My Bubble Will Burst

We all know those review-of-the-year TV and radio shows that pop up on every channel in December. Some years I watch them, some years I don't. With my own life, I take a similar approach. Some years I look back at what has gone on, some years I prefer not to. 

Life has been so busy over the past few years that I simply haven't had the time to reflect on what has been going on. I've just keep going, tweeking things here and there where I felt it was needed but not doing any major assessment of how my life is going. 

This year, and especially over the past month or so, life in general has been on my mind. On the whole I am happy, but I know that life as it is at the moment is not going to continue for much longer. 

I'm living in a bit of a bubble this year. I've been at home with my baby, a baby who is becoming more and more toddler-esque by the day. 

Number Two has been my kindergarten boy, coming home to me at lunchtime and staying with me for the afternoons. 

Number One, my schoolboy, has been plodding through his second year of school and, at seven and a half, is on the  border between little boy and big boy. 

Next year, the plan is that I will return to work in September. Life will change significantly. We'll have a bit of extra cash, which will be handy, but we'll also have a much busier life than we do now. 

Number Two will start school. Number Three will start kindergarten. We'll all be out of the house by 7.45am. We won't be back home till 4.30pm. There'll always be a rush to get out, to get home, to get dinner made and the homework done. 

There'll be the guilty feeling of not having the chiildren's friends over to play as much as they'd like. There'll be the unfinished feeling on leaving work in the afternoons. 

There'll be times when we have to decide whose turn it is to stay at home with the sick child and the times when tempers are lost and harsh words are thrown about.  

If I am honest, there will be times when I ask myself "Why are we living like this?", "Is this what is best for our family?", "Can't we just go back to how it used to be?".

But I know we can't. The boys are growing up. They have to go to school. I want to work and have my own income. I have too much fear of waking up one day with three grown sons and no job, no useable skills, no income of my own. 

I'm too much of a realist to entertain the idea of being a stay at home wife and mother for years to come. My bubble is going to bust. That's what bubbles do.