6:45-8:30am – Rise and shine! If you’re wondering what woke you, that’s the sound of your baby babbling (on a good day) or whining (on a bad day). Or it might have been the sudden realization that your young one was trying to launch himself off the bed. And if that doesn’t peel your eyelids back, he’ll try hitting you over the head with your own cell phone next. Try not to swear.
For about 15 minutes, pretend that you’re single again, and if you hit the alarm, you can drift back off into peaceful nothingness for just a little bit longer. When the whining starts in earnest, you have to just sit up. It’s the only way to force yourself out of bed, I’ve learned. You just have to DO it. You’ll get the same feeling you have when you’re nauseous after a long night of drinking and you know you should eat a piece of toast to sop up all the leftover vodka but your brain is screaming NO! NO TOAST! But as soon as you force that first bite, you feel a little bit better. When you make your protesting body sit up for a second, you realize you really can do it. The desire for singleness might not go away until after your first cup of coffee, but don’t worry; that’s perfectly normal.
Pick up your toddler and, squinting against the light of day, haul your tired ass into the nursery to change that soaking wet diaper. That poor kid does not want to stay in it for one more second, and can you blame him? There’s like 12 hours worth of piss in that thing. At this point, it weighs more than he does, and it renders him unable to walk without dragging his butt along the floor.
Breakfast time! You’ll feel SO much better after a frozen waffle and a banana, and a steaming mug of hot coffee. Promise. You’ll even be able to watch your son throw scrambled egg and blueberries at the dog without even an eye roll. Just keep drinkin’ that coffee, ma’am.
He signs “all done” (which bears a stunning resemblance to jazz hands) long before you’re finished, and you’re 99% sure he’s only eaten one bite of that egg you cooked him, since the rest of it is on the floor, rapidly being consumed by the dog (whose food you buy at the local holistic pet store for $40 a bag) (but finding the silver lining in any cloud, you think hey, at least you won’t have to sweep this shit up). You put your kid on the floor and wipe up his hands and face and he sees his jungle gym out of the corner of his eye. With a point of his chubby little finger and a demanding “eh!” from his lips, you know your morning will be spent picking him up and putting him back at the top of the slide, then clapping like you’ve never seen any performance as stunning in all your born days as his bum slides that whole foot and a half down to the bottom.
You realize at some point that you have a lot to do today, and you feel a little guilty for making a list in your head while, were you a better person, you’d be fully present as your son slides down the bus slide, giggling, for the 19th time in three minutes. You wonder what it would be like if you could live in the present, constantly aware of your surroundings and what is happening in the moment.
Time to get busy. You put a load of laundry in the wash, you start to vacuum, you pick your toddler up, you let him “help” you push the vacuum around, you put him back down. You clean the kitchen. You realize just on time that your baby, who has been “helping” you load the dishwasher, is reaching for the handle of a gigantic knife. You ask him to “help” you close the dishwasher. You praise him as he does so. You pull down the bread machine and you throw all the ingredients in for whole wheat bread. You give your kid a little of the flour to play in, thinking he will LOVE it. He’s mildly amused for about 20 seconds. He wants to be picked up again. You finish the bread one-handed. One-handed, you put the clothes into the dryer. One-handed, you try and finish loading the dishwasher. Your baby wants down again (he sees that shiny knife). You start the dishwasher.
While you’re holding your toddler, you notice him yawn. You see him rub his eyes. You look at the clock and realize it’s been about three hours, which means it for sure is nap time.
HOORAY! Nap time is wonderful. You gently close the door to his room after gazing lovingly at his sleeping form for a couple of seconds, and you return to the living room. Breathe deeply, girl. That silence is the sound of an hour and a half of whatever YOU want to do. You could take a nap (which sounds amazing, since you damn near rocked yourself to sleep just now), mop the floor, take a shower, sew something, do some yoga, read a book, write a novel, end starvation, build a city. No lie, you are, for the next hour and a half, the queen of the universe. You have to plan wisely. It’s the only break you get today. You think about how you’ll spend it, then decide to watch Hulu while you fold diapers. It’s deliciously decadent, and you sip your leftover morning coffee while you watch The Office.
