Today is your day! (Via "if you give a mouse a cookie")
/Alternate title: If you give a mom a "To Do" list. ;)
You wake up in the morning feeling fresh and motivated. Today you think. Today is my day. You start off your morning by making a perfect little list of “To do’s”. Things you will absolutely accomplish that day. Nothing will stop you.
You finish your breakfast quickly because making your list put you a little behind and now the baby is crying because she’s hungry. You sit down to nurse and use that time to peruse Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. You check your mail because even though it’s all usually junk, you think maybe there will be something interesting there. There isn't. You follow a tangent on Pinterest though, about how to organize office supplies and feel inspired to dive into that list you made.
Finally the baby is done eating, so you get the older kids settled with a few school projects and figure you have time while they are working to do a load of dishes. Then, before you even turn the water on, the toddler “need a go potty!” so you follow her to her little toilet where she sits and stands up over and over again for the better part of half an hour, never actually going. Then, you get a few dishes done while she’s distracted by Peppa Pig and feel again like today is the day.
Until the toddler pees on the carpet. It’s fine, you needed to do a load of towels anyway, and thank heaven for Oxyclean! Two hours later you’ve managed to do one load of dishes and the washer is running. The kids never really finished the work you gave them because you were too busy cleaning human fluids to ask them 70 million times how it was coming along, and they forgot (somehow???) that they were supposed to be doing anything at all, and decided to get monopoly out of the game cupboard instead. Every mothers dream -the game with a stupid amount of pieces to lose! They don’t even play it, they just get all of it out and leave it on the floor for the toddler to find. It’s officially your favorite part of the day so far.
Now it’s lunch time and also the baby is hungry again, because it’s her lunch time too. You throw enough frozen chicken globs for all of you (including yourself) on a tray, toss them into the oven and hope the time it takes them to cook will even out nicely with the time it takes you to nurse. It’s 1:15 now and you’ve pretty much missed the window where putting the toddler down for a nap won’t interfere with sacred bed time. You turn on another show for her, and give her a hot dog instead of chicken globs, because she’s starting to get hangry. And so are you. Baby is fed. Toddler is fed. Older three are eating at last, and you find a minute to stuff about 6 dinosaur shaped meat pieces into your mouth before the toddler “need a go potty” again. This time she goes! She gets a treat, and so do you. It’s only taken half the day, but you’ve also managed to nag the kids into finishing the worksheet you gave them 7 hours before, so you’re starting to feel like the day wasn't a total loss.
It’s 3:30 and the baby fell asleep. It’s time to get some of that stuff on your to do list done. You go to the filing cabinet to dejunk that bad boy and just when you’ve pulled every. single. thing. out of it, the baby decides she’s still hungry. Or hungry again. Either way she wants you. It’s 3:45 so that solid 15 minutes of list you got done is starting to give you an inferiority complex. A complex that reminds you you’re a failure, and maybe you shouldn’t have bothered with a list. What were you thinking?
While you feed the baby, the toddler decides she wants a snack and scales the pantry shelves. Of course she falls, bumps her head and you're officially a bad mom. The husband walks in just after this happens, and though he knows better than to say something, he scans the disaster he’s entered with just as much hopelessness and defeat as you feel inside, and you know somewhere deep down, he’s judging you a little. And you’re judging him for judging you and a small little seed of bitterness begins to take root. He kisses you and asks how your day was. You rip the seed of resentment out because you decide he’s not so bad. Next you stare at each other for a full half an hour following the dreaded evening question of “what should we have for dinner?”. You play out the scene from jungle book (the one with the vultures) and then decide it’s worth it to order pizza again just so you don’t have to sit there trying to figure dinner out for another hour, cuz that’s usually how long it takes to come to a conclusion. You scarf down dinner while nursing the baby again because...…she’s always on the boob, and if you don’t eat now, you probably never will.
At last you kiss the toddler goodnight, clean up the chocolate milk she spilled all over the kitchen floor, and then read one more chapter of that book you’re bribing your older kids into listening to. They go to bed. The baby is hungry. Again. You feed her. You eat a snack, because even though you vaguely remember eating breakfast lunch and dinner, you feel like you haven't eaten anything. Baby finally falls asleep. You fall asleep. Then you wake up and realize you're drooling on the living room couch. You crawl deliriously to your bed, climb in, glance one last time -defeated- at your "To Do" list, and swear tomorrow, tomorrow is the day!
