My current routine is to wake up at 7:10 am, every single day of the week, regardless of if I have to work or not, with the objective of having the kids’ breakfast ready to serve by the time I get them at anywhere from 7:30–7:45. Preferably with me waking them, because if they wake up on their own, it usually means something is wrong, and by something is wrong I mean that one of them has probably shit themselves.
Believe me, there have been mornings where it has been both, and those are wonderful times.
However the thing is, every single morning is kind of a race against a clock that I can’t see and know how much time is left until zero, where, usually #2, wakes up on their own. Which is never peaceful, or cute babbling on the baby monitor, resulting me in wistfully looking at my youngest with love and admiration. No, it’s always with crying, and mornings like today, instantly going all the way to 100 on the rage scale within seconds of waking up.
I try not to compare my kids, but it’s unmistakable that on #2’s character sheet, emotional sensitivity is at a 100 out of 99 and that she is without any question, a massive crybaby. Everything is worth going nuclear over, everything results in screaming, snot and tears, and the only things that can quell them is if one of her parents drops everything they’re doing and probably need to be doing, and picking her up for some snuggle therapy.
Usually at this time, #1 either gets jealous and starts blowing up herself, or she’s capitalizing on my inability to do anything else and runs off and gets into some mischief that I’m put into a Sophie’s choice of stopping my eldest from some form of damage versus allowing the crying machine to explode again, with ten times out of ten usually resulting in putting #2 down to where she blows back up again to stop #1 from hurting herself or hurting something important.
By the time I get the two of them in their high chairs with food placed in front of them, I’m already burned out because my daily allotment of patience has been reduced to a stump over 30~ straight months of waking up to deal with the first shift of parenting, and I’m typically on the verge of a breakdown and chanting to myself that I don’t have enough help and I don’t know what can be done about it and that for just one fucking day, want to not have to do, this.
Sure, Vegas gave me two mornings in which I didn’t have to, but there’s still something to be said about how I was still in a hotel and needing to walk eggshells so I don’t wake up mythical wife who wakes up at a pin drop, and it would be really nice to just sleep in, in my own bed for once, and not have to worry about the kids for just a single morning.
I don’t know if I’m an asshole for admitting it, or I’m just more open about my feelings, but sometimes, I’m just so over being a parent. As the internet has proven time and time again, I know that I’m probably hardly the only dad who does what I do for as long as I’ve done it, but factor in the pandemic, and added circumstances like having no friends or family nearby who can give some relief, and I have to imagine my pool might be noticeably more shallow than others. Or at least, I don’t know a single other person who is in similar circumstances I am in, save for one person who thankfully is one of my closest friends, that we exchange exasperated text messages on the regular, mostly about how everyone who has the audacity to complain about the difficulty of one kid doesn’t know shit and that we could raise a single kid in our sleep now. That I want to laugh and hang up on any parent who thinks one kid is hard. Et cetera, et cetera.
Frankly, I’d love to see someone try and live my life for a week. Wake up early every single day, after staying up late the night prior because there’s no other time in the day for personal time, so you cut into your sleep hours just to feel human. Deal with the onslaught of both my kids, crying, screaming and hungry, sometimes soiled and try to not feel like you’re failing, alienating or not giving enough attention to one of them at any given moment.
Usually, one of them is sick because my kids have literally been sick every single month this year, and right now it’s mystery fevers that are hitting them that might be teething, might be strep, but who the fuck knows because it’s not like I can drop and go to urgent care without needing to tow both, and opening up that colossal can of aggravating bullshit. And if one of them is sick, it’s inevitable that 2-3 days later, the other will get sick, because that’s how kids work, as they have to be exposed, endure and survive every sickness in order for their biology to build up the necessary immune systems.
Frankly, it could be my sitter, who was off Monday and Tuesday this week because she was out of town for a week and got sick, but swore that she was on antibiotics and has been testing negative on coronavirus, and because I’m already so drowned and in need of help, I still ask her to come in despite the fact that she’s still hacking and sniffling herself, and there’s the remote possibility that she’s gotten my kids sick, and I basically allowed it, so that I could get my head back above water for a breath or two.
Right here, I was about to write about how there is zero merit to being as hearty and physically resilient to illness as I am, because in spite of everything, I do avoid most colds, flus and other sicknesses, but as of tonight, I’ve been feeling a little chilly, a little achy, although that could very well be from my first workout in two weeks, and my temperature was slightly above.
Considering I got up at the crack of dawn and did my usual routine after getting throttled by both the Moderna #2 and the Pfizer booster, me maybe having any sort of ailment changes nothing about what is to come the following day.
Needless to say, way way way way more often than not, every morning fucking sucks. In fact, the rhythm of most days these days is usually a bell curve of suck, where I usually eat a big shit sandwich for breakfast, and when the nanny arrives or mythical wife wakes up and comes down, things improve as the ratio of kids to adults equalizes, or I have to go into the office, where I know I’ll get shit done and quell that anxiety that I’m not pulling my weight at my job, and let someone else deal with the kids.
While I have help or am forced to be in the office, my head usually normalizes and I can calm my emotions and actually feel like a normal adult for a few hours. By the time I get home, I’m looking forward to seeing my kids again, and it’s always the delight of the day to see my kids excited to see me come home. But then the sitter leaves, and I’m back on double duty, while shirking my work obligations until mythical wife comes home. So on top of the anxiety that I’m being inadequate to one of my kids, add hoping that nothing important happens at work, because I probably won’t get to it during business hours, and hope that my boss who knows my situation, continues to grant me leniency, but for how much longer. This is where the bell curve goes right back up or down, depending on your interpretation.
I realize that this post is one colossal bitch-fest about how I’m burned out on parenting and that pretty much the vast majority of the posts with the “dad” tag on them are these types of posts. I don’t ever feel good about putting all this in writing, but at the same time, I feel like I would explode and set the world on fire if I didn’t get it out and acknowledge the frustration that I feel. If anything at all, it’ll be something for me to fascinate myself over in the future when I read this post when it shows up on the On This Day plug-in, because I really am narcissistic enough to want to go back and read most of the shit I’ve written in the past, no matter how good or bad it might’ve been. I like to tell myself that it’s some form of taking accountability for the things I’ve said or felt.
Either way, not much has changed about me wondering if there’s ever going to be light visible at the end of this tunnel. Eventually, the help we want will become available, and hopefully be everything we dreamed it would be, or eventually, my kids have to age out of all this morning bullshit behavior. The question is will I have jumped off a cliff by then or not if that’s the only solution there is? Of course not. But damn does it feel like a logical solution sometimes when the shit is in the fan and being flung all over the place.
