A Day In The Life
I’m a working mom, so it’s rare that I get a full day to spend with the Little Man that’s not a hectic weekend. He’s got strep throat, so the doctor told him that he had to stay home. He’s apparently on the mend, so he’s being just a normal little boy. I thought it would be fun to document my day as a stay-at-home mom, including my quest to not watch TV all day as a crutch.
9am - he slept this late, and then bolted out of bed and ran around. An OK start to the day, but his first word when he saw me was “UHHHH”.
9:15 - “Mommy, I want to eat breakfast.” After three days of no eating, he downed some blueberries and a bite of oatmeal. He shared his blueberries with me saying “I’m a good sharer.”
9:30 - I needed go to the office to see what’s up with work. He found the old crib mattress in here, and asked if he could jump on it. (He can only jump on certain beds, and this is one of them.) He starting leaping. This was apparently the most amazing thing. He got his covers from his room and then got his stuffed animals so they could jump too.
9:45 - Pitstop! In my effort to potty-train, we put a diaper on Elmo and sat him on the potty. No luck from LM, though.
10:00 - he finds the boxes of advanced CDs in the house and opens them like “presents” because he’s now the mailman. We stack all the CDs in the bathroom and knock them down.
10:15 - we put on Debi Nova’s CD, and he seems to like it. He’s dancing all over the office while asking me to make Lightning McQueen dance. Then he rolls himself into a burrito and acts like a ghost in the comforter.
10:30 - I decide that I need to get a curtain rod to hang the thermal curtains in my insanely hot office. We get the tape measure and measure the windows. Then we find out that the tape measure will roll like a car when you let it go on the crib mattress. This takes up about 10 minutes of opening and shutting the tape measure followed by insane amounts of laughs.
Now I hear CDs falling in the bathroom, so perhaps I should check on that.
11:00 - after he tries to put a CD in the DVD player and futzing with the remote it’s time to go to Whole Foods. He has to get himself dressed by himself now, and that’s just a challenge in itself. He’s now taken both of his dresser boxes out and is sitting in them saying that they are at the train station. LM in a diaper wanders into the office to tell me that maybe we can ride the train one day, and maybe we can ask Daddy. I say, “yes we can. Get dressed so we can go to Whole Foods.”
And still, no TV…we’ve made it a total of two hours. Unfortunately, I promised some Scooby Doo after we get back from the store, so, um, there you go.
11:30 - after being told to get dressed and successfully taking his shirt off, we’re still not dressed. I’ve decided that since he’s playing so incredibly nicely by himself in his room and pretending, it’s not a big deal to postpone our Whole Foods trip for awhile. All I’m hearing from the next room is Thomas the Tank Engine and the Thomas song. But, the child has a very structured life, so this day of wandering around and being by himself is a good thing. Plus, it lets me check in with work to make me feel less guilty about taking the day off.
11:40 - shorts are on! A shirt (polo) was chosen, but it was being worn as a cape. And since we don’t go out looking like a preppy superhero, we’ll sit here until the shirt gets on. The crib mattress got jumped on again, just for good measure. “Mommy, where’s the big hole?!” is being screamed from the other room. And off I go to help him find the bottom of the shirt.
12:10 - we’re finally out the door with clothes on and shoes on and a car picked out to take to the store. He wants to ride the red airplane cart at Whole Foods, so we grab that. I prolong this trip by asking him about things. “Do we need organic strawberries? How about fish? Do we need this fish with a head?” Good news is that he’s finally hungry, and WF has amazing mac and cheese. We get our bounty (which includes a thermal bag to keep the meat OK while we play more) and go outside to eat. It’s 95 degrees, but he loves eating outside, so we do. It was honestly really delightful having lunch with him.
12:50 - we’re done. We decide to meet my mother at her office to say hey. There’s also a dollar store right next door which means cheap toys and aisles to run through. Mom talks to him, and we have a nice conversation for a bit. And….we get potty! He walks to the bathroom with me and (with the promise of chocolate from Mimi) he pees. Love it.
