Parenting: Tagging Out

Sometimes I parent better when I'm separated from my husband.  Not separated separated.  Sometimes, my husband travels for work.  

Sometimes, my husband travels for work, and I am used to being a part of a parenting team.  I spend all day with our kids whether we're visiting a historical site, watching history in the making, or hanging out at home.  There is a point every day where I realize my husband will be home from work, and I will be about to tag out for a moment even if it's to make dinner for the family or go to the bathroom.  For some reason, once this occurs to me, I sometimes become unreasonable when my husband has to unexpectedly work late or he loses track of time.  I cannot believe that he has not kept to our little plan.  He realizes I can sometimes be like this so he tries to manage my expectations.  We win most days, we lose some.

But when he has to travel, I find my patience for everything expands well beyond what my normal patience levels are.  I can handle our energetic toddler rousing at 5:30 a.m., skipping a nap and going to bed at 10 o'clock.  In fact, recently, I solo parented (that's what we call it around here), for two weeks while my husband was away.  I call it that realizing that at the end of his travel, I'll have help and a shoulder to laugh or cry on.  

Often when my husband travels I cannot reach him over the phone to talk to him.  And sometimes we are not able to email each other either.  So when I'm exhausted, questioning my parenting or just looking for someone to share a funny story with I can't reach out to my normal teammate.  

The kids and I always take a day or two to adjust.  The kids usually become more attached to me than usual because they think if they let me out of their site I might go away for a while too.  I recognize this and I am usually prepared for a few extra tantrums, a few extra requests, a messier house and three people in the bathroom while I pee, shower or try to hide.  

When my husband is home, we do a lot of what we call "tagging" in and out and "switching" which child we're attending to.  I like my husband to have one on one time with each of the children (and so does he), but there are only a few hours at night where we're all home and not eating dinner.  We always eat dinner as a family, Ash gives Noah a bath, and now that Maya is bigger, I bring Maya in after it's underway and let her take a bath with her brother.  The four of us laugh as the baby kicks water around, and then I swoop her out and Noah finishes his bath.  It works for us.  Then I put the baby to bed while Ash and Noah tell stories and eat Noah's bed time snack of granola cereal.  After the baby is sleeping, Ash and I switch and he either sits in the room with her or holds her while I read a few extra stories to Noah and then hang out until he falls asleep.  It's a team effort, but since we know my husband may have travel here or there for a night or a week or two, we're set up so we can make small adjustments to the routine without having catostrauphic results.

It works for us.  

Sometimes, I think I parent better when I am the only person responsible for what is happening.  Why can't I parent like that all the time?  I know the responsibility is shared, but what is it about the day-to-day that I always think I deserve to tag out?  There's not a difference between the activities we do when my husband travels verses when he's home.  The biggest difference is the way I think and feel about things.  

Lately, I've adjusted my attitude to not think of the end of my work day as the second my husband gets home.  Once he's home the house, the food, the kids and the ways in which we choose to handle those things are a joint responsibility, but I've been working on the attitude I have about it.  It took me parenting alone for two weeks without his help (physically or emotionally) to understand how I could change myself.

I look forward to my husband walking in the door every day.  And I know sometimes, we didn't used to wait to bombard him with things to do and all of our ideas until he had his shoes off.  I've never handed him the kids as he's walked in the door, but I think sometimes I didn't recognize how overwhelming the chaos of home can be as soon as you walk in the door.  We're happy, loud, grumpy, rowdy, tired, laughing and all kinds of things at any given moment.  I've been trying to make a better effort of letting him come in, get used to the family and then I hand the kids off and take 10 minutes to pee because I can. 

Disclaimer: Single parents are the bomb.  I think happy amazing thoughts for them every day.  I respect moms and dads that do all the parenting on their own without someone to cheer them on, thank them, listen to them or help them.

To Bill Maher

This post is for you, Bill Maher.  

I just watched you say, "No one is denying that being a mother is a tough job, I remember that I was a handful. Okay, but there is a big difference in being a mother, and that tough job, and getting your ass out of the door at 7am when it’s cold, having to deal with the boss, being in a workplace, and even if you're unhappy you can’t show it for 8 hours, that is a different kind of tough thing."

I know a lot of people have already put you in your place, but please, don't ever speak about what kind of work it is to be a mother.  You're not qualified because you aren't a mother.  You mock mothers who stay at home with their children as if we aren't former policymakers, consultants, lawyers, and lots of other careers that are much harder and more grueling than making cynical comments on HBO and reading someone else's jokes.

See, I've worked outside of the home, and now, I work inside the home as a stay at home mom.  Which I prefer to refer to as CEO of my family's Enterprises. 

I have no idea what it's like to work outside of the home and to be a mother at the same time, but I did work outside of the home commuting 3 hours a day, working 80 hours a week, up until the day I went into labor with my son.

I can speak to the experience I had working outside of the home before I was a parent and working inside the home now that I'm a mom.  Hands down, my current gig is more rewarding, full of more belly laughs and moments that take my breath away.  It's also more full of uncertainty, physical exhaustion, and requires more mental stamina.  Whereas in my past gig, thousands of dollars may have been at stake if I missed a deadline, the wellbeing and development of little people are at stake now.  I can't turn my mind off just because I want to.  My kids need me to help guide them, teach them, and care for them.

