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Changing the Routine: Tyrant Toddlers and Drunks

I should just give up entirely on writing about something interesting and instead just write about my everyday life. It goes like this:

  • Wake up when it’s dark
  • Shower, get dressed do hair and makeup
  • Take out the dog (This gets its own line because the dog is so freaking slow in the morning I have to block out 10 minutes for him to pee). 
  • Go to work and work all day (If I'm lucky I get a lunchtime workout in)
  • 11 hours later I get home, eat dinner, play with kids and put kids to bed (this is all about an hour and a half)
  • Watch TV and talk with hubby
  • Go to bed
  • Repeat

I could never make a dinner like this.
Not pictured: a glass of wine
I’m going out on a limb here and saying that my schedule looks pretty much like every other working mom’s schedule in the entire world, except that I’m really lucky in that I don’t have to take the kids to daycare or cook dinner. Husband stays home with them and cooks. I used to cook when he worked a million hours a week in an office, but it turns out I’m not a good cook, and so when the opportunity to work from home and not eat my cooking was available he jumped at it. I’m much better at drinking wine than cooking with it. Plus you don’t usually put wine in Hamburger Helper.

Sometimes I do the dishes, but that generally just pisses him off because I don’t do it “his way” or I put things back in the wrong place.

We’ve struck a balance with the kids and housework and going to work and it was working great for everyone. And then the girls turned into toddlers. Now the game has changed.

Where we used to have nice, quiet little girls who would play with toys, we now have 18-month-old monsters who know a dozen words, can climb things like lightning-fast monkeys, have obviously likes and dislikes, and those likes and dislikes change daily (or hourly). One has decided to fight us at every nap and bedtime. The other yells the second she is hungry. Both are independent, though one will let you help and the other won’t. At home they will hold hands and give kisses. In public they will run around like assholes, ignoring you, and scream bloody murder as soon as you pick them up.

Cupcake facial mask. 
Sometimes I am convinced that all the drinking I did with friends in my 20s was some kind of parenthood training. Sometimes they’re happy, then crying, then distracted, then asleep. They peed on their feet and may or may not vomit on any given day. For some reason at least one of them is never wearing pants. If they eat, there’s a 100% chance there is food in their hair and a 110% chance there is food on the floor. As soon as they’re done crying they love you even though they just hated you, and then they just pass out.

This weekend, after wresting them into their pajamas and carrying them upstairs, one under each arm like screaming footballs, I put them in their cribs. Later I admitted to Husband that I didn’t brush their teeth because I just couldn’t take another fight. He shrugged and said, “Who hasn’t gone to sleep without brushing their teeth?”

Yep, we’ve all done it. Especially after a long night out. Maybe my friends just partied a little too hard, but there were definitely some nights I let a friend fall asleep with their shoes still on. Drunks and toddlers. Eerily similar. The biggest difference is that these two are not going anywhere and each morning when I wake up after a few precious hours of sleep, I peek in on them before I go to work and they are precious, sleeping angels and I already can’t wait to come home and do it all over again, and if there happens to be a cocktail waiting when I walk in the door, even better.

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