Monday - Anne to daycare; Lauren to swimming lessons, then daycare; Grace to basketball camp and - ooops! - a make-up softball game that hubby has known about since last week but forgot to mention. Get to work at about 10, leave at, oh, 3:30.
Tuesday - Lauren to swimming; Grace to camp; at home with Anne for PT appointment. Got to work about 12:30. Left work about 5 and still had to do daycare pick up. Home. For dinner. It's a miracle.
Wednesday - Anne to Auntie's house, Lauren to swimming, Grace to camp, get to work at about 10:15. Pick Grace up at 3 and go straight to Auntie's to round up the littles for another softball game.
Thursday - Lauren to swimming, Anne to daycare, Grace to camp, to work at 10, left for hair appointment at 11:30 (General Sherman's army could not have stopped me from making this appointment), pick up Grace at 3, back to office for an hour then off to Auntie's and daycare to round up the littles for softball game #3. Please God, let us pick up pizza for dinner tonight.
Friday - Lauren to swimming, Grace to camp, Anne may or may not have a speech therapy appointment and/or a 6 month evaluation by Early On - my calendars are conflicting. Honestly? Not sure if I can squeeze this work thing in tomorrow.
Some weeks, if it's not one type of guilt it's another. It's also hoping like hell I can remember where everyone needs to go and actually get them there on time.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Do as I say, not as I do, or something like that.
"You are soooo busy! I just don't know how you do it!"
I hear this a lot, usually when I'm in the middle of buckling the baby into her car seat, instructing her sisters to help each other into the school-bus-sized Suburban without fighting, telling my lovely and priceless daycare provider what the schedule is for next week and talking to my sister (whose kids go to the same daycare - awesome!) all at once. My gut instinct is almost always to think I don't know how I do it either.
So I decided to think about it while I had 45 seconds of relative quiet in the car. That's the real beauty of the Suburban, a.k.a. The Refrigerator On Wheels: when you put the loudest kids in the third row seat it gets a lot quieter. Here are the results of my deep thought, in no particular order.
1. Go to bed early.
I know, you feel like you won't have any time for yourself to read a book, take a bath, paint your toenails, stare at the ceiling, whatever. But getting to bed on time is critical to your ability to cope with whatever is coming your way tomorrow and you know it.
2. Get up early.
This is only possible if you also do #1. I mean, you can get up early from a late night once in a while, but not on a regular basis. Especially if you're over 30. Plus, the quiet time in the morning, where you can put on your make-up without interruption or whatever it is you need to do, is - without question - worth it.
I should clarify that I do not do either of these things on a regular basis, but I regularly try. A girl's got to have a goal.
3. Do as much as you can the night before.
Make lunches, load the car with the sports gear, make your logistical plan with your husband/mother/sister/teacher/whomever in your village will be roped into your plan for the next day. This will dramatically reduce your stress the next morning.
4. Do one load of laundry a day.
Any more than this and you can't realistically be expected to get it all folded and put away. I learned this little trick from FlyLady, who has many other great ideas that will make your life easier.
5. Don't feel guilty about pancakes for dinner.
Or hot dogs. Or pbj. Or cereal. Some days dinner is just impossible, but everyone still has to eat. Make your life easy and make something fast, filling and that everyone likes. Don't guilt yourself about the lack of a green vegetable.
6. Have excellent child care.
This one is hard. Really hard. And can be expensive. But having your children in the care of someone you trust completely, who is patient and loving, provides structure and meals, and generally allows you to focus on what you need to do during the day is priceless.
7. Get a great husband.
One that does laundry, makes breakfast for everyone while you're upstairs running around looking for the shirt that's plain but with two flowers and the pink bows mama, who patiently shuffles car seats and strollers and sports gear from one car to the next, makes you laugh every day and always makes you stop for a hug and kiss no matter how big of a hurry you're in.
That last one is critical.
And now that I've put this down it turns out the list is not so long after all. Maybe doing this - juggling three kids, a full-time job, a husband, a house and a life - is only as hard as you make it. Me? I'm just trying to make it fun.
I hear this a lot, usually when I'm in the middle of buckling the baby into her car seat, instructing her sisters to help each other into the school-bus-sized Suburban without fighting, telling my lovely and priceless daycare provider what the schedule is for next week and talking to my sister (whose kids go to the same daycare - awesome!) all at once. My gut instinct is almost always to think I don't know how I do it either.
So I decided to think about it while I had 45 seconds of relative quiet in the car. That's the real beauty of the Suburban, a.k.a. The Refrigerator On Wheels: when you put the loudest kids in the third row seat it gets a lot quieter. Here are the results of my deep thought, in no particular order.
