<p>I&#39;m tired of feeling like I&#39;m running to catch up - I&#39;m always five minutes late to something, dinner&#39;s never ready on time, I&#39;m always forgetting how to do things. Things have been like this for so long that I&#39;ve pretty much resigned myself to never being &quot;with it.&quot; On top of that, I&#39;m always exhausted - but at the end of the day I rarely feel like I&#39;ve accomplished anything. </p>

<p>I don&#39;t like this feeling. I&#39;m stressed, and can&#39;t shake the feeling that I&#39;m missing out.</p>

<p>Things came to a boil last week when, as I was trying to reply to a friend&#39;s email (one that she had sent me three weeks ago) and I was simultaneously trying to feed my sick baby a snack while cleaning up the breakfast dishes (because we had to abandon them as we rushed out the door to drop off my preschooler and now I had two bowls of half-eaten oatmeal that had dried to a cement-like consistency), the doorbell rang. </p>

<p>Of course.</p>

<p>I ran to open it, and standing before me was some guy from the Water Department. I must have looked really confused because he reminded me that I had scheduled this appointment weeks before - because we needed a new water meter? I didn&#39;t remember making this appointment - in fact, I had no idea whether we had a water meter or not - so he could have been one of those homicidal maniacs for all I know. I was about to tell him to wait outside so I could check my calendar, but then I heard the clang of the baby&#39;s bowl as he threw it across the kitchen and I just let him in and pointed him in the general direction of the basement. </p>

<p>As I got on my hands and knees to pick up apple juice soaked Kix from the kitchen floor I started to get really mad at myself for not having my act together - it probably didn&#39;t help that at that moment my baby was screaming his head off because he was still strapped on the high chair, that my laptop&#39;s screen had gone dark because the battery had run out and probably eaten up the email I had spent 45 minutes trying to compose; the fact that I had let a stranger in the house was really just the icing on the cake. </p>

<p>That&#39;s when I realized that things were Not Working and the solution was clear: I need to Focus. </p>

<p>Focus. That sounds so perfectly simple! But it&#39;s easier said than done.</p>

<p>This is going to sound ridiculous, but I&#39;ve been living in denial: I have young children. You know that shampoo commercial that says, &quot;everything changes when you have a baby?&quot; They don&#39;t only mean what car you drive and your clothing size. No. They mean EVERYTHING.</p>

<p>I try to do twenty things at once because I used to be able to multitask, but that was once upon that mythical time before I had kids. Nowadays I have two little ninjas ready to pounce whenever my attention is diverted. I simply can&#39;t juggle a social phone call, work email and dinner - at least not while the toddler is literally hanging off the kitchen table (don&#39;t ask) and the preschooler is &quot;coloring&quot; the hardwood floors. </p>

<p>Instead, I have to do one thing at a time. One. The phone calls need to happen while the kids are napping or at school. The work email needs to be taken care of after the kid&#39;s bedtime. Dinner has to be on the table by 5:30 - which means that the kids are getting something simple or whatever we&#39;ve prepared the night before.</p>

<p>I&#39;ve also realized that I need to sleep. I simply can&#39;t run on 6 hours of sleep - not anymore. This has been the hardest change of all. I don&#39;t know about you, but I feel like my REAL day starts once the kids go to bed - is that any way to live? Instead, I&#39;ve been forcing myself to go to bed earlier and it&#39;s starting to make a big difference during the daylight hours; I&#39;m starting to actually enjoy them. The first night I forced myself to get 10 hours of sleep (that meant a 9:00 bedtime for me, which is a HUGE sacrifice because I normally turn off the lights at midnight) and the next day I felt like I could do anything. I hadn&#39;t felt like that in a long time. It felt good. </p>

<p>So that&#39;s it - my plan: Get to bed early, and when awake - to focus on one thing at a time. </p>

<p>Simple, but it&#39;s all I can handle right now.</p>
