I read this post on the Athleta Chi blog about Mommy Guilt. If you have the time, go read it. If not… a synopsis can be gathered from these snippets:

I don’t care if you have children with two feet or four, if you have “children” you have mommy guilt.

Not only was I relying on someone else to watch my babies while I went out and did something that I wanted to do, but I also had to shell out the precious cash to do so.

My husband was the one who really pushed me to look past the money and the guilt, telling me the money was inconsequential – my well-being and physical fitness were more important. I resisted for a really long time

I realized that I needed that time away, especially when my husband was deployed or out of town with his job

You truly are a better mom when you take the time to exercise.

Oh boy… this is something I struggle with! I feel guilt if I want to take time for myself all the time. In fact, when my husband’s busy season wrapped up I told him that I wanted to run every Saturday morning on my own. And I did just that last Saturday… but this week, nope. I didn’t want to “burden” him with baby care so I loaded Alex into the stroller and took her out for 3 miles instead of the 6 I had originally planned.

Part of that was due to being tired, we were both awake with her from 10:30 – 1:30 while she was sobbing last night. (Tears and wails of pain. She obviously didn’t feel well. It was rough.) But part of it was that my hubby looked so miserable for not having gotten much sleep. Did it matter that I was in that same boat? No… I take on all the burdens in the household! If someone is stressed, I’m stressed too.

Right now I’m struggling feeling okay with taking time for myself to run. I hate taking my “lunch hour” to run because I feel like that makes me a crappier employee. (Plus it will be increasingly harder to do that as it gets warmer and warmer. We’re supposed to hit 100 this week.) I hate going out to run in the evening hours because I feel like I should be spending quality time with my husband, although usually we just end up sitting on the couch watching TV while each of us are on our computers. Not super high-quality!

From what everyone tells me and what I keep reading, it’s important important important to take that. So in honor of Mother’s Day being tomorrow I am going to work on feeling okay about taking time for myself.

However, I really do want to spend my Mother’s Day with Kevin and Alex. I don’t even care if she comes into the bathroom with me at this point in life! 🙂

Today’s #BlogEveryDayInMay prompt: Sell yourself in 10 words or less

Um… that’s too hard. I really am not good at selling myself. One of the myriad reasons why I wouldn’t want to go looking for a new job! So if you know me personally or just know me from this site… help me out. What words should I use to “sell” myself!