Such is the Life of a Military Wife: Mama's Tappin' Out!

I finally hit it. I hit the critical point where trying to be supermom simply becomes overwhelming. It doesn't matter if you are a stay at home mom, a working mom, a military mom or a civilian mom. We all have a level where our full cup of patience spills and then breaks. My patience was gone and I was starting to have a stinky attitude towards everything and everyone. One afternoon my son, Matthew, came up and said, "Look mom! Look what I got for you!".

I'm not sure what it was about the flower but it got me thinking. Matthew was focused on me for at least 1 second while he was picking it and look how excited he was. Maybe I would be happier if I stopped and narrowed my focus back to my children.

Call it what you want; yelling for mercy, screaming uncle, tapping out, giving up, or whatever but something had to give. I realized I can't do it all nor do I want to try. So I made a list of things I could do to help bring my focus back to Nicholas and Matthew.

#1. Do not bring work home: no one benefits from this. I try to get work done, ignore my kids, and then get frustrated when they keep interrupting.

#2. Lighten up: so what if Matthew isn't always playing with an educational toy or learning how to write his name. So what if Nicholas is more interested in eating a flower than learning how to walk.

Just don't take his flower away.

♥I had such a great time watching him. This little man makes me laugh aloud everyday ♥

And it's OK if he wants to play with a DVD as long as it came from Target's $5 bin.

#3. Accept the fact that my house looks like Toys R Us: I quit trying to put the toys up in their proper place every night. It's spring, we're not using the fireplace, let's just store them there. I mean really. They're just going to be dragged back out anyways.

Yes, that's the elf on the shelf. Somehow he's become a permanent part of our living room decor.

#4. Enjoy every moment of my weekend: I finally stopped cramming so many activities into Saturday and Sunday. We usually have so much stuff going on that I get frustrated because we're always running late. Matthew's friend had a birthday party and it was so nice to go and enjoy it without being hard pressed for time.

#5. When I don't know what to say, just laugh: if I'm speechless that means my emotions could go either way. Laughter or anger, laughter or anger. Time to start choosing laughter.

Like when Matthew decided to get into a fight with a bottle of Anti-Monkey Butt diaper powder after 10pm on a work night.

Yeah, I had to keep mentally telling myself to laugh as I was cleaning up the mess. Although technically is was my fault. I should have been paying more attention to Matthew and not Army Wives.

#6. Constantly remind myself that they're still little kids: it's so easy to get frustrated when they don't stay focused, make a mess eating, throw their tantrums, are slow getting dressed or keeping up with you in a store. When it comes to Matthew, I catch myself forgetting that he is only 4 years old.

So every time I start to feel myself lose it, I think about my list. I'm sure it probably sounds lame to others but it's been working pretty well so far. I feel like I'm more enjoyable to be around. And thank goodness for that! I really didn't want my husband to come home to a grouchy wife.

That's right. Jacob's home! We were fortunate that this deployment was so short. I know there will be a time in the future where he will have to go again and probably for a long period of time. But for now our family is together and we are enjoying every moment.