A Typical Day

Even though, or maybe especially because, this month included a week
long vacation at the Shore, it's been quite a slog for Amy and me.
The combination of a high-maintenance seven-month-old, and his big
sister who is having trouble adjusting to his existence around the
house, has us at the end of our rope and then some.

For my own future reading pleasure, let me document how a typical day
might go. Sometimes I get up at 5 and sometimes I'm gotten up at 5,
but either way, I've got four hours to do the following, with Aaron
crying for three to four of those hours: 1) time with God, 2)
exercise, 3) spend some quality time with the kids, 4) check my email
and maybe bang out a blog post or two, 5) shower, get myself ready,
feed myself breakfast, and read the paper, 6) get the kids ready and
get them breakfast, 7) do some work-related reading, 8) walk Jada to
day care (two days a week), and 9) walk/bike to work.

We have about 40 clients at work right now, and I'm assigned to about
half of them, so needless to say 9 to 5 is a bit of a blur as I
rolodex through projects and feverishly knock out various analyses and
narratives.

Once 5 hits, I've got four hours to do the following before bedtime:
1) tie up whatever I'm working on, 2) get myself home and out of my
work clothes, 3) make dinner (unless Amy's taken care of that for me,
which she has increasingly done, God bless her), 4) feed Aaron and
Jada (unless Amy's taken care of that, see above), 5) spend some
quality time with the kids, 6) get them ready and down for bed, 7) get
my clothes and lunch ready for the next day, 8) check my email and
maybe bang out a blog post or two, and 9) take care of miscellaneous
house chores and administrative responsibilities.

Somehow, this hamster wheel of a routine makes me the second-most
tired adult in the house. For Amy wakes up once or twice in the
middle of the night, and she already has trouble sleeping. Three days
a week she's home alone with the both of them for eight hours plus,
and the other two days, when Jada's at day care, Aaron's no walk in
the park on his own. I do less and less of the cleaning, laundry, and
tidying, and with two kids there's more and more of all that for her
to do. Oh, and she has no thyroid.

So what we have here is an unsustainable pace. Some of this will
hopefully abate on its own, as Jada gets old enough that we can enroll
her in pre-school, as Aaron stops screaming so much and sleeps better
at night, and as both of them figure out how to peacefully co-exist
under the same roof.

But some of this will require some direct action on our part. We have
a few tricks up our sleeve, which we'll hope to test out over the next
couple of weeks. So as tired and jittery as we are, we're actually
feeling a little hopeful about it all. Maybe it's just our
deliciously dark sense of humor, which by the way is probably one of
the biggest reasons we're still somewhat sane. Still, if you bump
into us when we're out and about, please be nice to us.