The Struggle is Real

Parenting solo for one day: A timeline

April 22, 2016

There are typically two of us on the weekend, but when my husband has a big work event, his evenings and weekends get slammed. The following is a timeline of one day of parenting alone. I don’t know how how single parents do this.

Respect.

  • 8:30 a.m. – Daddy leaves to go to work
  • 9:30 – We spend the morning with family, enjoying the great outdoors and watching people make maple syrup. Nate eats his body weight in maple sugar candy, but I’m not worried. What can go wrong?
  • 11:00 – We get home. Nate has pushed the car all the way home while shrieking like an ambulance. That first part is mostly untrue.
  • 12:00 p.m. – Nate wants lunch. I make the lunch. Nate does not recall ever asking for lunch and would never EVER eat anything I make and refuses to touch it. At least he doesn’t throw it.
  • 1:20 – I suggest we go to the park.
  • 1:22 – I smell something.
  • 1:40 – After changing the baby (aka Poomicus Colossus), we pack up and 30 minutes later are on our way.
  • 2:20 – At the park, some older kids start laughing at Nate when he tries to initiate a game of “Good Guys/Bad Guys”. It’s a struggle not to interfere
    a) because he doesn’t know they’re laughing at him and
    b) apparently it’s considered bad parenting to fight all of your child’s battles for him. Pfft.
  • 2:30 – I will not step on their necks, I will not crush them like bugs, I will let my son figure it out.
  • 2:32 – Consider writing my own parenting book called “Mess With My Son And I’ll Come At You Like A Cracked-Out Howler Monkey.” I would buy that book.
  • 2:35 – Good news: no tears, no fights and he found another kid to play with. Crisis averted.
  • 4:30 – Home again. Nate wants to do arts and crafts. I set the dining room table up with every conceivable craft accoutrement imaginable. He writes the numbers “1” and “0” over and over again on a piece of paper. I wonder briefly if he’s writing binary code for “my mom is phoning it in today. Send backup.”
  • 4:35 – Nate is done with arts and crafts. He spends the next 15 minutes helping me make toast. It should be noted that no one actually wants to eat toast. He just enjoys putting bread in the toaster and pressing the lever down.
  • 5:30 – Dinner. Nate eats a cream cheese bagel and I make macaroni with tuna for me and the baby. He eats none of the macaroni, but has a lot of fun decorating the floor. I get one lukewarm mouthful and eat the rest off his chin. Surprisingly, no one wants fruit.
  • 6:15 – Nate wants to watch cartoons on my phone, even though his favourite show is on TV. Ben’s running around with a bowl on his head and eating a FreshCo receipt. I take this opportunity to drink my last glass of wine. It was left uncorked and I detect notes of both fruit and stale vinegar. I give zero poops.
  • 6:16 – We’ve officially gone feral.
  • 7:00 – I go to the washroom by myself, lock the door and spend 10 blissful minutes alone.
  • 7:00 – None of that happened. I peed with the door wide open, the baby in the bathtub and Nathan on the stool, asking me why I don’t have a penis.
  • 7:45 – Bedtime. Nate sleeps in my bed and the baby wakes up 14 times before I give up and bring him into the bed with us, where he proceeds to nurse happily for the rest of the night. Everyone sleeps.
  • 8:30 – Daddy comes home, wakes me up and tells me how exhausted he is.