My wife and I recently switched roles. For the majority of our marriage I have been out in the corporate world winning the “bread” so to speak, while she stayed at home raising our 3 children. I never really understood what it meant to be a “stay at home mom” until late.
Wow, what a thankless job. I get up around 6:30 am when she leaves and get our oldest out of bed (takes about 10 minutes of constant nagging). I usually spend the next half an hour making sure he is actually getting ready. Sometimes I will poke my head in his room to find him staring at the wall not doing anything. I then encourage him with a fairly loud “Are you freaking kidding me? You have been up for a half an hour and your not even dressed yet.” He then gives me his list of excuses as to why he isn’t ready yet. We spend the next few minutes bantering back and forth. I tell him the same thing I tell him every morning at this time and he gives me the same excuses he always gives me. Around 7:15 he has finally got himself dressed and I kindly say “Don’t forget to feed the dogs dough head, like you did yesterday.” He replies with, “I was on my way to do that.” I remind him to give them water as well. It is now 7:30 and time to wake our middle child. This is always a joy as she is most definitely not a morning person. She takes twice as long as her brother to get going. I spend the next half hour making sure she gets in the shower. Somewhere in that last 3o minutes I tell the oldest one to get off the computer and go to school. Once the middle child is actually in the shower and not in the bathroom looking at the running water, our youngest child who has been up since 6:00 am is now hungry. The two of us ensue an unusually adult debate regarding proper foods for breakfast. If she had it her way it would be a Bologna sandwich with some left over Halloween candy. Nevertheless after much debate I win and cold cereal or oatmeal is prepared. It is now 8:15 and time to go back upstairs and tell the middle child to “Get the he** out of the shower. You have been in there for thirty minutes.” Incidentally this is the same thing I tell her every morning. She finally gets out dries herself off, brushes her hair and asks, “Daddy, where are my clothes?” To which I reply, “The same place they are every morning sunshine.” Now I return downstairs to the youngest one who has been hollering at me for the past 10 minutes to get her more to eat. I tell her she has had enough, to which she gets pissed off and storms downstairs to finish watching the Doodlebops. It is now 8:30 and I head back upstairs to make sure the middle child is indeed dressed. Most of the time I find her looking for other clothes because she doesn’t like what I have picked out for her. She proceeds to tell me these pants make her look fat. Ya she is 7. How in the heck did she come up with that? She is finally dressed and now has 3 minutes to slam some breakfast down her throat before we have to leave for school. It is now 8:45 and I will begin to hound the middle child to get her back pack and lunch (I made somewhere in the middle of all the chaos). It is now 9:00 am and the youngest one and I are on our way home after dropping off the middle child at school. Upon returning home I do the dishes from the previous night. I then gather all the dirty clothes from the day before and begin the endless laundry quest. I usually spend at least an hour picking up miscellaneous things that never got returned to their proper place (shoes, pencils, candy wrappers, toys, dishes, garbage). It is now 11:00 am and I have given in to the youngest child’s endless nagging about being hungry, even though lunch is an hour away. We begin to discuss possible solutions to the hunger epidemic (I think she is growing). After a bit of a discussion she usually ends up with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If I am really feeling saucy I will consent to the request for Mac and Cheese. After preparing her lunch I head downstairs to the TV room to pick up the messes she has made throughout the course of the morning. She is still eating her lunch, I think to myself for a brief minute “maybe I’ll sit down and catch some Oprah”, but as the youngest child sees me getting closer to the television she hollers “don’t change it daddy, I’m watching that”. So back to the laundry dungeon I go to switch the loads. The youngest is finished with her lunch and I spend the next half hour folding laundry. It is now 12:30 and I have truly “done more before noon than most of the world” at least it feels that way. I head back to the kitchen to clean up the youngest child’s lunch mess (jelly on the floor, spilled milk etc.). It’s roughly 1:00 p.m. and my wife calls from work after her lunch break to tell me that the boss took her to some fabulous chinese restaurant, to which I say in my mind “must be nice”. The irony is that I used to do the same thing to her every week when I was working. Oh did I mention we only have one car. Couldn’t get out if I wanted to. I was thinking about joining a stay at home mom club but thought it mind sound a little creepy if I asked to carpool with someone. It’s 1:30 p.m. and the laundry needs to be changed again. How can there be so much freaking laundry? It’s as if we are wearing more than one set of clothes per day. So, folding, and more folding ensue. It’s about 2:00 p.m. and the little one is crying for a snack. We have a snack together and I finally consent to the ongoing “can I ride my bike now?”. We head outside to ride the bike for a while. I cried last week as she rode up and down the street for the first time without training wheels. They grow up so fast. It’s 2:45 p.m. and the oldest his home from school. We chat for a few minutes before he heads up to the middle one’s school to pick her up. It’s time to put the bike up and come in. You would have thought I cut off her legs. She is really upset with me. We go inside and I hold her for a minute and tell her how much I love her and how proud I am of her riding her bike. Seems that after a little love from “daddy” things are all better. I love that. It’s 3:45 p.m. and all the kids are home now. I fix them all a snack and within about 5 minutes the teasing, bickering, and arguing begins. Oh joy! The oldest has chores to do. At this time everyday I question whether giving him chores is the right thing to do. I spend more time baby sitting him doing the chores than getting anything done myself. Not to mention I usually have to go back and redo what he does. Oh the life of a 12 year old. I wonder if anyone is even home. I mean the lights are on but the blank stare I usually gets indicates nobody is really home. Now, the middle one is my big helper. She loves to clean and help. God bless her. She eagerly asks what she can do to help. She is off to clean the bathroom. The youngest one hates to help pick up. A constant battle of wills. She begrudgingly begins to lend a hand. It is now almost 5:00 p.m. and time to start dinner. Dinner? Crap! I forgot about dinner. What am I going to make? ”Thank God for frozen food” is all I have to say. Microwave becomes my life saver.
So to all the working dads out there, this is a thankless job. Love your stay at home wives. Support them. Encourage them. They need it. I never realized how demanding staying at home running the house really was. I have seen the light. To all the stay at home moms around the world you have my empathetic respect.
