Playing Hookey House

Oh.

My.
 
God.

You all with the parenting partners--the live-in kind, I mean--have been holding out. Having another live person in-house to share in the childcare gig is, um, REALLY FUCKING GREAT. I have not updated for a while not because anything was wrong, but because I was having such an easy, breezy time of it with my friend Nik here for the last week.

Disclaimers:

1. None of this is meant to be any kind of poor reflection on D's role as my partner. It is just the reality of the situation where the kids need a lot of physical care at this age and D has a lot of health problems right now. I think that when the kids no longer need so much physically from me in the next few years, I will not have so much of this "single mom" feeling.
2. Despite the topic of this post, my visit with Nik consisted of other things besides my slave-driving enjoying having his help with the kids. We actually did--gasp!--grown-up things as well! And had grown-up conversations! But for this post, I'm going to talk about how I turned over all manner of responsibility to him for a week and enjoyed being a lazy couch potato mom.
3. I'm going to cover up my ears and "la la la la la" when you comment about how I am forgetting that in real life, partners have to work and wouldn't really wait on me hand and foot and have spats about the laundry and whose turn it is to give the kids their baths and who forgot to bring home the milk from the store and who spends too much time on their hobby or whatever. You hear me, commenters? La la la la la la la.

But here is the thing. In my decision to become a mom, I knew I could do it and be good at it. What I severely underestimated, though, was how much exhaustion and the constant day-to-day 24 hour-ness of it would compromise my parenting skills. And how much work and discipline it would take to control and manage that so that I wouldn't go insane. It isn't so much about having a husband or a father, it is about having a second pair of hands, eyes, ears, feet, voice, physical presence in the vicinity. How nice it is to decompress with someone in the quiet of the evening and just talk about the day without the kids. (D and I do this often, but can't every night. Especially lately when he has needed additional night attendant care.)

I mean, get this: On, I think it was last Monday morning, I got to sleep AS LONG AS I WANTED TO, knowing full-well that the kids would be up, dressed, had breakfast and be entertained and safe while I slept. I have not had one. single. day. in the past three and a half years where I didn't have to get the kids up. This was literally the first time someone took the kids in the morning for me since they were born. And I realized how much easier and less stressful it is when you don't have to do EVERY bathroom trip, change EVERY diaper, mediate EVERY sibling dispute, and watch EVERY move they make all day, every day. It isn't as if I haven't had babysitters or occasionally D or my father look after them while I am in the vicinity, but for 8 days straight? By Friday or Saturday, I felt about 30 pounds lighter just from the stress that had been released from my brain. And the freedom to just run up to the store unencumbered by children. How many more little errands you can do without them. To just have them able to seek attention from someone else besides me all the time. I was such a lazy, slovenly mom all week. It was great.

What concerns me about this little experiment is this: Say I had help all the time. I wouldn't be as lazy of course, and my 'help' wouldn't be able to be as accommodating because of course they would be living here and having their own life, too. But I could see the potential systems that could be set up. The divvying of the work, the things that you could rely on. The backup you would have. The improvement potential. The better mom I could be. How much am I cheating my kids by compromising my own skills, energy and sanity levels with this exhaustion? I made this decision, I don't regret it. I will work it out. But what is my responsibility here? How hard should I try to get support so that I can be a better parent to my kids?

I'm not going to go out and get married or anything. Nik and I are not in a position to get married and besides, 3/4ths of other people's husbands sound like they don't pull their own weight anyway and then it becomes a management issue where you are parenting the husband as well. D will be able to step in to the role more and more as the years go on. So this is mostly a semi-permanent problem. Or a semi-temporary problem, as it were.

Or is it a problem? Tons of single women do this, many while working more hours than I do. Maybe I'm not working hard enough. Maybe I just need to suck it up and demand more from myself.  No, the baths won't get skipped when I'm too tired. The toys will get put away each night. The homeschool projects will get done each day. I will not yell at my kids when exhausted. Ever.

Sigh.

Just the mere thought of that level of expectation for myself makes me want to run into a wall repeatedly. No, there must be a better way to be a single mom of two preschoolers. Hire more help? Ask for more help from volunteers? Manage my stress better? My schedule better? Work less hours and live more cheaply? Work more hours and end up with a salary that goes to daycare, yet gives me a kid break?

It is the age-old question. What level of good parenting is good enough? I think--I KNOW--I do a pretty good job. But when smacked in the face with how much better I could do if the work were shared, it makes me wonder if pretty good is good enough. But there are no live-in partners; no stay-overs at daddy's house in the immediate future at least. So, I guess I just continue to put one foot in front of the other, try to control my stress level and energy level to some decent degree, and just be "good enough."

