I need to relax

And I don't mean in the "relax and you'll get pregnant" kind of way.  That's complete BS and always will be.  I just feel like I'm really high strung.  Stuff that shouldn't be a big deal is.  I always feel like I'm working under the gun.  I have to get a certain number of things done in a short amount of time so that I can make sure Bean is down for her nap in time.  I have to complete tasks in the quickest way possible because you never know how long her attention span will last.  I just feel constantly under pressure from somewhere.  The truth is, half the time I feel the pressure and I don't even know where it's coming from.  Am I creating it myself?  I don't know.

I know that some of it comes from this underlying feeling of responsibility that pervades my life.  Responsibility to my parents, to my family, to the people I've surrounded myself with.  I took myself off the table a long time ago.  Responsibility to myself seems like a thing of the past.  The thing that's really bothering me lately is I feel like my responsibility to Bean is slipping.  I mean, I always feel responsible for her and to her, that never changes.  But my life is so filled with other things, that I feel like I've been letting her down.  That my patience is thinner then it should be. That I'm not concentrating on the little things that I'm doing with her everyday.  I'm always trying to figure out a way to make sure I get x, y, or z done and fit moments with her in-between.  It used to be that I made the day about her and fit everything else in.  I don't like this shift.

I know that she needs to learn how to do things on her own, and not have me with her all the time, but I can approach it all differently.  I need to start saying no and refocusing my life.  I need to feel good about the way I parented at the end of each day.  Because in the end, while I feel responsible to a lot of people in my life, at the end of the day the people that matter most are Bean and Hubby.  And I think it's about time I started being a little more selfish because the one thing that I can give myself one hundred percent is feeling like I've done the best I can as Bean's mama.  Maybe I won't do it all right, and maybe some days I'll feel like I did it all wrong.  But I have to feel like I did the best that I could.