Common denominator

When everyone and everything is driving you crazy, to determine the answer, find the common denominator.

This week has kicked my butt.

I am an introvert who needs time by myself to recharge.
I am a mother of a baby and a preschooler.

These two sentences are incompatible.  Juliette wants to be held, but not in a carrier.  She will sit and play on the ground, but not with baby toys, just with paper to chew or wires to put in her mouth.  Benjamin has developed the "lovely" habit of whining.  All.  Day.  Long.

24 hours a day, either my baby, my preschooler, my older kids, my house, or my husband need something from me.  I feel as though I have been sucked dry, and there is not a drop left to be squeezed out, and yet they keep coming and coming and squeezing and squeezing to see if anything more is there.

There is not.

And yet, I must somehow find a way to be refilled, because not having something to give just isn't an option.  The daily demands on a mother.

(I must try to find the moments of joy, for they will fill my empty tank.  I must try and steal into a room full of sleeping, tired boys and lie down for a moment in their beds and watch their fluttering eyelids dreaming, dreaming, and drink in their fleeting childhood.

Then I must find a way so that every time Benjamin whines "Mooooo-ooooom" it instead plays the strains of a favourite song.)