I have no idea what it's like to be a working mom, but I have a ton of respect for those women that do.  And I don't need to compare myself to working moms to make myself feel valuable or to justify how I feel when I've had a long hard day with the kids.  I also don't need to compare myself to the successes working moms achieve at work when I feel like I've just rocked the house down with my amazing toddler and baby whispering skills.  The thing is it's not a competition and work inside and outside of the home can be rewarding, troubling, exhausting, amazing, and important.  Working moms do a kickass job of raising their children and showing them love.  And stay at home moms can add a ton to communities through activities and organizations they belong to.

I'm not interested in what you, Bill Maher, think of what other mothers or I do all day.

You don't understand what any of us do.  And I'll bet, we're all working a lot harder than you have to work to be such an asshole.

What does a SAHM do all day?

Someone I know recently asked me how I fill my days.  I know that there is a lot of wonder and awe over what it means to be a stay-at-home-mom.  Which I'd argue is a bad name for what I do.  I take my kids all over from lobbying at the House of Delegates in Annapolis to litttle outings to parks and museums or playgrounds and play dates.  We do stay home sometimes too and try to do art projects or science experiments or practice our counting (in english and spanish) or work on the alphabet. 

We started off the day playing crash boom with Noah's cars on our minitrampoline.  I bounced the baby while we did this then put her down to let her play some and then breastfed her while playing the game.  All in the span of maybe 10 minutes.  Then we colored in the kitchen.  Coloring in the kitchen led to experimenting with colors on surfaces other than paper like plastic and cardboad to see how the colors stayed the same or changed on surfaces.  

I fed the toddler a second breakfast because he's going through a growth spurt so he's willing to eat which means I shove as much food as I can down his throat.  We ran out of soy and cow's milk so today he had 5 pancakes and half of a piece of french toast which never happens.  Then I changed both kids diapers and then we headed to the grocery store.  There I wore the baby in the Ergobaby carrier and I bribed the toddler with oreos to get him to ride in the cart.  He darted into the store before I could get him in the cart so I ran with the baby attached to me, caught him and forced him in the cart.  It took a lot of cookies to get through the store. 

On the way home the toddler fell asleep because he hadn't napped for a few days and still woke up at 5 am today.  So I carried the baby in the car seat and the sleeping toddler into the house at the same time.  Then I put the toddler in his bed, and tried to set the baby up so I could go get all the groceries.

Then I rushed to put chicken in the crockpot, to cut up vegetables and lettuce for a fresh salad, and to cut up sweet potatoes for the toddler to add to his lunch and I rotated between cuddling the baby, patting her belly and dancing for her.  I don't like to baby wear her while cooking because I often hit my pregnant belly on the stove when cookin Pre-Maya so I don't want to risk it when I cook now.  I took breaks to breastfeed the baby and to change her diaper again.

I made the salad and mashed sweet potatoes and just as I was finishing them up the toddler came down.  He asked for a banana which I gave him then he licked it and told me he needed a better banana.  I changed his diaper.  Then I reheated shepherd's pie and got a bowl of mashed sweet potatoes to feed him.  

We headed downstairs for the thirty minutes of tv the kids are allowed so I could coerce the toddler to eat lunch.  The baby pooped, so I changed her.  We came back in the room and the toddler pooped.  So I changed him and realized his blueberry consupmption this week meant he'd need a bath.  The baby pooped again so I changed her and then we set up a bath for the toddler.  The baby was hungry so I breastfed her while bathing the toddler. Then we got him dressed and fed him the shepherd's pie and the sweet potatoes.  More diapers and now we're getting ready for the park.  We've taken so many breaks for eating, diaper changing and on and on that we started tv time at 12:15 and it's now 2:50 and we've seen 10 minutes of the dvd. 

Some days we paint or do science experiments or go on outings.  Yesterday we went to toddler gymnastics.  Tomorrow we're going to try to head to the MLK memorial for a black history month excursion, weather permitting.  

So there you have it.  And yes, we head to the store often because we can't take long enough to get all the things we need in one trip, and I'd rather have my husband home earlier from work then to send him to the store after work.  Mama needs some help sometimes.

I Will Always Have Today: My First Day as a SAHM to Two Kids

Today is the first day that I'm a stay-at-home-mom to two kids.  Until today, I either had the help of my husband, my mother, my sibling or a combination of any two of them. 

Today, I killed it at being a mom.  I started out the day thinking I would wrap the kids up and take them out in the car.  I decided I needed to get used to the idea of having two little ones in tow on my own.  Our toddler is full of energy and I knew that somewhere inside I was scared to take them out together on my own.  So we headed to a drive thru for breakfast for me.  And as we were heading home, I asked my toddler if he wanted to go to the park.  It was 50 degrees at 9 am afterall.

We played at the park, and we all had a great time. The baby slept, the toddler buried his Lightning McQueen car in the sand and then he ran around with some other kids that showed up towards the end of our time there.

M enjoying the park

"Lightning? Lightning?" Where's my car?

We came home, had some lunch and some some down time then made a secret art project for Daddy for Christmas.

Around 3:30 I wrapped the baby up in the Moby Wrap and put the toddler in the stroller and walked around the neighborhood.  Both kids fell asleep.  For an hour. 

I feel superhuman.  I know that not all days will go like this.  Maybe no day will ever work this well again.  But I feel so grateful for today.