Hello dear readers, it's the insufferable H. This year for Mother's Day, the Mean Mommy simply asked me to do a guest post. The topic--imagine a day in life if I was the one staying home with kids. Sounds simple enough, right? Well she asked me about this over a month ago and now it's 10:30 the Friday before Mother's Day and we're busy all day tomorrow. So I guess we've stumbled upon one key difference between H and the Mean Mommy already - H doesn't plan in advance. Seriously, I'm the worst. I'm not disorganized--quite the opposite. If you need a last minute trip to Vegas planned and executed within 36 hours, I'm all over it. If you need something temporarily fixed with none of the proper tools a normal person would use to do the job, I'm your guy. But something happening 3 weeks from now? Might as well be next year.
I started by jotting all the things she needs to get done from sunup to sundown. It's a handful. I already knew this but it's even more daunting when you see it in writing. I have plenty of days with back to back meetings at work but at least I have Brickbreaker (or the ever convenient "Yeah sorry about missing your meeting. I had a 'client' issue to deal with").
So let's take a look at a typical day if I was in charge of this part of the corporation. For one, the missus gets up at 5am to run 5 1/2 miles on the treadmill before the kids get up--6 days a week. She's got me running now but I'm lucky to get up 3 days a week and 3 miles is all I can take. If I had the kids, I guarantee that workout would be blown off daily. I'd be pushing 205 chowing down on taylor ham, egg, and cheese sandwiches after I got the kids to school. The missus is 36 with 3 kids and manages to be in better shape than she was at 25 with no kids. I have to make an effort and not be a slob so we don't look like one of those fat guy/skinny wife sitcoms they keep cranking out and canceling.
I often do breakfast on the weekends and I must say it's the second worst part of child rearing . They can't prepare anything themselves, require about 17 plastic bowls and plates to feed 3 small kids, and generally drag-ass on eating the meal without constant berating. Changing crap is not exactly fun but I'd rather change a thousand diapers than have to deal with dealing up 3 meals and countless second breakfasts, pre-dinner pacifiers, and here-eat-this-and-shut-up-I-need-to-get-something-done snacks. Any attempt by me on Saturday to complain about the maintenance of the all day child buffet is met with the thousand-yard stare of a woman who does this the other 84 times a week.
Getting something on the table is hard enough but actually getting something healthy in their stomachs is a whole another effort. The missus makes homemade whole wheat pancakes with cinnamon and bananas on Sundays and freezes them for the week. Homemade pancakes. Weekly. I call this either "crazy" or "dedicated" - it's a fine line. I don't think I'd remember to keep the freezer stocked with Eggos. The fridge is full of strawberries, cantaloupe, steamed broccoli (done in between school drop-offs), cut-up pepper strips, and cucumbers. And the kids eat it. Every day. Sure, they have their weekly treat of a Happy Meal but the missus keeps it in check. If I were in charge, there would undoubtedly be more McNuggets in their future. It's just too easy - hit the drive-through on your way home. All this healthy produce stuff needs to be purchased, prepped, steamed and doled out to 3 little people who are going to put up some kind of fight regardless. It's one of the hardest parts of the job and I commend the missus wholeheartedly.
My son still takes naps in the middle of the day (occasionally). The missus uses this time to clean, get ahead on cooking dinner, and generally straighten up all the toys and crap the kids disperse throughout the house. I have no idea how she doesn't use that hour for random Internet surfing, watching the tube, or naps on the couch. With the girls in school and LM down for the count, I guarantee I would be sitting on my fat ass watching some Rommel biography on the History Channel for the umpteenth time.
School times are scattered for all three kids. Second grader #1 needs to be in by 8:15. Little Man has pre-school at 9:00. Number two is in PM kindergarten. This makes the normally harried shuttling of kids all over town triple the fun. Just getting them ready to head out for one trip is an exercise in futility. Put your shoes on. Put your shoes on. PUT YOUR SHOES ON. Maybe after the fourth time and burst blood vessel in your forehead do they spring into action. So having to drop-off and pick-up multiple times a day before 3pm puts a little crimp in your style. Dry cleaning? The bank? Food shopping? Good luck with that. Again, from my weekend experience, I can't do any of this stuff with all three in tow. I can perhaps manage two--sometimes. So with me in charge, we would inevitably have no clean clothes, money in the bank, or food on the table. I would still be trying to get someone's shoes on before it was time to make dinner.
After school isn't exactly a vacation. Dance, gymnastics, CCD, playdates--you name it. We live in the age of the over-scheduled child. "Go outside and play with a stick" just doesn't cut it anymore. But the missus manages to strike a balance - she gets them involved and having fun but doesn't stack up the activities so much they can't just play. Including going in the back and playing with sticks.
There is also the other extreme. As I mentioned, after the difficulty with the shoes, I would probably be late for gymnastics repeatedly. Given my lack of advance planning I would probably fail to schedule many playdates. I can power up the Wii though.
As the sun starts its decline, the witching hour begins - the dinner through bedtime. The missus usually starts prepping dinner during Little Man's nap. So assuming I was watching "Rommel" instead of par-cooking turkey sausage and chopping onions at 1pm, I would be scrambling to get both the kids meals done and something good for the two of us to enjoy. At this time the missus relents and gets Little Man out of her hair by letting him watch Thomas the Tank Engine or the Disney rip-off "Chuggington". That would be 30 of his allotted 60 minutes of television for the day. I don't think I really need to get into details on what the total TV viewing time would be under my regime.
Fed and happy, 6:30 rolls around and the end is within sight. At this time, a text from me usually comes in "Uh, running a bit late, ETA 8:00". Not that it makes that much difference because I'm rarely home before 7 anyway, but the extra hour is a special kick in the ass to end the day. Most days the kids need baths, and that my friends, is the absolute worst part of child rearing. It's fun when they're very small, watching their little chubby arms splash around in one of those little tubs. But the novelty soon wears off and becomes a backbreaking chore at the very end of the day. Now the older ones are too big to do the two for one, so you have to run three separate baths. Hunched over the tub on wet floor at the end of the day washing long hair and trying to keep LM from hurtling over the side is about the last thing you need after a full day in the coal mine. Needless to say, man rules would apply under my rule and a "sniff test" on the children would be liberally employed.
There you have it, a pretty accurate sampling of what the missus goes through everyday and some key differences between how she runs thing and how H would fare under the same circumstances. Surely I exaggerate just a bit, but I'm not that far off. Even if I could learn how to pre-pack lunch and schedule playdates ahead of time, I don't think I could keep from losing my mind. It's a damn hard job, folks, and I for one could not handle it as well as she can.
So Happy Mother's Day to my wonderful wife, who not only runs a tight ship for three kids under 8 but has to keep me from doing stupid things as well ("Do you really need a taylor ham egg and cheese right now?"). And while raising a brood can be a slog at times, there are many times when we sit at the dinner table with the little ones quietly munching away and smile, knowing we are very, very lucky.
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