{"id":1259,"date":"2008-05-07T12:45:52","date_gmt":"2008-05-07T17:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2008\/05\/07\/random-bullets-of-stay-at-home-mothering\/"},"modified":"2008-05-07T12:45:52","modified_gmt":"2008-05-07T17:45:52","slug":"random-bullets-of-stay-at-home-mothering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2008\/05\/07\/random-bullets-of-stay-at-home-mothering\/","title":{"rendered":"Random bullets of stay-at-home mothering"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So I survived my first <s>few days<\/s> <s>full week<\/s> week and a half (it&#8217;s taken me a long time to finish this post!) of being at home full time with all three boys, without daycare.  Barely.  Even if I did have time for a full post with proper paragraphs and segues and actual, you know, thought, I don&#8217;t have the brain cells any more.  Bullets is the best I can do for you.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\nMy overall impression?  What the hell was I thinking.  <em>Three? <\/em> Why didn&#8217;t you stop me?  Or warn me at least.\n<\/li>\n<li>\nSeriously, it&#8217;s not so bad.  It&#8217;s worst when the baby is fussy or needy or being fed, which is only about twelve hours of the day.  The sleeping times are good.<\/li>\n<li>What the hell is it about the arsenic hours of 4 to 7 pm?  If a day is going to go sideways, it&#8217;s going to happen during the arsenic hours.  And it does &#8212; often.<\/li>\n<li>Earlier in the week, I had my first genuine fight-or-flight moment.  I&#8217;ve never been closer to bolting.  No joke, for a delicious minute I seriously considered just dropping everything and walking away for good.  A new parenting experience to add to my resume.  <\/li>\n<li>I feel much better now.<\/li>\n<li>As if simply getting through an ordinary week weren&#8217;t enough, this week Beloved worked late three nights, leaving me to fend for myself with three at bedtime, the neediest time of day.<\/li>\n<li>Thank god for my mother and pizza delivery, or else we all four might have starved.<\/li>\n<li>Now, just getting through an ordinary day at home with the boys seems like a breeze.<\/li>\n<li>Because I love a challenge, this was also the week I decided to volunteer for &#8220;Snuggle Up and Read Day&#8221; in Tristan&#8217;s classroom.  Lucas was a celebrity on par with Hannah Montana in the six-year-old girl crowd.  The boys seemed nonplussed.<\/li>\n<li>It was, in retrospect, prolly not the best week to implement my new &#8220;less videogames and computer and TV&#8221; policy.  But I stuck to it, sheerly because I am so damn stubborn. <\/li>\n<li>I remember a time when I used to use my stolen moments to read a book, or a magazine, or even (gasp!) sneak onto the Internet.  Now I use my stolen moments to empty the dishwasher or (gasp!) fold the laundry.<\/li>\n<li>\nAfter two weeks of stunning warm temperatures and sunshine, the weather this week has been nothing but cold and rain. We&#8217;ve visited the grocery store with the free drop playzone (twice), the mall with the $4 drop-in playzone and Ikea.  <\/li>\n<li>I heart Ikea madly. You simply cannot beat an hour of free childcare in the ball pit during which you can leisurely browse Swedish ingenuity with a hot coffee, followed by lunch for four for less than $4.  I knew <a href=\"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2006\/08\/23\/dont-call-me-ill-call-you\/\">we couldn&#8217;t stay broken-up<\/a> forever.<\/li>\n<li>\nNext week, we&#8217;re planning on two trips to Ikea and at least one to a McDonald&#8217;s playland.  And Costco.  Staying at home may just be as expensive as daycare after all. <\/li>\n<li>\nI really, really have to get Lucas to start napping in his crib, or in the swing, or somewhere other than in my arms.  Thank goodness he&#8217;s amenable to a good snooze in the car seat.<\/li>\n<li>\nI&#8217;ve also discovered that if you run the dishwasher and the exhaust fan over the stove and put the sleeping baby in his car seat in between the two, you can drown out the sound of just about anything and pretty much double nap lengths.<\/li>\n<li>\nI&#8217;ve also discovered extended amounts of white noise make me twitchy.<\/li>\n<li>\nOr, that might be the boys who are making me twitchy.<\/li>\n<li>I really, really like staying at home with the boys.  But I really, really miss having intervals of longer than two minutes to myself.<\/li>\n<li>This is going to be a stellar summer!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I survived my first few days full week week and a half (it&#8217;s taken me a long time to finish this post!) of being at home full time with all three boys, without daycare. Barely. Even if I did have time for a full post with proper paragraphs and segues and actual, you know, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2008\/05\/07\/random-bullets-of-stay-at-home-mothering\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Random bullets of stay-at-home mothering&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mothering-without-a-licence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}