One of us works a typical 9-5 job M-F. The other works Fri & Sat or Sat & Sun overnight. The day after the overnight shift can be tough, but otherwise it works perfectly. It is a great schedule if you can get it.
This just seems … a little too pat.
At any rate … it seems like if you printed **Gallan’s **schedule out, laminated the copies, and handed them out at your local high school, you could probably whittle down the teen pregnancy rate a little bit.
gallan, if your 2.5 year old can be relied on to put food gently in the cart, swipe the ATM card, and put in the PIN, you have an unusual 2.5 year old. It’s wonderful that you have a bright, biddable toddler, but you shouldn’t assume everyone does. I will always remember seeing a show on Discovery about temperament testing babies. The mom and baby were put in a room with some toys and a potted plant, and the mom was supposed to read a magazine, and if the baby went after the plant, redirect him. I sat with my jaw dropped as a baby was redirected once or twice, then left the plant alone. My children are like the second baby they showed going after the plant again and again, never giving up.
Also, please realize you are blessed to only need about 6 hours of sleep a night! If I slept for only 6 hours, night after night, I would go insane, then die.
If you can get some perspective on the lucky hand you’ve been dealt, maybe you can understand how your mystification at us “whiny” parents not getting it all done comes off as obnoxious. (And yes, I appreciate that I am lucky to have a partner to pitch in, where you do not.)
Anyway, I realized a good tip just now - the kids will play by themselves without pestering me for infinite periods, if it occurs just before bedtime. All toys and games become completely fascinating if they put off bedtime! I got some laundry folded and did a swish and swipe of their bathroom just now using this principle.
I just realized that last part about teen pregnancy could be construed as a dig at **Gallan’s **life, and I’m very sorry if it came out that way. On re-reading, I could see it being insulting, and I meant no offence.
What I did mean is that kids often have this idealistic idea of what it’s like to take care of a baby (“We’ll go to the playground every day!”) and don’t fully grasp the grinding schedule and the constant need to be “on” as a parent.
And seriously, **Gallan **- you got yourself an easy kid. 
Alright, sorry if I offended anyone. It never occurred to me that I might have been “dealt a lucky hand.” Just that most of the stuff I hear other parents complain about is really pretty easy, but this is my first and only child so I have nothing else to base my opinions on. I just assumed he was a pretty normal kid. Again, sorry coming off as obnoxious.
LOL! That was cute.
Being a night owl (horrible insomniac, actually), the best part about the school year is I can take naps all day if I want to (I have slept whole days off away), hang out with Alex when he gets home, and then do everything I need to get done at night when he’s sleeping.
Summer vacation is a bitch and I have no idea what I’ll do when the newest baby (not here just yet) stops sleeping 20 hours a day, but it worked for a while!
I’ve haven’t been working for a while and you know what I’ve realized, especially after posting in this thread? I’m actually a more productive person when I’m too busy to do anything. Now that I have all the time in the world, it seems nothing ever gets done because I know I won’t be busy “later” so, hey, let’s go the park now or go shopping now or go hang out with this friend or that family now and we’ll do this yucky chore at some non-existent “later” time. I didn’t pick up the dry cleaning for almost a week and I still need to go grocery shopping…
It’ll get better in a couple weeks when school starts back up.
I was raised by a single mother who worked full time in a high-stress position with long hours. 80+ hour weeks were the norm. How did she do it? Nowadays when I talk to her, she shakes her head and wonders. What I remember is this:
When we (my sister and I) were really young, we had a live-in nanny. In grade school, we were shuttled off to a variety of afterschool activities by people whom mom had made arrangements with. Dropping us off at school in the morning was not too bad - we had this big neighborhood carpool going on, so she only had to do so maybe one week out of every month. Around middle school-ish age, we moved to Singapore due to mom’s job. She was managing a new subsidiary there, and her working hours actually increased, if anything. So after school, we would go to our family friend’s place and stay there to finish up our homework until she picked us up in the evening. A year after that, we were sent to an American school in Taiwan, and we lived with relatives there for the rest of the school term (while mom was still working in Singapore). So all in all, a variety of arrangements.
I do have one thing to say about cooked meals, though. I’ll be real. The dinners I had growing up were never that good. Whenever mom did prepare dinner, it would be something quick and simple. I remember long stretches of mac n’ cheese or pasta with tomato sauce from the can. There were also short stints with having takeout delivered to our house or having a cook come to our home (it might sound nice, but said cook made really obscure Chinese dishes - my sister and I were picky eaters at the time and hated the dishes).
