The upside to being an everyday-life type of blogger is you don’t have to go out of your way to have things to write about. Maybe I drag my heavy camera around more than I would if I wasn’t a blogger. There are things we wouldn’t be invited to if it weren’t for the blog, so those are definitely a perk. And I do love the community of people I’ve met through the internet – not to mention my mom would be devastated if I stopped.

The downside to being an everyday-life type of blogger is when your everyday-life is boring and exceptionally every-day-like you have nothing worth writing about. Or if your kids are being total terrors – again – and you don’t want to turn into the person who writes constantly about how HARD her life is you have no content. And sometimes you let your desire to have adorable, bloggable pictures get in the way of common sense and good judgement and feel like a pretty crappy mom for a few days. On those days, it doesn’t hurt to remind yourself that the internet is just a series of tubes and if you go to bed early instead of editing Halloween pictures no one is going to hate you. (Plus also it’s OK if your pictures don’t look like a professional magazine shoot, since you were taking photos of actual moving children in the dark instead of models on a well-lit set.)

It’s surprisingly easy to let blogging for fun become less than fun sometimes, so please excuse a little rambling while I try to make it fun again without forcing it to be fun. No one wins when I turn into that mom.

I have discovered a secret about motherhood that I’m a little worried might not ACTUALLY be a secret. Maybe every single other mom already knows and I’ve just been lalalalaing my way through the past 3+ years.

Having a schedule makes me better at my job.

I was going to say “makes me a better mom” but it’s more than that. I’m better at managing my time, I’m better at feeding everyone healthy food, I’m more interested in playing blocks and reading stories, my house is in better shape and I sleep better at night. A schedule is like the opposite of kryptonite to this SuperMom. Sunlight. Sunlight is what made Superman strong, right?

After I left/lost my job when I was pregnant with Evan, I realized I needed to fill my time with something besides couch naps and daytime TV. I spent hours redecorating the house, painting the entire second floor and third floor. I blogged like it was my job. I baked a lot. But “busy” is not the same as a schedule and giving birth made it worse. At home with a newborn I was just trying to SURVIVE. It took almost 5 months before I could even commit to showing up at a breastfeeding support group regularly. Since then we’ve added a lot of activities and favorite places – Stroller Strides, gymnastics, the zoo, the aquarium, playdates, whatever – but none of those are mandatory and/or took up more than a couple hours a week.

But now we have SCHOOL. And don’t tell me it’s not mandatory – my kid might read this blog one day and I have told him quite firmly going to school is The Law and Mr. Policeman would be very angry if he doesn’t go. It structures our week. It gives me a few hours during which Getting Shit Done is much, much easier so Shit Gets Done. Laundry, check! Cleaning under the couch, check! Setting up the DVR for all the fall shows, check! Organizing the kids’ dressers with fall transition clothes and dropping off old, outgrown, non-favorite stuff at Goodwill! I’ve only got 2.5 hours so prepare for some of the fastest sock-sorting you’ve ever seen. I could win the sock-sorting OLYMPICS.

For the first time in more than 3 years I have to say “Let me check my calendar” before committing to stuff because I might actually have somewhere to BE at 11 am on a Tuesday. My phone is set up with alerts like “bake for bake sale” and “preschool open house” and “switch laundry to dryer” and I love it. When I wake up in the morning with a sense of purpose – especially a purpose that requires me to put on pants and be out the door in 2 hours – I don’t get to 5 pm and think “oops, there goes another day”.

I suspect this is part of why people say being a stay-at-home-mom is so hard. It IS hard to spend your entire day taking care of small humans who don’t appreciate it in any way. It’s hard and thankless and frustrating and repetitive. It’s easy to fall into a “who cares?” pattern when it comes to the state of your hair and your floors and your life. I’m not saying there aren’t amazing, super, awesome, fun moments too. There are. Every day. But if you look at parenting as one big long stretch, those first few years as a SAHM are an endless blob of unstructured time, with days and nights often running right into each other and pants being worn for far too many days in a row.

Maybe I’m still in the preschool honeymoon period and pretty soon I’ll realize all this driving back and forth and remembering snack for Special Helper Day and avoiding PTA phone calls is for the birds, but until then I’m really enjoying only dragging ONE screaming child around Target and mopping the floors more than once every decade.

…Although right now I’m using the time mostly to deal with the Saddest Teething Baby Even In The Whole World Who Is Getting Her Two Year Molars Or At Least I Hope So Because Otherwise She’s Just Turned Into A Huge Jerk.

Don’t let her fool you – she flounced off and pouted under this tree for like 10 minutes because I wouldn’t let her eat a rotten apple off the ground. WORST. MOTHER. EVER.

Being three years old is really hard. Parenting someone who is three years old is also really hard. Yesterday was one of those days where “hard” turned into “damn near impossible” and I considered just letting my kid grow up to be a selfish, inconsiderate jerk. It would be so much easier.

By 9:30 am Evan and I were both grumpy and whiny. Ten minutes later I was hissing at him to START LISTENING and FIX YOUR ATTITUDE or we would leave gymnastics immediately and he would go home for an extra-serious-in-your-room-full-10-minute-time-out. Ninety seconds later I had to follow through with my threat and drag him kicking and screaming out of the building.

