Because they say things just get harder. Which creates a knot in my chest because I think, how can things get harder??
This represents a pretty typical Tuesday/Thursday routine:
6:20: I wake up from the vibration on my wrist. My Fitbit alarm is going off. My first thought I think pretty much every morning is, "I'm so tired." Always. Then I think about whether I could get away with sleeping just five more minutes. But no, the bus will be here in 15 minutes. I crawl quietly out of bed pulling the blanket up to the chin of one or more of my sleeping children. (we've always had a family bed).
6:20-6:35: Throw a small pan on the stove to warm up. Wake up Baylee. Let the dog out to pee. Cook Baylee's breakfast. Let the dog back in. Make her cold lunch to take with her. Then we wait for her bus to arrive. Hopefully it doesn't arrive before she's ready. That's one out the door .. 3 to go.
6:35-7:20: Crawl back into my spot in bed, hoping it's still a little warm. Maybe sleep will come back to me. Maybe it won't and I'll just get up and hop in the shower. I'm maybe only picking up 30 extra minutes of sleep in this time frame, but sometimes it's worth it. Need I remind you .. I'm TIRED.
7:20-7:30: Drag myself back out of bed again and head downstairs hoping that Jeramie has gotten up while I went back to lay down and that he started the coffee maker. "YES .. coffee." OR "You effing a-hole you could have at LEAST put the coffee on, why do I have to do EVERYTHING around here..." (my inside the head language isn't nice when I don't have coffee in the morning).
7:30-7:40: Time to wake up the boys for school. At this point sometimes Jeramie will announce to me that he's planning to go to work early. Which equals .. oh surprise I have to get the boys ready all by myself this morning AND get myself ready for work. At which point I remind him the boys need home lunch today. He then starts cursing at me for not "telling" him sooner. To which I remind him that the lunch menu is posted in the kitchen and he's welcome to look at it anytime. Doesn't need to wait for me to TELL him. (We are not morning people in our house .. but don't worry all is forgiven by the time we leave the house). It's a recent development that I've assigned Jeramie the cold lunch duty for the boys. I figure it's the least he can do. I get Jackson and Wyland dressed, Jeramie is responsible for getting Oliver dressed.
7:40-8:15: The boys are served up cereal to eat on TV trays while watching cartoons. I finish getting ready for work. Pick up my gym bag and think to myself how glad I am that I pack it the night before so that I'm not having to do that in the morning as well. Thinking to myself I shouldn't have gone back to bed. Maybe that extra 30 minutes of sleep wasn't worth it. Thinking how glad I am that it's not a run day today. My legs still feel tired from the night before when I ran. Make my lunch to take to work. Try and squeeze in one more cup of coffee. Yell at the boys to get their coats on, find their backpacks, is their homework in their backpacks, where are their shoes ....
Sometimes if I have the time I'll throw dinner in the crockpot. It's always good to do crock pot on Tuesdays (leftovers on Thursdays) so that dinner is ready by the time I finally get back home that night.
8:20: Load all the boys in my car. It's my turn to drive today. Do I have all my stuff? My gym bag? My lunch? My purse? My keys? More coffee? Kids backpacks? All the kids? Okay let's get out of here.
8:20-8:42: Drop Jackson and Wyland at school. Drive Oliver to preschool.
8:42-8:51: Sit outside Oliver's preschool with Oliver waiting for the teacher to open the garage. We always have time to spare so we just hang out. I might check Facebook/Instagram/Email while we're waiting. He'll shoot up some dinosaurs on the iPhone. Once the garage opens he'll run in with his little backpack. The boy LOVES school these days.
8:51-9:02: Finally drive to work.
9:02-10:50: WORK. Before I know it my Fitbit is buzzing at me again, time to pick Oliver up.
10:50-10:57: Drive to Oliver's preschool. Load the dude in the car. On Thursday's we'll stop at McDonald's and he gets french fries. We only do that on show and tell days (with Wyland we had to stop every day for candy at the gas station, I learned from that habit and started Oliver off with a one day a week stop instead)
11:00-11:20: Drive to Robie's to pick her up.
11:25-11:40: Drive home to drop Oliver and Robie off. Sometimes if I didn't put dinner in the crock pot that morning I'll go in and throw dinner in when I'm home.
11:40-11:50: Drive back to work. That was my "lunch break".
11:50-4:15: Work my little tail off. I'll gobble down lunch at my desk while I'm working.
4:30-5:15: Walk on the treadmill. Since I'm not running I won't hit my 10k steps that day on my Fitbit/Up24 band so I need to get my walk in. I head to the bathroom to change and hit the treadmill at work and walk while watching Sons of Anarchy (that's what I'm watching right now anyway, thank goodness for Amazon's downloadable TV series). My Fitbit will buzz at some point telling me I've hit my 10k steps. Woohoo.
5:15-5:20: Go back to my office and wrap up a few more work items and pack my stuff up to head to the gym. I'm already in my gym clothes so I'll be ready to walk straight into class when I get there. Call Jerm when I'm on my way to make sure he's going (because sometimes he will get stuck at work and that always pisses me off). Normally he'll be at the gym already, having gone home and changed, picked up Jackson to take him with. He'll set up our benches in class and head to the treadmills to wait for me.
