I’m still adjusting to a new schedule. For a little over a year, my husband was out of work, and we adjusted very nicely to being home together during the day. For my littlest one, it was ideal. For most of the first year and a half of her life, she had two stay at home parents. For me, it was better than ideal – I had my best friend home with me, and an extra pair of hands to help out with all the parenting/house details. It was lovely… but now he’s back work and I’m missing him something awful.
Not just because my husband is awesome, I also miss having a buddy. Someone to watch the baby while I ran errands, or someone to do the cooking while I helped our daughter with homework. Now he’s got a great new job and is out of the house all the time. We’re down to seeing him for a bit in the morning and for an hour or so before the kids go to bed, and even that little amount of time is in short supply, as this week contained a lot of morning meetings and after work networking seminars.
So it’s just me, these days, at home. Getting all three kids up and dressed, figuring out the breakfast dilemma. My son loves breakfast, and follows a strict (self imposed) schedule. He gets up and crawls into my lap for a bit, then eats a bagel or bowl of cereal. Then goes to get ready. My oldest daughter is baffled by breakfast and will frequently break down in tears when pressed to decide what she’d like, so now I just give her hot instant breakfast in the mornings (I’m this close to thinking that the kid could use a cup of coffee to get her going in the morning, but thus far, I’ve been able to hold back from starting her on a coffee addiction before she’s ten). She just sips her “cocoa” and reluctantly gets dressed. I change the baby, and load all of them into the car, usually making it to the school with minutes to spare. I make lunch boxes the night before and hope that I remembered to pack them in the school bags.
After we get home, the baby and I have a bagel, and I have yet another cup of coffee. Usually, she putters around playing with her toy kitchen, baby dolls and crayons while I do laundry, make beds, etc. She goes down for a lovely nap around eleven, and I have to wake her to go do the pick ups. I get the kids from school, and depending on the day, either come home or drop my oldest at whatever activity she’s got going. Then we launch into homework time, followed quickly by dinner/bath/bedtime.
It’s not a schedule that varies much, I do pretty much the same thing every day. Sometimes I’ll toss in a playdate for the baby, or a trip to go visit my mother or aunt. Sometimes I run errands, or volunteer at the school – I think Julianna is well on her way to being declared the Flagg Street Mascot at this point. But I love it. I love little bits of it, I love the way Sam staggers directly to me when he wakes up, the way Jessie agonizes over her hair. The way Julianna will ask for her nap, and sing in the car on the way to go pick up the kids. I love the way they play together, the way Jessie’s mind works when she’s writing spelling sentences or setting up a game for the baby. I love their little faces while they sleep, how peaceful and content they look. And I love, love, love that moment when my husband comes home, and all the kids run to him.
It’s not changing the world, I’m not doing great things on a global scale here. But I am making a family and home, and I’m so grateful for it every day.
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