a day in the life
5:30am – Axl wakes up from a bad dream. He mostly sleeps with me since Pete died. I shoot awake from a dead sleep and soothe him back to bed. I notice that it’s light out, check the time, and wonder if I should just get up since my alarm will go off in a half-hour. But I stayed up until midnight trying to get caught up on some work things, and 5.5 hours is just not enough sleep for me, so I go back to bed. Always the wrong decision.
6:45am – I wake up to the baby crying. He’s standing up and staring at me from his crib at the side of my bed. I notice I’ve apparently been hitting snooze for 45 minutes and have yet again missed my opportunity to suck down a cup of coffee and have a moment to myself before the kids get up. I have yet to achieve that since we moved to Vermont, but I keep hoping. I jump out of bed and scoop up the crying baby in one fell swoop, and attempt to blink the sleep out of my eyes while I measure water and scoop formula into his bottle. I assemble the 5-part Dr. Brown’s bottle one handed with the baby on my hip. He grabs for everything along the way. I sit down to feed him a bottle, and before he is done, Axl is awake, too. We’re all living in a one-room studio apartment above the garage, and so once one kid is up, the other one immediately follows. Which is fine today, since we’re running a bit late.
I put Ford in his playpen, make Axl a waffle, and I quickly go pee and wash my face. I’m thankful that what I wore to bed the night before is passable as “athleisure” and I can just wear that for drop-off. The baby is already over his playpen and Axl asks for another waffle. I switch the baby to his highchair, give him a snack, and help Axl get dressed between bits of waffle. I brush his hair and his teeth and pack his bag for school. I eye the coffee maker and contemplate making a cup, even though I know I won’t have enough hands to carry it to the car while juggling the baby in his car seat and Axl’s bag for school. I get us all out the door and into the car on time, somehow.
7:45am – I drive the 15 minutes to Axl’s school, unload both kids, and go inside to unpack his bag into his cubby and drop him off. I drive into town to do an errand for my mom, thinking the baby will get a good nap in. He doesn’t.
9am – Get back home, unload the baby and put him in his playpen so I can make a cup of coffee and make sure I’m ready for my Zoom meeting with my boss at 10. Since the baby didn’t nap, I figure I can lay him down at 9:30 and he should settle down for sleep just in time for my meeting to start. Since we only have one room, I can’t take my meeting inside or I risk waking the baby up, so I set up everything I need outside on the porch, thankful that it’s warm out and not so windy that I can’t have my umbrella up to shield me from the sun.
9:55am – I realize that the baby is not going to sleep and, in fact, is unlikely to stop screaming his head off. Without enough time to move my whole set-up back inside, I instead grab the baby jail fence and quickly arrange it in the shade and throw a couple handfuls of baby toys inside so I can plop him there while I do my meeting, hoping he’ll be chill and happy if I stay nearby. He mostly does, but I have to open the meeting while feeding him another bottle, pop out after an hour and quickly put him back to bed, and toss him a never ending supply of snacks in between to keep him distracted. I have spent every meeting for the last 5 years needing to simultaneously keep my kids quiet and happy; I’m no stranger to it, but it remains stressful every time, even with a very supportive and understanding work team.
Noon – Finish my meeting. Ford is still asleep. I answer 2 work emails and send an inquiry to a moving company to try and get a quote for moving everything in my condex in MA here to VT before I close in 3 weeks. Ford wakes up. I feed him lunch while I wash and prep the fruit we got at the grocery store the day before. We play together. I do a load of dishes.
2pm – I lay Ford down for another nap and realize there is only 45 minutes until I have to leave to get Axl from school. He doesn’t sleep, but he plays quietly in his bed and I pick up my work computer to keep plugging away and notice that I’m starving. I haven’t eaten yet today. I want so badly to keep chugging along in my day, but since I am trying so hard to be good to myself, to take care of myself the way Pete would if he were here, I make myself stop to eat some lunch. I take 10 minutes to eat a bowl of salad mix with spicy ranch and 2 hardboiled eggs and suck down a mini Diet Coke, hoping the combination gives me some sort of burst of energy to get through the second half of my day. I answer another email and realize, yet again, that Ford is not going to sleep and we’ll need to leave soon anyway.