Lunch time! Baby’s awake, and you have to scrounge for something to eat. Lunch time really sucks, to be perfectly honest. You finished with breakfast, and at some point you’ll have to make dinner, and you feel sorry for yourself as you haul out leftovers, sandwich stuff, salad stuff, and frozen burritos. You’d much rather eat at the Silly Goose or Marche, but you know you shouldn’t spend the money. And if that doesn’t solidify your decision to eat at home, all you need to do is remember the last time you took your food-throwing wild man out to lunch, and you’ll perk right up. You may even start to whistle as you slather a slice bread with some all-natural, refrigerated, HARD AS A ROCK peanut butter. You’ll tear the shit out of that bread, but you’ll still be happy as a clam because today? Today your son will not smear his avocadoed hands all over the innocent patrons at nearby tables.
After lunch (and subsequent clean-up of child and child’s eating area), you have a plethora of opportunities in front of you. Would you like to go out? For a walk? Shopping? Maybe you have a coffee date. Getting the kid out of the house is a good idea, because he gets real bored with those same lame-ass toys he got for Christmas nearly a MONTH ago. He’ll look at you with such disappointment as you set him down in front of his basket of toys that you’ll feel obligated to get him dressed, put his coat on, put his shoes on, and strap him into his car seat (all activities he hates) so that you can take him to Border’s and chase him around for a couple of stimulating hours.
When you come back home, it’s play time. Play time is so awesome. Your son likes to wrestle you to the ground and climb all over you while covering you with drooly kiss-bites. He wants you to read four words out of a dozen books. He wants you to beat up pieces of furniture with his drumsticks. He wants you to zoom his car all over the floor. He wants you to chase him around and around and around the dining room table. (He wants you to hug him for a second when he slams into the corner of the dining room table.) He wants you to ask “Where’s Daddy?” or “Where’s Lucy?” and follow him around from room to room while he peeks inside looking for them. He wants to zombie-walk all over the house, stopping at intervals to dance to whatever Pandora station you’re listening to.
You need to start on dinner. Even though you’re exhausted from your outing with a one-year-old and from the marathon play-session. Your throat is hoarse from growling “I’m gonna GEEET you!” Your knees are sore from crawling all over the floor. Your back is sore from throwing your kid up in the air. Before you can face the kitchen, you need a coffee break. And your kid needs a throw-more-blueberries-on-the-floor-and-do-the-sign-for-more-cheese break.
Dog eats fallen food. Kid signs all-done. Wash kid’s hands and face. You know the drill by now.
So it’s time to start on dinner, and you’re halfway through chopping one pepper when your toddler decides he’s a) tired and b) bored. He doesn’t understand why you aren’t playing with him anymore. He becomes clingier than Saran Wrap. You can do so many things one-handed these days, but chopping vegetables is not one of them. You do everything you can one-handed, then wait for your hubbs to get off work. (Alternately: you stomp into your hubbs’ office and passive-aggressively wonder out loud when the heck he plans to get off work so he can help you out around here, for crying out loud. It’s HIS dinner you’re trying to make. What is this, the 50s or something?)
The hubbs takes the boy and plays with him while you finish making dinner. You drink a glass of wine and talk to your hubbs about his day. Which doesn’t take very long, since he works from home and you pretty much know how his day went already. The hubbs also wants to hear about your day, and you launch into a giggly diatribe about your play-laugh-session, which the hubbs jealously heard from his office while he tried to code so that your family could have money for a house in which to hold long, loud, play-laugh sessions. He tries to recreate the wrestling with your son, who loves the idea of a Round 2, and he slams his huge pumpkin head into your husband’s nose.
