Your schedule is all off. No one goes to work, no one goes to school. There are tons of things you need to get done and tons of things you'd like to do -- not just the things you remember (ever so faintly, now) doing before you had kids but the things you'd like to do WITH your kids. But. First there are the things you need to get done. No, wait -- first you have to keep the kids alive and fed and rested. The child wakes up at 5:10am, the baby (for the final wake-up of the night) at 6:30am; the child watches TV while Daddy naps on the sofa and the baby finds things to mouth on the floor. Mommy is trying to recover and has been up all night with the baby's wakings, so gets to sleep in. Eventually Mommy gets up, lets Daddy have tiny break; back to nap with baby at 9:30am. Daddy takes child to library (yay!) and farmer's market (boo! even if there's cider doughnuts, WHICH THERE ARE.) Mommy and baby wake up at 11:30am; Daddy and child return soon thereafter.
Then: lunch. Child, who has been on a slow-n-steady candy bender since Halloween, is acting crazy-like. Her new tactic: repeatedly shrieking her commands, ie., PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! or NO NO NO NO NO! As if being murdered, when in fact she is merely being helped with the zipper on her jacket. But anyway. Child to nap by 1pm. Baby is juggled between parents, who attempt to eat lunch and tidy up a little, until 3pm -- afternoon nap time. Mommy (still needs extra rest) and baby go back to nap just exactly as child wakes up. Child goes off to watch more TV with dozing sofa-Daddy. 5pm, Mommy and baby wake up. It is now too late to do anything except the fastest and most essential errands. Mommy preps laundry; Daddy takes out trash and delivers laundry; Mommy makes dinner; family eats dinner. Now: bedtime. Mommy takes baby, Daddy takes child, bedtime prep occurs, good-nights are said. Parents return to collapse on sofa, exhausted. It is 8pm.
We watch TV and browse the internet until way past our bedtimes, because really, there must be more to life than this.
No wonder we're turning into the Bickery McBickersons.
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3 comments:
Each weekend brings you a little closer to kids who sleep (mostly) when you sleep. It's coming. You just have to cock your head like Radar on decades-ago MASH to hear it. No need to adjust to this stage; it's already (slowly) passing....
Says me, G.K.
See, in my hopeful little mind, 8 p.m. collapse-time on the sofa would mean cuddling and commiseration. Because you're a team, in the trenches together. No?
There is some couch-cuddling, it is true. And that helps.
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