How things change

E is three months old now, and in many ways, it seems like she's just slotted effortlessly into our family. The schedule hasn't really changed much -- she's so easygoing that I can basically tote her around wherever we would normally go, and she'll do fine. And again, because she's easy, it definitely doesn't seem like there's much more work to do around the house (except for laundry. Adding one little person to the family seems to have added an avalanche of laundry).

However, there have been some changes on our lives (aside from the extra happiness of having a much-wanted, long-awaited bundle of cute hanging around). For one thing, my house is a mess. I feel like I should be getting back into the swing of things, but finding the time and energy to clean is proving difficult. More precisely, finding the time to clean at the same time I have the energy to do so is rough. M doesn't actually nap anymore, so my time is limited either to when she's in preschool (excluding travel time, I have 2.5 hours 2x a week) or when E is sleeping and M is watching tv or something. This happens surprisingly infrequently, and my preschool time is usually filled with errands and such. So the place is messy. Insanely so, even for me. I've really got to figure this out before the health department gets wind of us.

Of course, since I don't have time to do more than the most basic chores, many of my "me-time" activities have fallen by the wayside, too. As you may have noticed, there's barely any time for blogging these days. And I've gone from reading 3-4 books a week to being lucky to read one book a week. Heck, it's a miracle if I read one magazine a week these days.

Actually, the only leisure time activity that still claims as much time as it used to is, shamefully, television. That's the big indulgence for both The Boy and I. By the time we get both kids to sleep at night, it's usually close to 10 pm, and we're both shot. I know I could get a lot of chores done each night, but I just can't. It's almost all I can do to stay awake for an hour or two staring at the tube.

The funny thing is, as "busy" as things are, I don't feel busy. By and large, our days pass pleasantly, with lots of trips to the park or long meanders around the neighborhood. When M is busy, I get to spend time playing with E (who, for the record, can roll over both ways now, a trick she learned when she was still only two months old!). I manage to cook real dinners every night, and clean up a little bit here and there. And then the day is over and we do it all again the next day. It's a nice life, full of love and cuddles and laughter and play and heaps and heaps of joy. So it's ok that I'm drowning in clutter, right?