I'm working on it.

With my sweet three-year-old now at home, and our second daughter due soon, a work-from-home job and the regular day-to-day of life, it seems like finding that center of gravity is an impossible feat. How do I get the laundry done and the dishes and clean the bathroom and cut the lawn (*right, the weeds) and make dinner and balance the budget and read Dr. Seuss and paint and fight off helicopters and code and write and breastfeed and breathe?

That's the big question these days ... and is all of that the right thing to do after all? Is it the right outlook - should I be doing all of those things? Should I be dropping some of them? And what happens if we decide to add homeschooling ... which has secretly become a wish instead of just and idea ... ?

Everyone talks about balance. Well, maybe not everyone. But a lot of people seem to be all about balance - life is about finding the right balance - the balance that fits your life - that sweet spot on the see-saw that keeps you grounded and sane, right in the middle.

I'm not seeing it. I'm actually thinking it doesn't really exist - that it's just one of those things that the wanna-bes make up to make the rest of us feel bad.

My newest hypothesis (still in the testing phase) is that any balance we may have is momentary - and the place in the middle changes from day to day, sometimes even hour to hour. I don't think there's one perfect spot, or even one perfect stance, that lets us attack the many opportunities of life from a safe, protected space.

I'm testing out the idea that we have to be swift of foot and swift of mind, adapting second by second (in pre-school world) to the needs we have at a given time. Maybe it's more about moving in and out of many different patterns of action and less about getting the right amounts of this and that, the right number of minutes at each of our life stations.

Not sure how all of this theory will play out over the next months. I'm actually happy I just found a few minutes to think this out on the keyboard. And I'm wondering, for what must be the millionth time two things:

Why won't my daughter take a nap, and why do manufacturers insist on putting itchy tags in the side seams of maternity tops?