5:20-5:45: Drive to the gym. Sit on I-15 in traffic. Listen to an audio book while I'm driving. I get tired of the same songs on the radio. I recently finished Unbroken on Audible. It was good.
5:45-6:00: Find Jeramie somewhere on the treadmills. He'll want to chat about his day. I always feel weird trying to have a conversation with him with other people all around us, kind of yelling over the treadmill noises. He'll get irritated that I don't want to "talk" to him. I'll just want to read my book.
6:00-7:00: Barbell Strength class. I'm really hoping this makes me a stronger runner. Otherwise this is just a waste of time. I think about how hard this class is. Then I remind myself that I'm there to work, I need to work harder. Squat deeper. Why haven't I been able to up my weights lately? I'm so tried.
7:00-7:15: Drive home with Jackson. We talk about his day and whether he has homework. Which girl is going to be his Valentine at school. This year it's Avery (his 1st grade love). He hugged her FOUR times today and it made her so happy. But she didn't hug him back.
7:15-8:00 Jeramie drives Robie home. First thing I do is turn the TV off. I'm pretty sure it's been on all day long. With the TV off it's one less noise to contend with. I change my clothes. Argue with Jackson about doing his homework. He cries. I get mad and yell some more. Tell him he can just go to bed if he's not going to do his homework. Eventually he'll make his way to the kitchen table and I'll have to sit right next to him to "help" him do his homework. But I'll keep getting up to go to the kitchen to fix my dinner. More often than not it's soup out of the crock pot or left over soup from Tuesday's crock pot. I eat at the table while Jackson finishes his homework. Sometimes I'll hop up and down fixing the boys dinner (it's never the same as what we eat).
8:00-9:00: Hopefully Jeramie is walking back in the door from dropping his mom home. I'm STILL trying to finish my dinner. Get the boys fed. I need to go wake Baylee up and have her come up and eat dinner. Jeramie will come in and flip the TV on while he fixes his food. If I'm VERY lucky around 8:30 I might sit down to watch a few minutes of TV. Jerm really wants me to sit down and watch something with him. But at the same time the dirty kitchen is calling my name. Jerm swears he'll take care of it, he just wants me to sit with him. The kids are done with homework, tired of video games and have 2-3 different iPad's going watching YouTube. Or maybe Wyland and Oliver are playing at the kitchen table (with an iPad on in the back ground). It's gotten really loud in my house again. The TV volume goes up to drown out Jackson's iPad, Jackson's iPad volume goes up to hear over the TV. Baylee is barking in the kitchen about calling Grandma to ask what she had for dinner. I sit there and beg in my head that my mum answers the phone when Baylee calls. If she doesn't Baylee will refuse to go to bed until she's talked to Grandma because she HAS to know what she had for dinner. I'm tired. I'm watching the clock, is it 9pm yet?? Baylee feeds the dogs. More noise .. they're very excited it's dinner time.
9:00-10:00: BEDTIME!! I tell Jerm I'm going up to bed. Baylee's finally gone downstairs to bed. As soon as I get up to go upstairs the boys all follow me. Jerm sits and quietly watches TV while I get the boys ready for bed. I get pissed because it isn't fair that I have to deal with all three boys while he just sits and relaxes. He asks what he's supposed to do, they want me, not him. Boys start bouncing off the walls. They think it's play time again. Change of scenery .. beds to jump on. Everyone wants to sleep with mom. Sleeping pills for ALL of us! Wyland and I tap our pills together and say "Cheers". I go to wash my face. Yell at boys to get PJ's on. Pull my work clothes out of my gym bag to put away. Repack my gym bag for tomorrow. Throw phones on chargers. Thing to myself, I should really do reading with them all. But I'm SO tired. Maybe we'll read. I think about how much I love reading and wonder whether they will ever feel that way. I start thinking about all the stuff I have to do at work tomorrow. What meetings do I have. Am I prepared? Do the boys need school lunch tomorrow? Finally they start to settle down.
10:00-10:30: One by one the boys fall off to sleep. I look at them and think about how lucky I am to have them. How much I love them. How they won't be this little forever. And one day I'll miss the days when they ALL wanted to snuggle with my in bed. Fight over who gets to sit next to me. Who's spot is who's.
I take my vitamins while I read on my Kindle. Enjoy the only few minutes of quiet in my day. Watch my babies sleeping. Write in my training journal about that days run/steps/cross training. Check Facebook/Instagram .. did I miss anything good today? Oh yay look at that friends kids getting first place in spelling bee's, reading all on their own because they love it so much, reading by flashlight because they love it so much, their lives are all so perfect. Thinking I must suck as a mom because while we did get math homework pages done today, we didn't get to Jackson's reading. Or maybe we did get to his reading, but only after arguing about it for 30 minutes before actually reading for 20 minutes. Wondering why he can't just understand that he could have been done so much sooner if he'd just buckled down and not argued about it. Or maybe he asked to read that day and I wonder why can't every day be like that?
10:30: Lights out. I'm tired. Then I remind myself that my kids won't always be this little. These days are numbered. Soon they may not want to have anything to do with me. Tomorrow I will do better. Tomorrow I will have more patience. Tomorrow we'll make up for the 20 minutes of reading we didn't get to today. Should I have skipped the gym? Would that 60 minutes have made the difference.
Probably not.
This is my crazy life.