1. Go to bed early.
I know, you feel like you won't have any time for yourself to read a book, take a bath, paint your toenails, stare at the ceiling, whatever. But getting to bed on time is critical to your ability to cope with whatever is coming your way tomorrow and you know it.
2. Get up early.
This is only possible if you also do #1. I mean, you can get up early from a late night once in a while, but not on a regular basis. Especially if you're over 30. Plus, the quiet time in the morning, where you can put on your make-up without interruption or whatever it is you need to do, is - without question - worth it.
I should clarify that I do not do either of these things on a regular basis, but I regularly try. A girl's got to have a goal.
3. Do as much as you can the night before.
Make lunches, load the car with the sports gear, make your logistical plan with your husband/mother/sister/teacher/whomever in your village will be roped into your plan for the next day. This will dramatically reduce your stress the next morning.
4. Do one load of laundry a day.
Any more than this and you can't realistically be expected to get it all folded and put away. I learned this little trick from FlyLady, who has many other great ideas that will make your life easier.
5. Don't feel guilty about pancakes for dinner.
Or hot dogs. Or pbj. Or cereal. Some days dinner is just impossible, but everyone still has to eat. Make your life easy and make something fast, filling and that everyone likes. Don't guilt yourself about the lack of a green vegetable.
6. Have excellent child care.
This one is hard. Really hard. And can be expensive. But having your children in the care of someone you trust completely, who is patient and loving, provides structure and meals, and generally allows you to focus on what you need to do during the day is priceless.
7. Get a great husband.
One that does laundry, makes breakfast for everyone while you're upstairs running around looking for the shirt that's plain but with two flowers and the pink bows mama, who patiently shuffles car seats and strollers and sports gear from one car to the next, makes you laugh every day and always makes you stop for a hug and kiss no matter how big of a hurry you're in.
That last one is critical.
And now that I've put this down it turns out the list is not so long after all. Maybe doing this - juggling three kids, a full-time job, a husband, a house and a life - is only as hard as you make it. Me? I'm just trying to make it fun.
Monday, June 7, 2010
T.G.I.M.
It's Sunday afternoon and I look like something the cat dragged in. I am wearing a t-shirt three sizes too big, a hoodie sweatshirt and black yoga pants that have been washed 79 times too many to still be identified as black. My hair is knotted up in back and my bangs - which I foolishly cut myself about a month ago in a fit of impatience and knowing it would be at least two weeks before I could get into my stylist - are in desperate need of a shampoo. My eyes are smudged with Saturday's makeup and my chin is in the midst of a five-alarm breakout, the likes of which I haven't seen for 20 years. I look worse than one of Stacy and Clinton's befores and even though it's Sunday I feel like I'm letting myself go.
But I'm tired. I've been up too late all week. And I'm going crazy. My kids are actually making me go crazy.
It all started out sort of okay. Grace got on her new bike to go pick up the mail, a small voyage of independence and pride. The baby napped. Lauren watched a movie. When Grace got back she brought the mail upstairs to the baby's room, where I was, I don't know.... doing baby stuff. In a flurry of nonstop, excited chatter she dumped the mail on the bedroom floor, sorting it into piles and opening "two things from Auntie Meg, mommy!" Then she ran out of the room, on to the next thing, and the mail was left behind. But now I know what I was doing - feeding the baby via her G-tube while she slept so that she doesn't miss a meal, or the calories that go with it. They measure these things like Nazis and while I may not get everything right, this is one that counts so here I am.
Hours later my nerves are frayed by a nuclear meltdown over a t-shirt for this picture:
repeated refrains of "I'm huuunnngryyyy," even though they eat like birds no matter what I put in front of them, fights about whose Littlest Pet Shop Bobbleheaded Freaks are whose and way too much TV. Oh yeah, and after the baby had diarrhea I got her all naked for a bath and she peed on me between the changing table and the tub. Of course.
And this was just Sunday afternoon, an improvement over Saturday if that's possible.
Now I'm in the bathroom with my littlest peanut in the tub and Grace comes in to tell me something. I listen. Then calmly ask her to please get the mail out of the baby's room and take that, and her backpack, downstairs. Put the mail on the table. Backpack by the front door.
She says, "no."
No? No!? What? Are you freaking kidding me?
I went all the way to the edge of crazy in that minute, telling her in a voice just short of a yell that she had better get the mail off the floor and down to the kitchen this minute and she'd better not come back into that bathroom because I. have. had. enough.
Fast forward to nearly dinnertime. I'm in a clean outfit that is just a variation on the previous one minus the baby pee. My hair is still gross. My heels are starting to look like I've walked a thousand miles barefoot. My acne is still happening. But thankfully the older girls are outside playing together peacefully. I see them from the upstairs porch, rounding the fence at the end of the driveway to play under the neighbor's tree, creating an imaginary world that is theirs alone. The sunlight is golden and warm, the breeze just a whisper in the leaves. The house is quiet and I can take a deep breath.
