There's no such thing as momentum.

Not in my life, anyway. And I think that this is (at least part of) the reason I have such a hard time feel like I'm getting anything accomplished around here.

I don't like cleaning the bathroom. I particularly don't like cleaning the bathroom when the floor needs to be mopped because a child left a four foot arc of pee across it. Doing chores that I dislike requires a certain amount of "gearing up" for me to actually get started. And when I get started in the bathroom, what I'd like to do is use the "already started" momentum to clean the counters, the sink, the tub, the toilet, and the floor. All of it, all at once, beautiful and shining and DONE at the end.

But I can't do it like that, because when I'm wiping the counters Josiah needs to be held. (That's ok, I can wipe counters with one hand.) When I'm cleaning the sink, Jonathan and Thomas have a fight and I have to break that up, discipline both boys, and then hold Siah again because he's been upset by all the chaos. Back to the not-at-all-clean bathroom, it has been at least 30 minutes since I started and now I'm feeling like I'll never be done. And I can't clean the toilet because a child is sitting on it. Momentum, gone.

I keep telling myself to just "do the next thing" but it can be so discouraging when the "next thing" never actually seems to get finished. Right now I'm looking at my (conservative, reasonable!) list for the day, and there are three fairly minor chores that can't be crossed off because they aren't entirely finished, but I've been trying to get them done since 8am this morning.

If I could just clean, without the myriad of interruptions that are the daily fabric of my life, I could get the entire house reasonably clean in under 90 minutes. Sometimes I miss the days when I could do that. Sometimes I dream of a house cleaner. Sometimes I long for a babysitter.

But sometimes, often in the quiet of naptime when I have a chance to breath and pray and think, I remember that I have three beautiful children, whom I love so very much, and they beat out momentum every time.

So in the midst of this life that God has given me, with interruptions and giggles and shrieking and train tracks strewn across my wish-it-was-vacuumed floor, I guess I'll just work on learning to use momentum in smaller pieces.