To all the working mums and dads out there…
I started this blog as a reflection on how full time working mums like myself try to juggle household and their dreams. But it quickly turned to this…I believe many will relate. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
The clock hits 5… I take a deep breath and start taking notes … things I need to work first thing tomorrow… like 10 things?… first thing in the morning?… Is that humanly possible? I still end up putting 5 sticky notes with multiple tasks and sub-tasks on my monitors (I do have online tools to help me keep track of things, but I still end up using good, old sticky notes). Let’s see which task wins the race tomorrow morning.
“Ok, let’s close this and this…”, I repeat ‘this’ to about 10 different tabs thinking I have done referencing them and will not need them. However, I have a feeling deep down that I will regret this tomorrow… but thank God for Chrome history.
One more day down… ‘Ready for the next shift?’, I ask myself… do I have a choice? Actually not, because it was our (me and my lovey-dovey hubby’s) mutual decision to have kids… to have not one but two.
Twenty minutes pass and I have picked the kids from after school care and daycare. Now we drive three-quarters of an hour back home.
Traffic is bumper to bumper as per usual… wonders of living close to the city. The zillionth time my toddler asks, “Are we home yet”. To which my tween replies with agitation, ‘Can’t you see, there is so much traffic on the road and we are still a long way away from home… mummy just told you a sec ago.’… what to say… we try our best to make the most of these drives, but it doesn’t happen too often.
Finally, I pull the car in the driveway… pull the hand brake and let out a sigh.
What’s that smell?
No, I don’t own a dog or a cat, not even a goldfish…
Whenever my kids plead for a pet, I have a simple yet effective answer,
“We can have a pet but one of you would have to move out”.
I get silence and a worried look every time… kids look at each other as if asking the other sibling to move out. Because they don’t have an answer for this, they move on to the next thing.
Anyways, where was I… yes…smell…
With a hundred million things in my hand and two tired, fighting kids behind me, I open the door to the house.
House… a house that should feel welcoming, cozy and warm. Should smell like walking to a freshly baked pizza or smell like a bowl of warm tomato soup on a cold winter night.
Instead, I am welcomed with the odour that is not all that unfamiliar… a stench of leftover cereal on the kitchen counter left behind this morning by one of my offsprings… and I don’t know which one… and there is no point of asking them… because they don’t remember either.
As I take the next few steps and before I could swiftly run the whole to-do list in my head, I stumble on a pair of sneakers that my toddler left in the doorway when he changed his mind last minute this morning before leaving for daycare.
Hardly keeping my balance… juggling backpacks, files, laptop and a hundred million other things that I have no idea how they end up in the car, I finally find a spot to put them down. Not forgetting simultaneously giving instructions… instructions that I happen to repeat every evening, “please make sure your bags, shoes and hats all go where they belong…”
If I am lucky, I will have one less thing to frantically look for tomorrow morning.
What’s For Dinner
‘Fire up the oven’, says my brain and that is what I do before a quick wardrobe change.
A quick call to the guy I am married to for last 11 years… I live and sleep with him… my hubby dear… I give him a quick update on the kids… and also to listen to how his day went.
36 seconds into the conversation and this man standing behind me start to shout and demand. I have been living with this man for almost 5 years now. He is as handsome as they come. Most nights he sleeps in my bed and my husband has no problem with that. I call him with love ‘Jani’, which means ‘my life’ and he calls me ‘mummy’.
“What’s for dinner, mommy?”, demanded my little man. He doesn’t care about the food, all he needed was my attention and nothing else. With a giggle and a shout, he gives my leg a squeezy hug and runs off.
I dish out some proteins and carbs for the kids, and of course some vitamins… the least fav for my toddler at the moment. I am glad my tween is all up for healthy eating.
With my brilliant persuasive skills (a mix of some bribing, distraction, threatening to give away PS4 etc… don’t judge me), I manage to get my toddler to eat at least a quarter of what’s on the plate.
Bath Time
Extremely exhausting but fun… oh, the stories I hear … some made-up… and some odd scenarios that start with a laugh and a ‘What if, mommy?’ … there are some, well a lot of pooping and farting stories… I am guessing all toddlers are like that… or maybe I have a broken toddler.
I end up with a wet bathroom every night but who cares… I certainly have stopped caring for years now… it dries the next day, of course, to get wet again.
Blow-drying, detangling spray… argan oil… comb… blow-dry… tears… screams… my darling tween has got long thick black hair and I love them more than she does but every night after a shower I feel like chopping them off. We end up with a peace treaty… I will be gentle to comb out tangles next time and she will try to brush before tieing her hair every morning. Fast forward to tomorrow night after shower… we both don’t keep our respective end of the bargain.
I am on the phone again with dear hubby, trying to pick our conversation from where we left and have been on the phone now for the last half an hour while trying to put things in place, in hopes of having a bit of a less chaotic morning.
‘Daddy is home, mommy!’, shout the kids as if I was not on the phone with him all the time. We were talking as he stepped out of the car and walked to the door.
Daddy tries to accommodate all stories and demands after an exhausting day. Of course, saying yes to all demands.
It’s Bedtime
It is hugs and kisses, bedtime for monkeys, quiet dinner for mommy and daddy… or is it?
We place our dinner plates and sit in front of the TV to multitask. While we are still debating between watching travel/ food videos on Youtube or Netflix a movie, our tween walks in, ‘Mommy, I can’t sleep, for some reason, my brain is keeping me awake… Can we get Roblox, all (means 2) of my classmates have it on their computers at home… can I tell you how it works on your computer?’.
Follows my toddler. Coming out of bed for the 8th or maybe the 10th time… I don’t remember… I lost count, ‘I am hungry mommy, can I eat what daddy is eating’. And without a warning, he grabs a piece of cucumber and starts chomping, ‘yummy…’
Yummy? Yummy? for heaven’s sake, this is the same cucumber I was trying to feed you 2 hours earlier to which you refused to eat saying these are made of parrot poo. Urgh!
Well, as long as they are trying to eat their vegetables I should not have a problem… what hour of the day does not matter?
It was not a debate anymore… we all ended up snuggling on the same sofa watching Baby Boss- Back In Business (it is a series on Netflix) till mommy and daddy finished what was left on their dishes. Then it was bedtime for serious… or was it?
I am a wife and a mother of two. I have a full-time day job and I am also a blogger. Hope you enjoyed this piece as much as I enjoyed writing it. Leave a comment if this resonates with you, would love to hear about your pre-COVID19 routine and if you miss it or not.
I also write on other topics that you might be interested in.
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Previously published on medium
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Photo credit: Photo by Edward Cisneros on Unsplash
