“Yea, I shall return with the tide.”

“Yea, I shall return with the tide.”

― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Hello folks, I’m back! And although I’m not sure if the tide has turned, I am committed to try to return to blogging. A big thank you to all of you who wrote to me to find out where I’ve been.

So where have I been? Well I’ve turned into a ‘busy’ mum. Whenever you read about mums they are always ‘busy’, and now I have membership in this club. Ask me what I’ve been up to lately and I cannot give you a straight answer, but sure as hell, I’ve been ‘busy’.

Top 5 reasons why I haven’t had time to blog:

1. The Flash. My time has been largely taken up with my newest, The Flash. She’s a cat napper by day and much prefers my attention than anything else, and she’s got it. (I’d forgotten just how much time babies take up when I’d made my list of all the things I was going to get done on maternity leave.)

2. Parenting in general. I don’t blog when the kids are up so that gives me between 9pm and 6am. And this is the exact same time when I prefer to sleep. Or talk to TSH. Nup, I’m kidding, sleep wins.

3. Testing the Swedish health care system. I had what I thought was the fever/chills of mastitis but turned out to be the fever/chills of a wicked kidney infection and wound up in hospital. The Flash had to be weaned asap and because I wanted to continue breastfeeding once I was off the antibiotics, I ended up with my old friend, The Pump. Enter round the clock pumping sessions in the infections ward of South Stockholm hospital. I think everyone in Stockholm has now seen my boobs. They missed me when I left. Well everything is sorted out now but the recovery time was long.

4. A holiday. We went to Malmö in the south of Sweden to visit friends. And what a friend Tina Sparkles turned out to be, when my family arrived on her doorstep, and then started spewing on everything. Yes one by one we all caught stomach flu and saw diddly squat of Malmö. More recovery time. And washing.

5. Visitors and events. My lovely mum paid a visit and luckily was here for Kidney Crisis 2012. A mother of 5, she was a whiz helping out with the newly weaned Flash and lending a hand with Bubba. We also held a christening for the Flash which was just beautiful.

So I’m a busy mum, just like everyone else. But I complain about it more. To be honest, I feel like I should have time to blog. I’ve got a pretty sweet set up here: Well behaved baby? check. Toddler in part-time daycare? Check. Cleaner? check. Husband that does more than his fair share of family/household duties? Double check. But honestly, I don’t know what happens and then all of a sudden it’s bedtime.

I need to work on my work/life balance and considering I don’t work, I should have more balance. Am I trying to keep my good housewife standards too high? When you read about ‘busy’ mums they always say that you need to ignore your messy house and to lower your expectations. Here’s a picture of our living room. I don’t think that’s my problem.

Am I trying too hard?

I’ve checked in with other bloggers during the last few months and can only find myself asking the question, ‘how do they do it/where do they find the time?’

• This blogger looks after her daughters, blogs and makes beds that look like this. She also washes her sheets. The only time I wash our sheets is when they can walked over to the laundry basket and put themselves in.

• This blogger  has a toddler at home and is very pregnant. She found the time to look fabulous, move into a new house and renovate. She painted straight lines with a toddler around. I can’t do anything straight if my toddler is around.

•  This blogger had a baby around the same time as me. She also has more kids than me. She finds the time to post. She also said she breastfeeds while writing. Well that’s a good idea, if I wrote every time I breastfed I could put Swan’s Way to shame.

Has the tide of time turned, will I be able to blog in the future? Sorry, but yes. I’m putting it on my to-do list and you are all going to cop it. Tell one, tell all, spread the word, tell the world. I respond to applause.

So now I’m going to do an old blogging trick – taking cues from other bloggers that I’ve read before – I’m going to complain about how I don’t have time to blog and then be more prolific than ever before.

Watch out, you can run but you can’t hide…