I am sure that anyone who is the parent of a toddler can probably relate to at least some of what goes on at my house. Sometimes, though, I find myself sitting here in disbelief thinking things like “Did that really just happen?”. Then I laugh. Of course it just happened. Being a mom is a lot of different things, and interesting is certainly a word I would use to describe motherhood. Some people ask me whether I get bored, hanging out at home all day with the kids. Since there’s never a dull moment here, there is no time to get bored. Some days I wish that I had time to get bored, but overall I am thankful that I’m not.
For your entertainment, here’s a brief overview of a typical day around here. Around 8, the kids wake up and I wake up with them. It’s a race to the kitchen where Dylan demands food immediately and I get him a little cereal while I cook breakfast. Cooking breakfast is a procedure. After he wolfs down his cereal Dylan goes to the playroom to play, but he calls out for me to go in there every other minute. “Mooooom, I neeeeeed you”. I know better than to ignore the call for too long because otherwise any number of unpleasant things could happen – pee on the floor or hard toys being thrown at the wall, to name a few. Eventually breakfast gets cooked and everyone eats. Plates occasionally get overturned on the table.
Today it was very nice out so we took a long walk. We must have been quite a sight, me in ratty sweatpants and an old tee shirt and the boys in their faded, tattered, but still operational double jogging stroller that I got out of the free pile at the local thrift store a few weeks ago. Did I mention that Dylan had on a pair of my husband’s long dress socks and a pair of my husband’s swim trunks that I had rolled and tied so that he could walk in them without falling down? Yup. That’s what he wanted to wear today and I wasn’t about to try and win that battle. I ran a little bit in between the walking and that felt good. The sun shined. We saw cows. The cows mooed, and Dylan was in seventh heaven.
We returned home and I rushed to get a nutritious lunch on the table as Dylan played in the yard and Blake bounced in his jumperoo that I had moved out to the deck. The rest of the day was a blur of half cleaning up various messes, playing outside, playing inside, getting people bathed, making and eating dinner, being told that I was as big as a cow, reading stories, cuddling, and putting the boys to bed.
Now that I have reduced my day into writing, I can laugh about it. I laughed plenty during it, and marveled at just how strange it would look to an outsider. Strange or not, it’s just another day in the life of a stay at home parent of a baby and a toddler.