Confessions of a Village Mom

I'm so tired of my kids! It just really hit me last night. At the end of
the day, I was ready to crash. I'd been up and down in the night with kids
who needed to go potty, or needed a light so they could find their covers,
or who needed to nurse. Then it was the crazy busy of normal life:
scrubbing, wringing, hanging laundry, juggling homeschooling 3 kids, plus
entertaining 2 more. Making and cleaning up meals. Dealing with the
fighting and bickering my kids were doing. Heating up water for kid's baths
and cycling 4 of them thru the tiny little tub I wash them in. Dealing with
more never-ending arguing. By my bedtime at 8 (don't laugh too hard... by
that time in the village all I can think of is getting into bed and just
having quiet and reading a book or watching a show!) I was ready to just get
rid of all my kids (for a short period... not indefinitely).
I was realizing that when we're here in the village, I just don't get any
breaks from the kids. I have them all day, every day for weeks on end. In
Ukarumpa at least, several of them are off at school for a chunk of the day.
I can do things like go work out for an hour without them, or run some
errands on my own. Or go to my women's Bible study for a whole morning.
But here, it's just me, with the kids, all the time.
Please don't get me wrong... I love, love, love my kids. I really like the
extra time I can have with them when we're here in the village and life is
even slower paced. But at some point, I just get completely drained and I
need a bit of completely kid-free time to recharge.
Yesterday especially, it felt like the kids just fought constantly, and made
one disaster after another. I think partly, we're all feeling the daily
rain we've been having (for like all but 3 or so days of this month in the
village) and just being cooped up in a small house.
Thankfully, my wonderful husband saw that I needed a break. He graciously
offered to take the 4 older kids down to the river to play this morning and
let me have a quiet morning at home. So I still have the little guy, who's
off and on my lap, and wanting to be held and fed, but at least I only have
one to juggle at once, and can get some quiet time to try to catch up on
emails, and just relax a little.
Hopefully this morning will do the trick and I'll be good to go for the next
month!