I look out over the liquid blue of the lake and I fantasize about my desk at work. My newly re-potted plant with the pretty blue ceramic pot on a tray that is too big, but that I will fill with beach stones. I imagine the pink ceramic jar that holds the oil that smells like Valencia oranges, and how it has a lovely relief pattern that reminds me of octopus tentacles, but not in a creepy way - more of a life-is-a-circle-that-never-ends way, and my jar of beach glass.
I think about how tomorrow I will have freshly shaved legs, clean hair, nice make-up, clothes that fit and don't make me look like a before. At work I will be productive. Check things off my list. Talk to adults who make their own lunches. Have a chai first thing in the morning. On Monday I will return to a neat, relatively tidy world populated by mostly rational people. And then I laugh at myself, because I also know that as much as I love work, love the problem solving, the creative energy, the shared humor and the desk that is mine alone, I will also spend my day thinking often of my kids and anticipating their sweet hugs, sweaty, baby-fatted hands in mine, their breathless stories of the day's adventures.
I know I'm not alone with this weekend craziness. I know other mothers are having this too. Personally, I think it's the adjustment into the rhythm of summer and the change in structure. My kids anticipate summer eagerly, but also mourn the loss of their school routine and teachers they love. They are settling into new daycare routines, different sleep schedules. And I am too.
Some days, especially in summer, I wish that I worked less. Or maybe I wish I didn't work at all. But this week... this week I am just feeling Thank God It's Monday.
But I'm tired. I've been up too late all week. And I'm going crazy. My kids are actually making me go crazy.
It all started out sort of okay. Grace got on her new bike to go pick up the mail, a small voyage of independence and pride. The baby napped. Lauren watched a movie. When Grace got back she brought the mail upstairs to the baby's room, where I was, I don't know.... doing baby stuff. In a flurry of nonstop, excited chatter she dumped the mail on the bedroom floor, sorting it into piles and opening "two things from Auntie Meg, mommy!" Then she ran out of the room, on to the next thing, and the mail was left behind. But now I know what I was doing - feeding the baby via her G-tube while she slept so that she doesn't miss a meal, or the calories that go with it. They measure these things like Nazis and while I may not get everything right, this is one that counts so here I am.
Hours later my nerves are frayed by a nuclear meltdown over a t-shirt for this picture:
repeated refrains of "I'm huuunnngryyyy," even though they eat like birds no matter what I put in front of them, fights about whose Littlest Pet Shop Bobbleheaded Freaks are whose and way too much TV. Oh yeah, and after the baby had diarrhea I got her all naked for a bath and she peed on me between the changing table and the tub. Of course.And this was just Sunday afternoon, an improvement over Saturday if that's possible.
Now I'm in the bathroom with my littlest peanut in the tub and Grace comes in to tell me something. I listen. Then calmly ask her to please get the mail out of the baby's room and take that, and her backpack, downstairs. Put the mail on the table. Backpack by the front door.
She says, "no."
No? No!? What? Are you freaking kidding me?
I went all the way to the edge of crazy in that minute, telling her in a voice just short of a yell that she had better get the mail off the floor and down to the kitchen this minute and she'd better not come back into that bathroom because I. have. had. enough.
Fast forward to nearly dinnertime. I'm in a clean outfit that is just a variation on the previous one minus the baby pee. My hair is still gross. My heels are starting to look like I've walked a thousand miles barefoot. My acne is still happening. But thankfully the older girls are outside playing together peacefully. I see them from the upstairs porch, rounding the fence at the end of the driveway to play under the neighbor's tree, creating an imaginary world that is theirs alone. The sunlight is golden and warm, the breeze just a whisper in the leaves. The house is quiet and I can take a deep breath.
I look out over the liquid blue of the lake and I fantasize about my desk at work. My newly re-potted plant with the pretty blue ceramic pot on a tray that is too big, but that I will fill with beach stones. I imagine the pink ceramic jar that holds the oil that smells like Valencia oranges, and how it has a lovely relief pattern that reminds me of octopus tentacles, but not in a creepy way - more of a life-is-a-circle-that-never-ends way, and my jar of beach glass.
I think about how tomorrow I will have freshly shaved legs, clean hair, nice make-up, clothes that fit and don't make me look like a before. At work I will be productive. Check things off my list. Talk to adults who make their own lunches. Have a chai first thing in the morning. On Monday I will return to a neat, relatively tidy world populated by mostly rational people. And then I laugh at myself, because I also know that as much as I love work, love the problem solving, the creative energy, the shared humor and the desk that is mine alone, I will also spend my day thinking often of my kids and anticipating their sweet hugs, sweaty, baby-fatted hands in mine, their breathless stories of the day's adventures.
