Time crunch

Last week was Josh's first week at day care.  We decided that since I wasn't working last week, it would be a good week to start.  If he was having trouble adjusting, I could just go get him and bring him home.

Silly us to even consider that.  Josh never looked back as I left the first morning, and was not terribly interested in leaving when I picked him up at that night.  They have toys, and he can spend all day playing with toys, instead of being carted around town doing errands and running into work with Mommy and whatever else real life throws our way during the day.
Day care is clearly way cooler than being with Mom.

He had a great time.  We're thrilled that we(finally) found a good child care solution--2 days at day care and 2 days with Grandmas a week. 

But I am exhausted.
I'm up at 5 a.m. to be to work by 6:45.  I don't get home till almost 8 on Mondays or later, then I have Tuesdays off, and then I go back into work from 4pm on Wednesdays to midnight Thursday night, a 32 hour shift.  Fridays afternoons and evenings I'm at work studying, and then Saturday morning I have to be at class, an hour and a half away, by 8 am, and I'm not done till almost 5 pm.  By the time I get home, it's enough to kiss Josh, give him his nighttime bottle, put his pajamas on, put him to bed, and then say goodbye to my husband, since he has to be to work at midnight, and won't come home till the wee hours Tuesday morning.
And then my week starts all over again.

It's easy to get discouraged when I realize how much I'm not doing that I think I should be.  My house is clean, because we're never here and I do a speed-cleaning on Tuesdays.  We eat out way more than we should right now, because even though I made up freezer meals when I realized how busy these few months were going to be, I never remember to defrost them in time for dinner.  I've given up on lunches; Subway is only three blocks away.  Tonight I took tacos up to eat lunch with my husband, and ate Healthy Choices microwave meal for dinner.  In between trying to catch up on laundry, read four chapters of my textbook, play with my son, and think about how I really needed to change the sheets on my bed.

And then I read the blogs about happy, carefree, content, peaceful moms who cook three course dinners from scratch, sew their children's clothing, clean their house and welcome their husbands home every night.  With dinner, that is warm, and that is not takeout.

And I can't do that.  For starters, my husband doesn't come home every night.  And when he is home, I may be at work.  We divide up housework and cooking--we each do about the same amount.  I can't sew, and even though I can cook from scratch, I don't know when I'd find the time. 
Someday, maybe I will realize that it's not the end of the world.  This is my situation, and that is that I work 44 hours a week and am taking a 6 credit hour, very difficult critical care paramedic class an hour and a half drive from home.   I am not superwoman, and I can't do everything. So for right now, some things slide.  My stairs may not be vacuumed.  I may not be as hospitable as I like.  We may not even attempt to attend church right now, because I don't have a husband home on Sundays and I'm exhausted.  I had to put my son into day care two days a week, and he's thriving without me.
I have to let go of all that.  I have to focus on what I can do, here, now, with what time I'm given.

And that's okay.