2:45pm – I load the baby in the car and drive to pick up Axl. We come back home and Ford has finally exhausted himself enough that he remains sleeping in his car seat when we get back into the apartment. I set him at my feet and start back at work while Axl climbs in my lap and cries about how badly he wants candy. In the middle of wailing, he falls asleep on my shoulder. At the same time, Ford wakes up from his nap and starts crying. I unpeel myself from Axl, who stays asleep, and get Ford in his high chair for a snack. I blend up some greek yogurt and the last of our blueberries to make him some baby popsicles, and feed him avocado in the meantime.
4:30pm – I try and get Axl up from his nap to no avail. I bake chicken breasts so I can shred them and have an easy protein ready for us for the week. I cobble together a meal for us and somehow get him awake to eat.
6pm – While Axl eats, I feed Ford a bottle and get him ready for bed. Since it’s summer and completely bright outside at bedtime, coupled with us sharing one space, this can be particularly difficult. Especially now that Ford can stand up in his crib and see us living our lives while he’s supposed to be sleeping. We try going out to the porch where he can’t see us, but keeping Axl outside and quiet is proving to be fruitless. Ford continues to cry, so I give up and go get him so I can rock him to sleep. Axl keeps popping back in the room to scream the Spongebob Squarepants theme song, so this takes a while.
7:30pm – Ford finally falls asleep in my arms and I put him in his crib. It’s time for “Special Mommy Axl Time,” which is a designated 30-60 mins that I spend time with Axl, uninterrupted, while we have a treat and play something of his choosing. Tonight he chooses for us to play a video game (Lego Star Wars). We get a late start because I spent 15 minutes frantically looking for a missing Pyrex lid. (I don’t find it.)
8:15pm – I get Axl ready for bed. I let him have a few minutes of iPad time so I can load my little countertop dishwasher with Ford’s bottles from the day and make Axl’s lunch for tomorrow.
9pm – I stop cleaning the kitchen in hopes that if I turn all the lights out in our apartment that Axl will be able to fall asleep. He’s wide awake and begging to draw a picture of a piranha plant from Super Mario. I put on a kids’ sleepy meditation podcast and try laying with him to get him to stay in bed. It doesn’t work.
10pm – I get back out of bed and try and resume making Axl’s lunch and picking up the apartment in near-darkness in hopes he’ll fall asleep. He doesn’t. I sit down across the room to try and write this.
11pm – Axl is still awake, frequently getting back out of bed and coming up with questions he needs to ask and things he “NEEDS” to do immediately. Back in our old house when he had his own room, we would let him play whatever quiet activity he wanted for as long as he needed to wind down and then he’d crawl into bed and go to sleep when he was ready, but he can’t do that here due to our setup, so getting him asleep is a struggle. Getting him to wind down when I’m right here trying to finish up my day is tough.
I never did get to any of my work today. I didn’t get to shower. I did manage to eat two meals, and there were vegetables in both of them, so I’m proud of that. I didn’t drink enough water. I didn’t get a chance to call the prospective moving companies. I think I was a good mom, though. I was patient and I was kind and I was happy. My kids had a good day. Axl might be tired tomorrow, but he’ll be okay. He doesn’t usually nap and he’s never up this late, so I know this isn’t forever. I still have to pick up Ford’s toys from the porch. Bring in the patio chair cushions. Wash my face and apply all my lotions and potions and serums. Floss and brush my teeth. And then I’ll climb into bed next to Axl and hope he’s finally asleep. I think I should be able to fall asleep by midnight. I’ll take my prescribed sleep aid, which should help. And for the 140th day in a row, I’ll set my alarm for 6am and pretend I’m going to sneak out of bed before the kids are up to enjoy a cup of coffee outside while I stare at the mountains.
It won’t happen, but damn if I won’t keep trying to get it right. Just like the rest of my life.