And she never did much housework. She hired a housekeeper.
You win some, you lose some. You don’t have to do it all.
What is a clean house?
I dropped my standards when I was home full time and came out somewhat sane. It was me against the tsumani of clutter. Clutter will always farking win. So, I lowered my standards and do a deep cleaning for company a couple times a year. PMS really helps moments like this.
Frankly speaking, women who fuss over a clean house all the time and clean all the time probably need to take some meds for OCD and kick their mothers out of their heads. Also, stop reading home decorator magazines/parenting magazines and anything that Martha Stewart does. It is creating an illusion that no one can live up too. (What the hell is a clean counter top when you have kids? Anybody? Bueller? Bueller?)
I also started my kids very early in learning the joys of chores. Road to Self Suffieciency and all that twaddle which they hate now but see what some of their second and third tier friends don’t do around the house and how lazy they are.
Now that I work for a livi…to survive, the everyone pitches in loads more. The kids do their own lunchs and have since first grade. Pack their own backpacks and getting out the door at X time, regardless of who is driving in that morning. Keeping someone waiting is rude and not tolerated. They are responsible for bringing down laundry, shoving it in the machine ( I need to supervise the filling of laundry soap or I will be out of stuff in a week with just two kid loads) and from there, it is their responsibility.
My husband helps out ALOT around the house because he is very thankful that I found a job for 40 hours with bennies and he knows it is a braindead soul sucking thing. He sees how exhausted I am when I get home. I am not hardwired for shit like that like he is.
I do it for my kids. I do it so they can have better teeth. I do it so they can participate in activities they enjoy. I do it so they can go off to college and get better jobs than what we have and never have to have this wage struggle.
I do it for them.
Holy crap, and some of you thought gallan was offensive!
Look, not all of us have poor time management skills, okay? That doesn’t mean we have OCD. And you want to know what a clean house is? Something I don’t ever have to be embarrassed about if somebody just drops in and something I don’t have to worry about if I get a call saying “Hey, I’d like to come visit.” I have never, ever “cleaned for company”, an idea which is completely asinine to me. Sure, come over but give me a few hours first so I can clean this dump and then I’m going to be all tired so I won’t want to hang out anyway! I’ve also never had to say the words “Sorry, the house is a mess.” And I don’t fuss over anything because a clean house, when you do it right, just is; no fussing required.
And my mom isn’t in my head, it’s my dad’s voice I hear saying “It’s a hell of a lot easier to keep a room clean than it is to clean it.” And you know what? He wasn’t wrong. Thanks for the tip, Pop.
It’s not an illusion and it’s not true that “nobody can live up to” it because I do it just fine. And it isn’t because I “clean all the time”, I just don’t mess. So if I’m playing Sorry! or Guess Who? or whatever with my kid (which is a damn near nightly thing; I know I must be out of my head!) and I get up to use the bathroom and, when I get there, there’s HAIR IN THE SINK AGAIN, OMFG, don’t you just want to strangle guys sometime? Anyway, I’ll take the 0.5 seconds to clean it up while I’m in there and on my way back out I’ll grab the laundry somebody left on the floor (usually the kid) and drop it in the appropriate hamper. Like I said, I clean all day. That doesn’t mean I clean all the time.
Oh, and I have a tip for existing clutter: throw it away. If you have a pile of shit you haven’t so much as looked at for six months, chances are it isn’t important. For future clutter? Put your shit away when you’re finished with it. If your clutter doesn’t have an “away”, make one up. While I was polishing my organization skills, I liked shoe boxes.
Or you could just leave it there and lament how busy you are and about how crazy people must be if they aren’t slobs.
Unauthorized Cinnamon, it can be done well. You’ll struggle at first while you all adjust and work out how best to manage everything, but you’ll figure it out. You don’t have to sacrifice decent meals or a clean house or quality time with your family to do it either, I don’t care what anybody in this thread says.
Amen!
Also, everything in our house has a home. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t come into it. That goes for everything from that new handy kitchen gadget I want to toys to extra towels. Everything goes to its ‘home’ before the end of the day. Hint: nothing lives on the kitchen counters. It may seem OCD to you but we live in a very small home. If it were not neat and tidy, we wouldn’t have room to move or play!