Literally kicking and screaming. Barefoot, since he punched me in the face when I tried to put his shoes on. I pinned him under one arm and led a very sad and confused Caroline with my other hand to the car, where I briefly considered just LEAVING Evan so his sister could finish class. I did not leave him in the car, but I did stand behind the van for 90 seconds taking deep breaths after I strapped him in. Getting punched in the face by your kid is the kind of low point that requires deep, cleansing breaths. They don’t do much to improve your day but at least you can feel in control of SOMETHING, even if it is your own lungs. Take that, lungs! You’re not the boss of me!

The rest of the morning was just as bad. We both used our angry voices. He threw things. We both cried. He asked for a hug and I said no. It was not my proudest moment. After we both calmed down and had a snuggle and said we were sorry we talked about his feelings and why he was upset. He wasn’t really sure, but was worried Daddy was going to be mad so I assured him we still loved him even if he sometimes acted naughty. We talked a lot about being angry and how to express those feelings without hurting people. We agreed using kind voices was much nicer and that we would be friends and love each other forever and watch Little Einsteins during quiet time.

Then we had lunch.

“Mommy, I don’t feel empty anymore!” says Evan.

“Empty?” says Mommy.

“Yeah! I was empty and sad. Now I FULL so I happy!”

*FACEPALM*

Hungry. My kid was HUNGRY. He melted down because I didn’t feed him enough breakfast. HOURS of fighting that could have been prevented with a bowl of fricking cereal.

Sometimes being three years old is really hard because your mother is an idiot.

There’s nothing like a trip to an amusement park to show you what parts of parenting you’re not-quite-so-good-at yet. We went to Sesame Place this weekend, just me and the kids, since E’s schedule is preventing him from doing anything besides stare at a light on a dashboard and sometimes the back of his eyelids. I’m not alone with the kids (I’m not that crazy) but Kim has two kids of her own to chase around. I think that might make both of us a little more than nuts.

(more…)

Our vacation is quickly approaching – 19 daaaaaaays!!! – and although I am insanely excited about it I’ve started to think about the practical aspects of leaving the kids and house in someone else’s hands for a week and I’m freaking out.  My reasons are two-fold, and I will of course tell you about them now in great detail.

Reason 1 is because how can anyone besides me take care of my beautiful, special, magical snowflakes? They are delicate flowers! Fragile angels! Helpless babies! No one besides me can give them the care and love and constant attention they require to blossom and grow on a daily basis. I am their Mother, giver of Life, completely Irreplaceable.

Of course on a daily basis my love and life-giving mostly involves handing them cheese, playing trains, pouring juice and making sure they don’t kill each other. Not exactly rocket science.

But on the other hand, there ARE a lot of small things that matter an enormous amount to two toddlers but other people wouldn’t know. At bedtime, Evan wants me to sing his songs in a specific order. Caroline likes different sippy cups than Evan does. Her favorite games are hard to understand unless you realize punching you in the face is playing. When Evan asks for a “chocolate bar” he means a granola bar. Are their lives going to be RUINED if someone else does things differently for a week? No, of course not. And because my folks are coming here to our house the amount of change really is minimal. I just want things to be as easy as possible for everyone.

Reason 2 is because there are going to be PEOPLE in my HOUSE and I won’t be here to help them find things which means when they need extra towels or more toilet paper they are going to be opening closets and looking under beds and oh God it’s giving me heart palpitations just THINKING about it. Despite my best efforts and intentions, I am not a well-organized person. Yesterday I “cleaned” the guest room, which consisted of ten minutes untangling yarn, three minutes staring hopelessly at the giant pile of stuff still left to organize and thirty minutes of shoving craft supplies under the bed. Success! Or…not. At least it looks better than the cabinet under the bathroom sink. Or the pantry. Or our bedroom. Or – OH GOD – the basement. THE BASEMENT.

Then there’s the tiny issue that my mother is the kind of person who cleans my microwave every time she visits and my father is the kind of person who builds a new patio every time he visits so things need to be CLEAN and projects need to be FINISHED. Of course, I’ve known about this trip for a year so obviously my anxiety levels aren’t at the level of “get off my butt and do something” yet.

So here is my question for anyone who has left their kid(s) before OR hes watched someone else’s kids for them: How many pages of instructions are helpful vs. crazy-pants obsessive? Evan isn’t helpless, he can ask for the sippy cup he wants, but no one’s going to know what he means when he asks for the “camp-it hoot show” (Captain Hook show = Jake and The Neverland Pirates). Do I need to catalog our exact bedtime routine, or just “Bathtime at 7, in bed by 7:45” good enough? The most stressful part is I’m going to be virtually unreachable, so if I forget to write down “We usually ride the elevator a few times when we go to the mall, even if we don’t need to” I’m imagining the kids sobbing on the floor while my parents look on helplessly.

I don’t think there’s any advice for the house-mess situation, unless you want to come over and clean it for me. Ok, thanks, see you soon.