Solo Parenting: One Week In

What's that saying?  "The days are long but the years are short"?

Right now, the hours-sometimes the minutes-they are long.

There was this.

There was also plenty of this.

The days themselves?  Actually feel kind of short.  Y'know, in a hindsight is 20/20 kind of way-once it's 7:30 pm, the kids are in bed and asleep, the place is somewhat-sorta-kinda back to a semblance of "cleaned" up, and I get to kick back for a little bit before turning in myself.  (This is when a glass of wine or bottle of beer would come in handy, but-alas!-pregnancy.)

And my days are longer.  Tyson usually gets up with Caden and Brooklyn and makes them breakfast in the morning, especially since I've been pregnant, so I can sleep for a just bit longer before getting up to shower and face the day.  Almost every day this week I got up (*ahem* dragged myself out of bed) around 6:30/6:45 to shower myself before getting them up and fed.

The days themselves aren't all that different.  Tyson is usually gone or busy working from home anyway, so I'm used to trying to fill the hours up during the day.  It's just that much more crucial for us to get out of the house now, since there is no relief walking in the door at just the right time to allow me to prepare dinner interruption-free.  This makes the evenings almost as different as the mornings, flying solo every night during the craziest two hours of the day filled with dinner, dishes, and baths before bedtime (blessed bedtime).

I thought that the worst part of Tyson being gone would be my Type-A-ness getting in the way.  Sure, the kids would get taken care of, fed, etc., but the other stuff like toys being picked up each day and dishes washed right after a meal might not happen since Tyson helps out with a lot of those things.  But (so far), those things have (mostly) gotten done. Granted, dinner is a LOT more simple around here, to accommodate its interruption-FILLED making, so there aren't a whole lot of dishes or prep work.  And the toys don't take that long to clean up, really.  Ten minutes, tops, and that's on an especially trashed living room kind of day.  

Besides the mornings (because I am not, never was, and never shall be a morning person, amen), the hardest part is maybe the most obvious: simply that there is no break.  It doesn't matter that I've already changed eight diapers-the next one is mine, too.  Cleaning up from yet another meal/snack/eating extravaganza?  Still me.  I put them to bed the past three nights, and tonight it's on me again.  (Until the weekend!)

(Though actually, the two things I dreaded and hated doing most of all this week were taking out the garbage and killing a spider.  I...guess my priorities are straight?)

Also, there's the fact that this isn't super temporary-it's not just this week, it's the next several weeks, over the next few months.  I don't want to compare myself to a single parent, (who I have even more respect for now), since I do have relief coming every weekend, but it is a lot of work during the week.  A lot of mundane, boring work, but mostly needing to fill up the hours-their hours-every day by myself from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm is exhausting.

In the end, sometimes I yelled.  Sometimes I was patient.  Sometimes I wanted to quit. Sometimes I wanted to trade spots with Tyson (I could learn to program with a PhD pretty fast, right?).  Sometimes I was creative.  Sometimes the house was filled with giggles. Sometimes I counted the hours until bedtime.

And really...isn't that what every week is like, anyway?