Who Am I?

As a stay at home mom there comes a point where you start to reflect on your life as it was and as it is now. There are positive things about both. I would not trade my kids for anything, ok maybe on some days I might consider it...... I might even pay someone to take them. But really who am I ? I have been asking myself this a lot lately. Am I just a mom and wife? I enjoy being both for sure, but some where a long the way I have lost.....me. Mothers have a way of  putting  ourselves last all the time. If there is not much money, we spend what little extra we have on the kids. I'm not even the kind of mom that believes it's all about the kids, I have always believed it is important for them to feel loved, but not believe they are the center of the world. That means I do know how to say no. However, in reflecting the other day I realized it has crept into my life anyway. You do it without thinking because it keeps the sanity at the moment. For instance, music in the car. You start out with an infant putting on relaxing music so they do anything but scream in the car. Next thing you know your car is filled with book on cd and movies and kid's music so the kids wont fight in the car. For the moment you don't care because you aren't yelling at them and breaking up fights.......there is quiet......blessed quiet. After a while you realize you haven't listened to your music in so long you have forgotten what it is.  Already I feel like there is an endless pile of laundry, endless dishes, endless mess, endless demands. Today, Bodie had his first presentation in front of a room of his peers. He did it on deep sea fish and did great. I am proud of him. However, now we are back and I am feeling guilty because I am taking time to write.....for the first time in months instead of getting right on house stuff or finishing our taxes  that I have to have in by the fifteenth of this month. And it's rediculous because I never take time to do stuff I want to do. I have a great friend who is in a very simular situation and we talk about this a lot. We try to be super moms and don't even realize that is the way you burn yourself out. The hardest thing about being a mom, stay at home or not is that it is so long before you realize the fruits of your labor. Laundry is a thankless job (and a thinkless job) there is never that moment of accomplishment because it is never finished. The same goes for dishes, and the clutter, and the noise. Even with the kids you won't realize the fruits of your raising them for years and years. Right now all you get are a couple of glimpses of headway mixed up with a whole lot of headaches. And in the midst of all that here I am doing my job as best I can. In some ways my brain is being stimulated and in some ways it is being stifled. I feel somewhat stifled in my own dreams and goals, they are gone by the wayside in an effort to grow and stimulate others brains. While I know this is good and important it still leads me back to the question who am I? Is my only identity in being mom? I don't think so. And my identity is not in just being a wife either, although I feel strongly about that also. I am me......it's just that me has been lying dormant for a while.