Multitasking with little kids underfoot is an unfair, thankless, contact sport. It really just is.
Because no matter what I’m feeling, thinking, or wanting in this season of my life, there will always be at least three small people needing to eat (again?!), needing to be reminded to not stand on the table (looking at you, Blondie), and needing to physically be moved from location to location. All. Day. Long. Wiping the same portion of the same (shockingly not spotless) kitchen and ensuring that bodily fluids end up in (borderline) acceptable spots take a big chunk o’ time out of the day, too.
Throw in holidays- any you like- and some mashup of working from home (and working decidedly not from home), and it leaves me wondering at the end of each day: What the heck just happened?
Tomorrow will be better, I tell myself. Tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow will…at least not be this day, because I think we can all agree that this day was physically, mentally, and emotionally stupid. (WE DON’T SAY “STUPID,” remind two little voices.)
And I want tomorrow to be different. I don’t want to wake up one morning and wonder when Nora stopped saying words like “ghost-ez” to pluralize “ghosts” and “hadded” as the past tense of “have” and stopped discussing how the “pillow-grams” got here on their boats in time for Thanksgiving. Susannah will not always find it hilarious to pretend to fall asleep in the car so I’ll be forced to carry her inside, all the while feeling her smile against my cheek. (And yeah, sure, full disclosure: I don’t always find it hilarious in the moment, but that doesn’t mean I want it to end forever and ever, amen. Not just yet, anyhow.)
And what about Jasper? (Which will be the title of the apologetic book of essays I pen for him later in life.) Jasper’s whole lot in life these days is to be shuttled from crib to car to crib to playroom corner to car to crib to car to highchair to bath to crib. And he smiles at me throughout our day, too, and it just about breaks my soul. WHY ARE YOU SO CONTENT WITH THIS, I want to (kindly) ask him. THIS IS NOT FUN. ARE YOU REALLY HAVING FUN?!
So I overcompensate by scheduling specific times to lie on the floor with him and stare him down, as if to mentally acknowledge that we are here and together and this is our quality time, so if you’re gonna start walking, pal, this would be a stellar time to do it, I’ll grab the iPhone. (Which, I think we can also all agree is not the basis for the kind of event Hallmark cards are penned for.)
“We’re going to look at the moon because I’d like to write about it for you.”
But Jasper’s going to turn a year old really, really soon. Zu already doesn’t want help with zippers, buttons, or anything else, frankly. And Nora, come Fall, will be going to full-day Big Kid school. And so I stay up even later each night writing them notes and blogs and culling scraps of things together to someday paste into a book that’ll say: Here. You might not remember it someday, but this all happened and it was real and I tried so very hard to make the most of the fleeting time we were given in this stupid, pretty great world. (Even though we don’t say stupid.)
And then I’ll wake up and make toast (and pick up toast from the kitchen floor) and remind myself that this is the day I get to be better.
Starting now.
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