“I think we need a new shed,” my husband said, looking out at our neglected and overgrown back yard.

“Maybe we can get a kit and I’ll build it,” I said.

He looked at me like I was delusional.

“Do you really think this is a good time to commit to building a shed? We can’t even commit to putting away the laundry.”

Well, he has a point. He had also caught me at my new habit – making goals that I cannot possibly complete. Is this a thing other new parents do? Maybe it is the freedom of nap time or the nice weather, but suddenly I am brimming with tasks I can’t wait to complete.

There is just one thing standing in the way of my burst of productivity and the completion of all of my brilliant ideas. Yes friends, only one thing can stop me now – and it is currently crawling over to splash in the dog’s water dish.

As a parent of a newly mobile baby, I spend most of my day chasing him around and picking up after his destruction. If a task cannot be done in 35 seconds, then it will not be done until nap time.

As such, I have had to re-evaluate my rather over-ambitious goals. Here are some examples:

Original Goal: Build a shed

More Realistic Goal: Mow the lawn before it grows taller than my dog. Already she does a high step over the lawn, while glancing meaningfully over her shoulder at me as if to say,”Cut the lawn already! How is a dog supposed to pee in these conditions?” Don’t worry – she is a lab, so we’ve got another foot before we really need to cut the grass.

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Original Goal: Sort my clothing, store the winter clothes and donate anything that doesn’t fit.

More Realistic Goal: Do a load of laundry, and put it away. (Preferably within a 24 hour period, but let’s not get crazy here.)

Photo credit: rhodes via Visual Hunt / CC BY-SA

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Original Goal: Sort my son’s clothing and toys and store the ones he has outgrown.

More Realistic Goal: Push the pile of outgrown clothing into a corner with my foot. Toss the toys into the play pen until the baby looks like he is in a ball pit. Kids like those, right? Great.

Photo via VisualHunt.com

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Original Goal: Make extra food to freeze for later in the week.

More Realistic Goal: Make one meal fit for human consumption. In order to do this however, I have to let the baby play in the dog’s water dish while I frantically chop veggies. Inevitably the baby ends up soaking wet, the dog ends up licking the baby like an ice cream cone and I end up burning at least some of what I made while trying to prevent those two things from happening. Well, at least we will be full and the baby kind of got a bath. I call that sweet multi-tasking.

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Original Goal: Run errands

More Realistic Goal: Go to one store in between nap time and lunch time. Time this carefully, as there are about 15 minutes a day when neither of these things are happening. These 15 minutes get taken up by trying to change the baby’s diaper as he rolls frantically away in search of sweet freedom.

Give up and order things online.

 

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