Priorities

Wow. This Wowfactor Competition is taxing me! My own promise to myself, to face things I fear and to enter competitions is really driving me this year, and I haven't yet missed a deadline.
 However, this one is looming and I haven't even yet decided for sure if I'm going to make it. There is so much wrong with my book - I can see evidence of my own lazy writing throughout it, and I could just keep it and work on it on and off for another five years....but I'm spending as much time as I can on it, and I'm going to slash about 40, 000 words (I hope) and send it out anyway. It is getting easier to put myself out there, the more I do it.
Having these deadlines gives me permission to set aside all else and focus on writing (when I can stop procrastinating). The house is in a real state, and every so often I want to hyperventilate because it's so bad, then I remember that I can sort it AFTER the deadline.
The one thing I can't put on hold is the children. I see them growing (it happens in fits and starts, as soon as your back is turned) and want to hold onto this precious time in their lives. Looking at old photos, I'm unable any longer to duck the fact that they are only this age for such a brief time. Obvious, I know. But it's no use thinking to myself that the four year old is only four, and we can go the farm another day, or to the play centre next month, when he will be at school soon, and then he'll grow out of things, and one day, quite soon, he won't want to be with me, but with his own friends.
I'm having a real conflict right now about it. The writing will wait. But I don't want it to. The children won't wait, and I want to be with them. But can I really keep juggling everything, or am I going to collapse in a sleep-deprived heap? Oh well, I'll sleep when the deadline has passed...