1:20 - off to the dollar store we go. Lots and lots and lots of cheap toys. We , see them and play. He’s so good to put things back where he found them. Then he finds a Lightning McQueen ball. He throws it around the store. I hear “hey! hey! hey!” I come around the corner to see a man with no teeth on a ladder saying, “This is a store, not a park”. All I can think of is “this is the dollar store - this is mommy’s airconditioned playground.” But instead I take the high road and say, “LM, the man says to stop playing with the ball in the store.”
2:00 - we’re back in the car after picking up our groceries at Mimi’s office. My plan? Drive around until he falls asleep. We keep driving, and he keeps playing. We keep driving, and he keeps playing. We pass the house, and he says “I want to go home” all while having heavy eyes. So we go home because I think that we’re just a lie down to a nap. Oh no! After we hit the bedroom, the car is rolling on the wall, the tears are flying because he doesn’t want to lie down. I rock him, and he seems tired so I let him be.
3:30 - the car is still rolling on the walls. Now I’m hearing the Scooby Doo theme song singing on a loop from the room next door. I’m pushing 4:00, and we don’t have a nap. Oh boy. I can’t force the boy to sleep, but I certainly am not looking forward to dealing with the boy who doesn’t. I think this is where TV comes out.
4:30 - He finally emerges from his room yelling, “mommy - I pooped my pants!” Well, I guess we’ve learned that he knows what’s going on. We change it all, get a load of laundry in the wash, and wash hands/bottoms/everything. Robot pull-ups are on, and off we go.
4:45 - it’s mommy’s potty time (I know…too much), but that’s how long I’m gone only to find when I come back..
4:46 - the entire bag of shredded paper turned upside down and scattered around the office. It’s kind of hysterical, but not that funny knowing that we have to pick it up. I get lots of resistance, but that’s a three-year-old. Eventually the paper gets put back into the garbage bag by pretending that we’re making it snow into the bag.
5:00 - it’s my bright idea to go ahead and make this boxed cake mix that’s in the pantry. That involves him pouring things into a bowl and being happy about it. We do this and discover the greatest thing about making cake is licking the spatula. I am not party to this as he has strep, and I really don’t want it.
5:15 - He’s luring me to the playroom to direct the traffic of his cars again. Instead, we move into the office one last time so that he can jump on the mattress. And he asks to listen to Debi Nova (how does he know that the single is picking up?). The grand plan for the rest of the evening is to somehow segue the cakemaking to dinnermaking to dinner to welcoming daddy home and eating the cake. At which point we might watch 15 minutes or so of Scooby Doo.
5:30 - cake comes out, dinner gets started. I realized that my day has been TV-free, but it’s also been time out free! This changes. The scream of “NO” or excessive whining get 1.2.3’ed to time out. We get this for screaming about not wanting to set the table and not wanting dinner. So back to the room. It’s fine. It’s been a lovely day, so there.
6:00 - 3 time outs and we’re done. He’s been convinced that eating the orange we bought at Whole Foods would make an amazing accompaniment to sausage and potatoes. We eat just fine (whew!), and we start our tantrums. It’s fine, again. I convince him that he needs to finish so that we can frost the cake.
6:30 - dinner’s cleaned up, cake gets frosted. It’s put away, and we’re into the mad dash to find the cars. Into the media room we go, when we hear…
6:45 DADDY! LM runs to the back door screaming “Daddy - I made you a cake!” while trying to get the door open. Daddy comes in and is excited to hear about cake and to see us both in one piece.
7:00- we eat cake (me and LM), and dinner (Daddy) while discussing the day. And Lightning McQueen. And the new Iron Man car. And the Dollar Store.
7:30 - Bath time. He’s especially fiesty tonight, and we can’t get the clothes hamper off his head. It’s strip-down time, and the threat of no…
7:45 - Scooby Doo! He made his appearance, but only at the end of the day. We watch one episode of the show (21 minutes), and have a fight getting to bed. It’s fine. He asked for Daddy to lie down with him, so I’m off the hook.
I don’t know how stay-at-home moms do it. I struggled to find things to do today, and this was a good day. I guess when going to the pool or other people’s houses, etc. is an option, that helps. But, I do know, again, that being a working mom is exactly what I want to be, and that we’re all a happier family for what we have now.
Get better, Little Man! You’re going to school and swim class tomorrow!
