#289 Exhaustion

Today I volunteered at both of my boys’ schools. This morning I helped out at pajama day at the 4 year old’s preschool. We did an art project and made dream catchers out of paper plates, string, stickers, paint and beads. It was a lot of fun. The kids were adorable (as always), and I really enjoyed myself.




Later I went to my older son’s first grade class to teach a lesson on citizenship as part of their character education curriculum. Usually I really enjoy doing this as well, but today I was a little bit late and we bumped up against the end of the school day and the whole thing felt a little bit hurried. Also, only two kids in the normally very interactive class seemed interested in answering any questions. One of those kids was my son and while I love that he wants to participate, I hate to always call on him when I’m in the classroom. Citizenship can be a difficult topic to grasp though, so I had to do a little bit more explaining than usual. Honesty and Justice, the character traits I’ve taught so far come a little easier to the first grade mind.



This was an ambitious day for me given my advanced state of pregnancy (2 weeks to go!), but it’s going to be easier for me to do this stuff now than it will be when the baby is here. I’m glad I did it, but boy am I exhausted. And of course I still had to do all the normal mommy stuff—help with homework, piano practice, make lunches for tomorrow, dinner tonight, etc, etc, etc. I’m not complaining, not at all, just rationalizing the exhaustion.



I was thinking about how exhausted I was when I happened to glance at a picture of Eric and realized that he would scoff at my exhaustion. He wouldn’t understand the effort just being pregnant takes (Does any man really? Let alone one who’s never lived with a pregnant woman?) and he never understood normal exhaustion anyway. He never seemed to tire; he just went and went and went until he dropped. And then he started going again as soon as he woke up.



I have never been like that as much as I envy it. I need my down time. But sometimes it’s not worth it. Sometimes it’s worth it to exert the time and energy on my kids. Besides, I’m going to be distracted enough from these two when number three gets here. Here’s hoping some of Eric’s energy somehow finds its way to me. I’m going to need it.