I don’t think Shirley was getting on people who try to keep up with stuff. I take that from the point about not reading Martha Stewart Magazine. That shit will drive you crazy, as it is only for bored rich housewives who are trying to occupy their time, as far as I can tell.
On the other hand, I’ve always had a messy house and felt like I couldn’t keep up with the cleaning. I guess it’s because my mom never taught me how to “keep house,” rather than clean up giant messes with huge investments of time and effort. I’d look at the pile of crap that’s accumulated in my bedroom, for instance, and not do anything about it because I don’t have the five hours required to conquer it. Lately I’ve started following some of the FlyLady stuff, and as irritating as she can be, it is a revelation to find that investing a few minutes here and there actually makes a huge difference, without exhausting you.
So I’m becoming someone who cleans all day too - not because I’m OCD, but because I’m lazy, and it’s easier than doing a Herculean clean once in a while!
The other disadvantage you have is that your kids are far apart in age. Mine were close, which DID make the first four years or so a blur of exhaustion, but for most of their pre-schoolerhood, they’d at least watch the same TV/movies, play the same games and enjoy visits to the Children’s Museum or playground. Being one year apart in school, I’ll only have two years where they are on different schedules catching different buses (next year, then again in three years). I had them in the same swim lessons and on the same soccer team. Two little ones are a different challenge, but with one older and one younger, they aren’t paced the same.
ETA: Use your older child’s friend’s parents. MANY of them are willing to drive, host more than their share of sleepovers, and be helpful. Reciprocate as possible, making sure to host sleepovers and let them know you are willing to be called in they have a party to be at and want you to host an overnight. It takes a village, and most of us working parents develop a village around us - often of other working parents willing to take your kid for ALL OF SATURDAY so you can get something done.
Well, all I can say as a working full-time, single parent of two is: work with your natural body clock - not on anyone else’s schedule. But the A-1 tip: put things away as you move from one room to another during the course of the day.
My girls are 13 and 6. My 13 yr old is home in the afternoon for about 2 hours and during that time she is supposed to empty the dishwasher, vaccuum and do her homework. The 6 yr old I have to pick up from daycare on my way home from work, so we usually get home around 6pm. If there aren’t girls scouts or PTA or some class sombeody’s taking, then as soon as we come home, I start dinner and we usually eat by 7pm. Depending on what’s for dinner we might have time to go down to the gym so I can get in a quick run (sometimes my oldest & I race on the treadmills ), we might go for a walk, or they might help me cook. Then they start eating while I clean up the dinner mess before I sit down to eat with them. They eat slowly and in the kitchen so, it works out.
For me, once we’ve eaten dinner I am just physically/mentally/emotionally finished. I can handle hanging out with my kids, get them ready for bed and their backpacks ready for school. But that’s it. I crawl into bed and am out as soon as I know they’re asleep. They both have the same bedtime but the oldest is allowed to read until about 10pm before I turn out the lights in self-defense. Going to bed “because Mommy’s tired” is not a strange thing in our home.
Mornings are where it’s at for me as far as keeping up with basic stuff. I get up at 6am and the kids catch the bus at about 7:15am. Our morning is basically:
[ul]
[li]throw in a load of laundry while I’m making coffee; [/li][li]wake the kids and get them started;[/li][li]get things generally ready for dinner while I’m making breakfast (taking whatever out of the freezer - making sure all the canned/boxed stuff, spices, utensils, cooking dishes & what-not are out on the counter & easy to grab); [/li][li]get the kids started eating breakfast; [/li][li] shower and dress myself - wipe down the bathroom sink & toilet while in the bathroom (clorox wipes kept on the counter to make this quick and easy); [/li][li]send the kids to brush teeth & wash face - load & start the dishwasher, wipe sink and counters while they’re doing this; [/li][li]take out the trash on the way out of the door.[/li][/ul]
On Saturday mornings I throw on some music and do the deep cleaning. Then we spend the rest of Saturday running errands and doing something fun. On Sundays we vegetate as much as possible and I do their hair for the coming week.*
I find the thought of just having kids around you as being work, kind of baffling. There is some part of you that is always ‘on’ when kids are around, but I find that that part is more ‘on’ when they’re away than when they’re with me.
*African-american so there is a pretty significant time investment.