bag for work, get changed to go teach dance, hopefully Dan gets home now!
3:40- Play with kids a bit
3:55- Leave for work
4:10- Get to work
4:15- Teach ballet to a very enthusiastic bunch of 7 year olds!
5:15- Leave work
5:30- Get home eat dinner that Dan cooked (after I prepared)
6:00- Clean the kids off
6:10- Sweep and mop the floors yet again!
6:12- Wash the bath tub (fun fun)
6:15- Bathe the boys (thankfully this is Dan's job)
6:25- Wrestle them into their pjs
6:30- Dan puts Cohen to bed
6:35- Grandpa arrives to hang out with Marshal
6:50- We finally get out the door to head to the church
7:15- Arrive at church to teach the you their cultural celebration choreography
7:30-Work with the youth aka run around the church like a chicken with its head cut off making sure all youth know what they are doing as they prep for a big celebration at the end of October.
8:30- Finish teaching the youth
8:45- Leave the church and go home
9:00- Get home and finally sit down on the couch, realize that I totally for got to switch the laundry earlier!
9:01- Switch the laundry
9:02 Turn on the tube and watch the X Factor!
11:00- Get ready for bed
11:15- Go to bed
(oh wait a second I completely forgot about dirty diapers in there, plus attempted potty time too!)

SLEEP!

Wake up ...and Repeat!

The Changing Family

Well I'm attempting to return from my blogging hiatus. I'd love for you to believe that I'm truly coming back to the world of regular blogging, but I really can't make any promises right now seen as my life has taken a turn for the busier! I'll get into the details about all the exciting new things I'm up to in my next post, but for right now I've got something that's been on my mind.

Let me start by saying that I have zero intention of offending, hurting or criticizing anyone with this post topic, it's simply an issue I've been thinking about and would love to hear other women's feelings on.

The topic I'd like to discuss today is children and families. The other night Dan came home from work and told me the client he had been working for that day was the father of 13. He is a much older man (in his 80s) so all of his children are adults now, but I couldn't help but feel amazed that this man had 13 children! In our society families of 3 children get labelled as large, and generally people are both shocked and amazed if you have more than 3 children.

However it was not so very long ago that the family was much larger. It wasn't out of the ordinary to have 5 or more children in a family. Now, I realize that our social culture has changed quite dramatically over the past century. I'm no sociology or anthropology expert but of the many changes, we have seen the role of the woman change extensively, contraceptives have become readily available and the rate of marriage has steadily declined. I'm aware that all of these things have serious effects on the number of children that families choose to have. And yet I wonder why exactly they have had such a significant impact?

Why exactly are women choosing to have such dramatically fewer children?

Again I just want to reiterate that I have zero intention of offending anyone. I am well aware that we all have the freedom to choose how we live our lives, and we all have our own issues/life factors that come into play when we make the truly significant decisions regarding our families. As a woman in today's society I truly feel blessed with how much is available to me. I went to to university, have worked and continue to work (part time) at a job that I love, while also getting married and becoming a mother. I know that I have been fortunate to have these things in my life. I know that there are many other women in a similar position to my own and many in other very different ones.

Bringing this back around to my real question about why the number of children per family has decreased so significantly. I personally feel that we live in a world that facilitates the role of the mother. For example, we have grocery stores- most of us don't have to grow or harvest our own food, raise our own cattle and churn our own butter, we make a weekly trip to a store and purchase all the items we need for the week. We have cars making it easy and time efficient for us to get around. We have disposable diapers (I know many choose to use cloth) but seriously even the cloth diapers we have today seem way easier than those of the past. We live in homes that many of us feel are too small, but lets face it there is nothing wrong with kids sharing a bedroom! We have baby food on the stores of our grocery shelves and if your really feel better about making your own I'm certain you have a blender or food processor to do so! So all in all (in my humble opinion) we are pretty lucky to be mothers today.

Now trust me even though we have so much it is still hard to be a mother and I am in no way diminishing what mothers do and the sacrifices we make. I know just how hectic it can be to get to the grocery store and load up the cart when you have a ticking time bomb in the shape of a toddler helping you to push your cart! I'm just trying to point out the benefits we have.

So with all of this and all the things we have that do indeed make our mom jobs easier- why is it that we now have an average of 2.9 people per family and more couples without children than couples with children? See 2012 census details.

I am really very curious as to why we are having less children. Is it that we have less time, don't have the patience of our fore-mothers, have other things to pursue, feel that it is more important to be able to afford to take our children to Disneyworld and other exotic locations every year, simply don't want more kids, are physically unable to have more children, or just want to be able to enjoy our own life without the added stress of sleepless nights and dirty diapers?

For whatever your reason may be I get that it's a personal one and am not asking you to delve into your personal pockets for me. But if you do have an idea or opinion about this topic that you're willing to share I'd love to hear what you have to say.

I'm not sure how many kids you have or are planning to have but doesn't 13 just seem extraordinary! I don't think many of us will make it that far but maybe over time we will see an increase in the size of families again. Who knows! For what it's worth even though kids are a TON of work they are also a TON of joy!

Jordan