I often hear parents talking about how they feel like they are always on a treadmill. I never knew what they meant. Until now. I have to say that the analogy is not quite correct: to me, it feels more like I'm on a treadmill while simultaneously trying to juggle two balls and a dagger.
I'm tired!
Here is a glance into a typical day in the Jane household:
6:30am: I get up, get dressed and ready, and check to make sure that there are no messages from daycare. If I'm lucky, I may get to grab a glass of juice.
7:00am: Wake up Baby Jane. Nurse and dress her.
7:30am: Wake up Mr. Jane. (Yeah, yeah, I know, but he wouldn't get up otherwise.)
7:45am: I finish getting ready and grab breakfast while Mr. Jane feeds Baby Jane her breakfast.
8:15-8:25am: Clean up Baby Jane, buckle her into her car seat, and off to daycare.
8:45am: Daycare dropoff.
8:45am-5:45pm (on a good day): Drive to campus, teach, pump, sterilize pump parts, meet with students, squeeze in some research work, prep classes, pump, squeeze in lunch hopefully, deal with normal workday stuff, drive home. Try to squeeze in as much productive work as possible.
5:45pm: One of us feeds Baby Jane while the other preps dinner. Then one of us eats dinner while the other one entertains Baby Jane, who is most likely crawling to somewhere she shouldn't be or trying to grab food off of our plates.
6:30pm: Playtime, pack daycare bag, bath.
7:20pm: Get Baby Jane into pajamas, nurse, story, bedtime.
8:00pm: Workout, shower (hopefully)
9:15pm: Back to the computer for more research/class prep/doing whatever didn't get done during the day. And blogging (hopefully).
11:00pm: Pump
midnight: Bedtime, hopefully.
6:30am: Get up and do it all over again.
On a good day, it all works out ok, aside from the relative lack of downtime. On a bad day like today, when Mr. Jane was sick and I had all of the before and after daycare, after staying up way too late to watch tennis? Yeah, it pretty much sucks.
Oh, and I have no idea at all how I'd do this if I didn't have a spouse that was putting in equal time in terms of childcare on a daily basis. (yay for Mr. Jane!)
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5 comments:
Yay for both of you....
I'm returning to work on Tuesday, and my day will be very similar (though I'll have to leave by about 7:25... Boo.)
One thing that we did when Bug was little was eat dinner late--Euro style!-- after he went to bed. That way, we could have a few child-free minutes together, too. Eventually, we all started eating together, but when he needed to eat early, and could only sit still for 5 minutes, we found it to be less stressful to just wait.
Of course, now that we're a family of 4, we're winging it every night!
I'm totally impressed that "work out" is in there. Props to you for also taking care of your own health. I usually throw that out the window first, but it's not good. What type of work out do you do? Do you do it at home?
aayor, good luck returning to work!! We thought about the "Euro-dinner" thing (which actually matches our pre-baby dinner schedule pretty well), but really the only time I have to work out is that 8-9pm time slot. We do sometimes eat a later dinner on the weekends---we call it our "date night at home" night.
flicka mawa, for me working out is a sanity thing---if I skip a few days I get all discombobulated and I can't function, mentally. I do work out at home---we have some free weights and a stationary bike in a room in our house, plus I DVR some things off of FitTV and work out to those. (Right now Gilad and Sharon Mann are in my FitTV rotation, but I may mix it up soon and try another show or two.) I also try to get out for a run once a week---I'm hoping to run a 5K in the spring.
Yay for Mr. Jane, indeed! And good job Mrs. Jane for working out!
thanks, sciencemama!
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