Frozen

It has been yet another rush around week this week.  Something tells me that as The Peanut gets older, that is just going to be how we operate out of necessity and survival, on that downward slide into teenage-hood.

Ouch.  That hurt to even type it.

Today, she will be competing in the school spelling bee, having won her class one last week.  We've spent the last few days spelling words like cephalopod, bric-a-brac and shiatsu in the car and back and forth in the living room at random.  It has felt like being a side story in Akeelah and the Bee.  (If you have not yet seen that movie, you really must.  It is awesome.)

Beyond that, though, I haven't gotten much of anything else accomplished.  Ugh.

Sometimes, as a momma, it feels as though everything you are, everything you do has more to do with everyone else than it ever does with you.  At least, that's how it has felt lately.  That isn't to say that I wouldn't do things the exact same way all over again given the choice, because The Peanut is that important to me and she thrives with a supportive environment (such as when momma helps her make individual flash cards of the spelling words so that she can practice anywhere, anytime, in the way that best helps her to memorize, for example...something that took forever and wore me out entirely, but I'm glad I did it anyway).

Finding balance is really difficult.

Should I feel guilty about even saying that out loud?  Because I kind of do.  It's a dilemma, isn't it, finding balance without shorting the people you love somehow, too -- impossible, but worth trying to find somehow, I think.

I'm going to work on that for the rest of the week, for everyone's sake, because a happy momma means a happy family.  And I'm feeling a bit too off-kilter at the moment.

Won't start it just yet, though.  Have to get ready to go back over to school to cheer on my wee girlie -- who is not so wee any longer.  Why oh why do they have to grow up so fast?

(Photo via joysaphine.)