Took the girls for a lovely stroll this morning. The rain dried up and the sky is clear blue with smatterings of marshmallow clouds. I am feeling quite unsatisfied of late. I don’t think this is a bad thing, necessarily. Usually when I am like this I try to do things to be more productive. Time management is at the bottom of this I’m afraid. Whereas in the past, I had plenty of time in addition to the time I had to spend doing the crap I had to do. Bad sentence. I had lots of free time. That is what I’m trying to say. Now, what would be free time in the past is spent decompressing before running around doing chores and fretting about what kind of job I’ll be qualified to do when I go back to work in a year, when the girls are three, and wondering where the hell my artistic career (albeit small, unlucrative and unrecognized for the most part) went and will it ever come back. There are also many levels of panic surrounding my own guilt about having this dissatisfaction when I should really be spending my time focusing on making my daughters smarter, well-adjusted and perfect.
Mothers. So silly. You can’t make your children perfect! They are who they are, which is already perfect, even in its imperfection. Should I really be in the role of their schoolteacher at this early age? I tell them about color, sound, we dance around, there is much discussion (one way) about sharing and being kind to one another. I count when doing everyday things, I tell them how many toes and fingers they have, which foot is getting a sock. I provide food for them to eat which they really seem to enjoy. And then I clean up after all of this, which is quite time consuming. I guess I could just forget about my interests and really, myself altogether, and devote every waking moment to their betterment, but that doesn’t seem realistic or like a very good idea.
Can you tell someone recently mentioned to me I should be organizing their days more? Structured activity? Today the blog is like me whining to a therapist, except I don’t have to shell out any money or think too much about my own childhood.
20 Fingers, 20 Toes 
Structured activity is overrated. Sounds like you’re doing fine, including the girls in your everyday life. That’s probably what they really want, anyway.
Thanks for your encouragement, Marcy! Parents get judged like crazy, eh? Some days I’m just amazed I can get out of bed in the morning and deal with two toddlers all freakin’ day!
Freedom rules, structure drools. They’ll have enough of that when they’re older. People who say you need more structure are afraid of their own possibilities. Don’t give up, J, you rock as a mother and an artist and an individual entity in the universe apart from socks and food and all the rest of it.