But I had a very nice week.

Comments

[Angela]

Glad you had a good week.
You know even though my husband may act like a second child sometimes I still have that extra support. Go ahead and be happy about that help.
Glad you got time to yourself to just do nothing if you wanted.

[Cat]

As you know, I think you are doing an excellent job raising your boys and you should not doubt how good a parent you are for one minute. But I am soooo glad you got the chance to relax a bit.

[Courtney]

I'm glad you had a good week. I was thinking about checking up on you, as you hadn't posted in a while, but then I remembered I mostly lurk on your blog and you don't know me.

Administrative note: the font on this post is too small (and the characters spaced too closely together). In other words, it's really difficult to read. Could you make it slightly bigger? Am I the only one who doesn't really like the new Typepad?

[marisa]

remember that you also have chronic (kidney) illness and limited sensory access to your kids unless you are nearby enough to hear, see, touch them. that adds up to more fatigue than your average single mom has to deal with.

also, anyone who wants to increase the font size (or even the font) can do so on their own computer by changing the settings on their browser. the easiest way is to go to "view" and then "increase text size". this may be called something a little different in whatever browser you're using, but for example, on my mac, using firefox, alli have to do is press apple and the plus key. (apple and the minus key will decrease font size.) it's been a while since i had a PC, but i believe it was control-plus and control-minus.

more info: http://www.w3.org/WAI/changedesign

[snickollet]

Great post. You brought up a lot of the things I struggle with being a single mom to my kiddos. I work outside the home and actually love the kid break, but financially, it's a wash and I sometimes feel guilty about not spending more time with M&R.

If you figure out how to not lose your temper when you're tired, please tell me, because it's a real problem for me, too.

So glad you had some help and got to sleep in and do all of those delicious little things that make the tough stuff in life easier to handle.

[Sheri Bheri]

Yuh-HUH! Woman! I think that you have seriously underestimated how hard you've been working since the boys were born. Never mind anything else, you have TWIN(!) BOYS(!). Have you read other twin Mom blogs? They're exhausted too! And they don't have HALF the issues you have.

So yeah, you might have to give something up. Can you afford a cleaning service? That has TOTALLY saved MY marriage. Can you close the door to the playroom instead of picking up the toys? (Jeez LOUISE! I only have one, calm little girl and I don't pick up the toys every day.)

Other than that, I can only say that this is a short season in your life. They will be old enough (soon enough) to go to the bathroom by themselves, and to get themselves up to watch cartoons and make their own (easy) breakfast, while you sleep in. The funny thing is, you will MISS this time with them, when they were wee, and *needed* you so much.

This too shall pass.

[Elizabeth]

not to in any way make you seem bad... but, well... you are GREAT. and are going to burn yourself out.

my mom did what you are doing... until i was 4, and my sister was 1, and she COULDN'T. then she had my other sister when i was six. then i spent my 8-9 year in the hospital. then my step-dad went into hear failure. and she went crazy.

literally.

baths, yes. toys? not always. breathe. you are awesome and wonderful and those boys know they have a great mother. its okay to not do everything perfectly.

i really have no clue if this will be a help or not. but i AM really glad you got a break :)

[shannon]

Two thoughts:

What do your kids have that other kids DON'T have because of how you are doing this. Your way is less championed in the media, so its benefits are less obvious, but your kids do have some benefits from your life that kids with two parents don't. (And I'd say 90%, not 3/4 of husbands don't pull their weight. There are pretty clear and consistent data about this.)

But

Is there any way you could start looking for a Kate and Allie type of arrangement? What about another mom in a similar boat as you--maybe one who works a 9-5 job 5 days a week and needs childcare? You could live together, be her childcare during the day, but she'd be your "partner" other times? I don't know where you'd start to look, but I could brainstorm with you, maybe.

[Elizabeth]

shannon, above, is totally on to something. if you lived in ohio, i would even volunteer to help you fibd someone... and i bet i could :)

such a great idea!

[fridawrites]

It will get easier as the kids get older, it really will. I promise. I had the kids to myself last summer because of travel/work, and except for the sibling spats, it wasn't as difficult as the preschool years were *with* help.

You are a great mom, and it shows. What we've had to do with my hopefully temporarily increased level of disabilty is accept help. When people tell us, "Let us know if we can do anything," especially when they say it a few times, I add them to my list of people who are willing to help. And now we're calling on them, alternating among them, for various needs since my husband's really getting overtaxed. Giving someone something short to do, such as help with an errand or driving or cooking, every few weeks or once a month isn't too much for them but a huge, huge relief for us! And I've found that the people I've called on really are glad to help and have thanked me for asking. They really don't know what needs to be done until we're specific.