Your kid cries, and you rush over to comfort him while your hubbs runs to the bathroom to get some tissue to sop up his own bloody nose.
Dinner time! You tried a new recipe you found on a food blog (at least one new one per week). Your hubbs praises your culinary skill, and your kid eats several bites before he begins throwing it all on the floor for the dog. It’s a hit! You make a mental note to make it a regular meal in your house. Then you promptly forget about it forever, because you made a “mental” note, and you know perfectly well you have no room in there for any notes. Next time? Write it down.
After the cleaning of the kid and the surrounding area, it’s time for some gentle play. Gentle, because if you get him all riled up again, it will be hours before he goes to sleep. You could take a walk if it’s nice outside. You could open several books for him to see. He points to the pictures. You label the objects to which he is pointing. “Hat.” “Pajamas.” “Lynx.” “Piano.” “Weird purple alien-animal thing.”
Bath time is awesome, because your kid LOVES bath time. Bath time means toys which he never gets to see outside of the tub. He splashes around and plays while you wash him off. You and your hubbs’ teamwork allows you to pick your toddler out of the tub and wrap a hooded towel around him without him slipping out of your grasp or making yourself too soaked.
You take him to his room and set him on his changing table (which is also the top of the chest-of-drawers and it’s getting kind of dangerous and you wonder how much longer you’ll be able to use it as a changing-station) and he instantly starts reaching for everything you have sitting up there. The wipes warmer, which he opens. He grabs the wipes, throws them to the floor. Now the touch-lamp. He touches it once, it goes dark in the room. Again, and it’s very dim. Again, and you can see again. You quickly grab a diaper and fasten it to his bum as he touches the lamp again, and the room becomes fairly bright again before *touch* one last time and darkness falls once more. You brush his hair. You rub teething gel on his sore gums. You massage lavender sleep balm into his temples. You laboriously pull his arms and legs into pajamas. Of course, to accomplish this you have to stop him from touching the lamp or throwing the wipes or grabbing the diaper creme or whatever else he’s trying to do, and that makes him mad. This is how you know he will go to sleep easily.
One last story, which you ask him to pick out and which he zombie-carries (walking is hard in his huge nighttime diaper) over to his Daddy. His Daddy picks him up and sets him in his lap, and together they read/violently turn the pages of/point and identify pictures in some story you’ve read a hundred times and could recite in your sleep, like Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar or Sandra Boynton’s The Going to Bed Book.
Your kid reaches out to you, you pick him up off your husband’s lap, and your husband stands up and gives him a goodnight kiss. It’s dark and quiet in the room now, with the soft white noise of the heater and the humidifier filling the air. You rock and nurse and sing and soon he is asleep. You transfer him to his crib and cover him with his blanket. He stirs for a minute and you hold your breath, but then he settles with one arm over his head and one hand in his mouth, and you tiptoe out of the room and close the door.
Breathe the sweet free air, girlfriend. You and your hubbs swap stories about how cute and wonderful your kid is, and after the dishes are cleared away you sit on the couch and pick up your book or watch your Netflix or discuss dessert options, and before you know it it’s 10:00 and you need to get in bed before your toddler wakes up with sore teeth or gas or because he misses you or because he’s thirsty/hungry/being a little shit/take your pick. You don’t mind anymore though, because you love cuddling him at night when the house is quiet and the cat is curled up at your feet. You don’t love waking up with his giant noggin resting on your arm and making it go to sleep, but you shift him around and it’s ok. You keep hearing all these things you “should” do to help him sleep on his own at night, but you have decided that until he is ready, you’re just going to keep doing what you’re doing and trying to maximize the sleep that happens in your own house, because you know in just a couple of hours, it will be morning, and you’ll have to start all over again.
But that’s really ok. Because you love your life. You love being a Stay-at-Home-Mom. And you love that bread you baked yesterday, too, and ooo! That’s what you’ll have for breakfast!