I know I'm not alone with this weekend craziness. I know other mothers are having this too. Personally, I think it's the adjustment into the rhythm of summer and the change in structure. My kids anticipate summer eagerly, but also mourn the loss of their school routine and teachers they love. They are settling into new daycare routines, different sleep schedules. And I am too.
Some days, especially in summer, I wish that I worked less. Or maybe I wish I didn't work at all. But this week... this week I am just feeling Thank God It's Monday.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
And then there were four.
Just a few minutes ago I went down to the kitchen to put some breast milk in a sink of cold water to thaw. When I opened the freezer I found a bowl inside with approximately one tablespoon of ice cream in the bottom. It was put there by my mother-in-law, who also happens to be my next door neighbor and babysitter-in-chief. I muttered to myself under my breath, "this woman is insane," and what do I hear but her voice coming through my second-story kitchen window...."are you throwing away my ice cream?"
She must have those extendo-ears dreamed up by the Weasley twins because she was a story below me, outside, trying to get through to her sister on her cell phone and I was talking really quietly.
"No, I'm eating it."
I lied without hesitation. Because discussing why or why not one should preserve one tablespoon of ice cream, even if it is the expensive kind, is not something I feel like doing tonight. And also, because even though Hillary Clinton was laughed at, it really does take a village and this woman is critical to the functioning of my village.
And my village has just expanded.
No, no more babies. Instead our 17-year-old nephew has moved in with us for the summer. B is sweet, easy to get along with, mildly moody in that teenagerish way, loves to fix things - anything really, doesn't like sandwiches (how is this possible?), up for just about anything - he is kayaking with his uncle right now even thought it's 10 at night and the lake is just a slightly lighter shade of indigo than the weather that's coming across it in a few hours - and tall. As in, adult sized.
For someone who has been living with three girls, three small girls, B's arrival is like having an alien dropped in our midst. Not only is he a fully formed teenager, but he's a BOY.
He's here because we are part of his village. And suddenly we are parenting four. Each one at a different stage, with a different temperament, different needs. My wish for him is that being here will help him realize that his village is bigger than he thought. That he is truly part of it and that he belongs in the truest sense of the word.
He has landed in chaos. In fact, he arrived the day we brought the baby home from the hospital where she had surgery to put a feeding tube in her abdomen (which went perfectly smoothly and she's fine). Since then it's been a flurry of getting his bedroom set up, relocating Chad's office and everything that was in it, end-of-school projects, softball games, weekend pool parties, dinners on the run, little girls in overtired meltdown, occasional thunderstorms blowing rain into the windows and onto the carpet, misunderstood Facebook posts and multiple job schedules. Oddly enough, he seems to like it.
She must have those extendo-ears dreamed up by the Weasley twins because she was a story below me, outside, trying to get through to her sister on her cell phone and I was talking really quietly.
"No, I'm eating it."
I lied without hesitation. Because discussing why or why not one should preserve one tablespoon of ice cream, even if it is the expensive kind, is not something I feel like doing tonight. And also, because even though Hillary Clinton was laughed at, it really does take a village and this woman is critical to the functioning of my village.
And my village has just expanded.
No, no more babies. Instead our 17-year-old nephew has moved in with us for the summer. B is sweet, easy to get along with, mildly moody in that teenagerish way, loves to fix things - anything really, doesn't like sandwiches (how is this possible?), up for just about anything - he is kayaking with his uncle right now even thought it's 10 at night and the lake is just a slightly lighter shade of indigo than the weather that's coming across it in a few hours - and tall. As in, adult sized.
For someone who has been living with three girls, three small girls, B's arrival is like having an alien dropped in our midst. Not only is he a fully formed teenager, but he's a BOY.
He's here because we are part of his village. And suddenly we are parenting four. Each one at a different stage, with a different temperament, different needs. My wish for him is that being here will help him realize that his village is bigger than he thought. That he is truly part of it and that he belongs in the truest sense of the word.
He has landed in chaos. In fact, he arrived the day we brought the baby home from the hospital where she had surgery to put a feeding tube in her abdomen (which went perfectly smoothly and she's fine). Since then it's been a flurry of getting his bedroom set up, relocating Chad's office and everything that was in it, end-of-school projects, softball games, weekend pool parties, dinners on the run, little girls in overtired meltdown, occasional thunderstorms blowing rain into the windows and onto the carpet, misunderstood Facebook posts and multiple job schedules. Oddly enough, he seems to like it.
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