Life in Theory versus Practice: an examination // vote for me?

The other night, we’re doing dishes and watching the baby on the monitor, listening to our favorite band’s new album, and I turn to AA:

Is this how you thought you’d live your life?

He snorted and kept scrubbing the few plastic dishes we use that I refuse to put in the high heat of the dishwasher for fear it will ignite their secret BPA ingredients and kill my kids. Then he asked me what I thought my life looked like in theory versus practice, which is a way better way of stating my same question. No surprise. He’s definitely the brainier of us. And I’m more rigid, as I confess in my Blessed is She devotion today.

I explained my present life in my mind looks like this:

Homemade food eaten by children wearing all clothing that I’ve made or sourced organically, while they gently play with their wooden toys and share kindly as I look on, showered, clothed, and knitting from a very comfortable yoga position I’ve mastered. Maybe I’m reading aloud from A Child’s Garden of Verse and maybe we’re all doing crafts.

He laughed so hard starting with the part where the kids are only wearing clothing I’ve made and going all the way through. I joined in and we moved on to the greener pastures of intellectual discussion like how many shirts I needed to iron for his week at work.

This got me to thinking, how closely am I living to how I’d like to live? How far off am I and what’s holding me back from actually living whatever this life is?

Convoluted question? Probably. I’m teetering on the edge of the flu myself and have watched most of the rest of the household fall to it so I’m a little wonky as I write.

We do eat homemade food often, and I do make a lot of the kids’ clothing or it’s hand-me-down from relatives so I feel less wasteful, and they do have a lot of wooden toys they love to play with, though they squabble as all small kids do, yet I am more often than not looking like a functioning adult and certainly haven’t mastered any yoga despite doing a little knitting everyday. I do read aloud daily, but not as often as I’d like. And I hate crafts.

What’s hindering this somewhat funny ideal?

Maybe our daily homeschool preschool consisting of a quick morning lesson comprised of How to Read in 100 Lessons for SuperBoy, a little handwriting practice, a little reading aloud, and then fun games like Math Animals and tick-tack-toe throughout the day. And the almost three year old peels all the crayon paper off. Because she likes to. She does throw away the trash, and it’s good for manual dexterity, right?

Maybe scheduling playdates in the morning during BabyLoves’ nap and so just nursing him down in the sling at whomever’s house.

Maybe spending spare moments working on new leggings for my etsy shoppe rather than plucking my eyebrows and brushing out my very very long hair, ergo: dreads.

I’m being more conscious about leveling expectations for the day combined with what’s both practical and feasible. I can’t both nurse the baby down for his nap and stop the big kids from squabbling. So they learn how to share on their own for a little while {constantly interrupting me!!!}. I can’t both play in her room with her and watch the baby try to scale her bed and start dinner so some days, it’s dinner from the freezer or takeout. I can’t work on handwriting with him while nursing the squirmy babe. I can’t clean up before dinner and make dinner. So either we all clean up or dinner is late or both. Or neither.

In my mind’s eye, I’m more organized and personally cared for, and more kids get more one-on-one time. In reality, no one cares that I’m not magazine ready and they play all day long and love almost all of it with their siblings.

This little exercise in fantasy & reality made me come to tenacious terms with what my days are going to look like for the foreseeable future. And maybe a little more hair-brushing needs to happen, but otherwise, I’m okay with the reality of my life.

//

Speaking of really fun places to go and spend time on the internet, you must, simply must, head to my friend Bonnie’s blog, A Knotted Life. I had the great fun when Bonnie stayed briefly with us a few months back when she was in town for a speaking gig {her son is the alleged miracle for Venerable Fulton Sheen’s canonization–baby brought back from the dead//so book her as your next speaker?}. She runs something called the Sheenazing Awards for best blogs in the Catholic blogosphere.

Go and take a peek and all the awesome blog and maybe vote for me as I was nominated for a little blogger award? I always find a lot of new reads through this so scroll on through! I feel sheepish telling you about it!!