When Will I Get My Me Time?

Before I begin to vent, let me say that I love being a mother to this girl and a wife to this man.  And now, I commence.

I know all of this is normal for being a parent, first time or not, and it's a shame that it has to be this uphill battle for so long since having a family is such a blessing.  How is it that I (and I think many mothers) barely get any time to myself?  My husband still gets a decent amount, and he's not a lazy or uninvolved dad.  In fact, he's one of the most involved dad's I know by a long shot!  It's just the way things fall with our schedules.

He's often off during the week, so I'm at work and our daughter is at daycare; therefore, he gets entire days to himself.  He's not necessarily playing video games or wasting time; most of the time he's taking care of chores or running errands, but it is easier to do any of those things when you're on your own.  I'm off every other Friday/Saturday and every Sunday.  When I'm off, our daughter is also home so whether it's doing chores, paying bills, or running errands, everything is more complicated because of diaper changes and feeding and needing attention.

An example is today.  Husband went to work early to help out with a project, so from about 7 AM till about 9 PM, I have taken a 30 minute nap with our daughter; done two loads of laundry; baked lasagna not from a box; gone to the grocery; gone to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to get some things off our registry; laid out driftwood and cap and can pieces for sculptures that need to be made by August 1; put away most of our daughter's laundry; bathed our daughter; picked up a folding table from a friend for the market August 1; fed our daughter multiple times - feeding her a bottle with one hand right now and just fed her oatmeal a few minutes before (she holds her bottle sometimes, but not always); changed her diaper several times, two of which were poops; put a bag of baby items together to bring to a consignment shop sometime this week; cleaned up oatmeal from the dining area since our baby thinks it's fun to wear her food and also believes that everyone and everything else should, too.  I also washed dishes, nearly filled the dishwasher, and cleared some counter space off in the kitchen.  I still need to bathe myself, get my lunch ready for work tomorrow, and put some of my laundry away so I can actually sleep in our bed.

The upside to all this insanity is that I get to spend time with our baby girl - see and hear and make her laugh, watch her achieve her milestones, like holding her bottle, trying to sit up on her own, and waiving; hear all her shrills and shrieks and other sounds she likes to make; watch her interact with her toys; show her off when we run errands; tell her how much I love her; and kiss her and put her to bed every night.  Her daddy doesn't get to do all that nearly as often, especially putting her to bed at night.

This isn't newborn hard - nothing is as tough as that was! - but this isn't easy.  I've even toyed with the idea of working part time just so we could eat dinner at a semi-normal time instead of 9 PM or later many nights, and to have more time to work with our daughter's physical achievements like tummy time, working toward crawling, and introducing more solid foods.  When she's at daycare, I could run errands, finish the several art projects I have laying around, actually finish reading a book, make phone calls that I usually have to make on my lunch breaks.

See, my lunch break isn't mine either.  At the beginning, I'd go visit her at daycare because I missed her.  I still miss her, but she's getting to the point that she knows if I'm not there.  Then I had to go to give her her inhaler for a couple of weeks.  Now I have to get gas, call doctors and or insurance companies or make other business hour phone calls that I can't make when I get off work because everything of that nature closes at 4:30 or 5.

I've just put her to bed, which she and I are both very happy about, but my husband just walked in the door and again, any chance of "me time" is squashed.  Thankfully, he needed a shower so I can at least finish this post before starting to do things once again - serve dinner, talk about our day, be affectionate, and superficially ignore the fact that our love life isn't wonderful because we are tired or stressed.  It's no wonder I can't lose these last twenty pounds, am fighting a sinus infection, and feel just as unrested as any other day after a weekend.  By the way, we can't afford me to work part time so full time it is.  Ah, the life of a parent. Yet, I still can't close the door on the idea of possibly having another child one day. We'll see, though....right now, we're definitely good with just one!

Surrounded by Idiots: Raising a Child in Modern Society

Did you ever sit in a bar or coffee shop and get into passionate discussions with friends about politics or the state of the economy?  While I try to avoid confrontational conversations like that with people these days, I at least sat in on several of those types of discussions into my late twenties.  Especially as I got into my thirties, I began to think - mostly quietly, but along with everyone else - that raising a child in today's society was a scary idea.  So scary, in fact, that I was hesitant to have my own children because trying to protect them from so many things seemed impossible.

Well, now I have a daughter.  Her dad and I have a great relationship and we think she'll grow up to be a good citizen.  We recycle, we love animals, we're health conscious....heck, we're conscious!  Which, unfortunately, I can't say is true for a lot of people.  The following examples are things that I have dealt with first hand.  While it would be annoying to my pre-pregnant/parent self, it's maddening to me as a parent.

When I was nine months pregnant I went to Barnes and Noble one evening.  There were some teens hanging out in front, and as I was walking to the doors, two of them walked in in front of me.  The first one held the door for his friend, but the second one (his friend) did not hold the door when I was right behind him.  There are two sets of doors, so  the first time I blew it off and thought the guy didn't see me.  The second set of doors, however, the teen actually turned to me, took his hand off the door and said, "oh sorry....I wish", and looked back at me.  Had I not been nine months pregnant, I imagined that I would have grabbed him by the shirt collar and yanked him back before yelling at him about what a crappy kid he was, what would his parents think, etc.  In real non-pregnant/hormonal life, I'd have said something clever and snarky with the same sentiments as my pregnant/emotion/hormone filled self was thinking.

Another time when I was driving home from work and on my way to pick up our daughter, a car full of twenty somethings stopped in my lane until I got really close with my car, only to then floor it into a parking lot.  They all looked at me and laughed, as though causing an accident or even getting killed was hilarious.  Again, where did things go so wrong in their lives that they have no respect for themselves, their parents, each other, life?  How is a situation like that humorous?

It's been a while since I've seen this family, but every time the scenario is the same. There was a cute little boy in library with his parents.  He was having a good time playing with the activity center in the children's section, his mother was using a computer, and his father was in and out of the library to get things out of the car, or to smoke.  The entire time the mother is on the computer, the child keeps asking his dad to play with him, while the dad looks at his son with disdain and either tells his son to stay put or makes him come outside while he smokes.  At one point, the little boy comes running out of the children's section, cigarette lighter in hand and he trips, the lighter sliding across the floor (how I noticed what it actually was).  This poor child is being treated like he's not important or a burden.  His mother seemed to semi-humor him once she got off the computer, but she was still preoccupied with her thoughts.  My take is trashy parents raise trashy kids.  This little boy would likely grow up to be a good kid if his parents gave him attention, and presented themselves better.  Instead, he's playing with cigarette lighters, begging for attention, and will likely grow up to do something crazy for attention and possibly end up in jail or worse. 

Am I being judgy?  You bet!  Am I making assumptions?  Yes.  But I don't think they're too far off. I'm betting the Barnes and Noble teens are from a well-off family and they feel entitled; the awful driving twenty-somethings could be from anywhere, and it's obvious that the library family is not well off.  Point being, money has nothing to do with it.  Raising a child is one of the most, if not the most important thing you will do in your life (only second to like, finding a cure for cancer or Alzheimer's).  Have fun with it, but take it seriously.  It's kind of a big deal.  Setting good examples and breaking bad habits is hard, and we are far from perfect or experts.  It's just common sense and being aware.  And really the whole point of this post is not to tell anyone what to do or how to be, but that I don't want our daughter growing up in this nation of idiots that we seem to live in.  I want her to be in a society that is aware, conscious, and tries to do their best, even if it's tough.  And no, we're not hipsters, or hippies - just two educated, conscious, working parents who try to do our best no matter how tired or broke we might be.