Tedium

Tedium describes my evenings when Jamie is gone. I do a pretty good job of avoiding the monotony of SAHM-life during the day; the kids are at preschool two days a week, and the other three I always manage to find things for us to do. My kids have a pretty active social life for three-year-olds, and this is entirely because the thought of actually staying at home all day with them makes me start to hyperventilate. Like I've said before, I'm not very good at the staying at home part of being a stay at home mom.

So our usual routine is to do something in the morning through the early afternoon, come home for nap (which is usually just an hour and a half of the kids in their beds not sleeping, but not raising hell either so I don't feel too bad), if they don't fall asleep I get them out of bed around 3:30 and then we play until dad gets home at six. And then it's dads turn to play. Except for when dad is in Michigan for the week. Then the tedium sets in.

Now I will say that I am very fortunate to have twins that get along and like to play with each other. They do a very good job of playing a variety of make-believe games ('house' has been the popular one lately). They also play well independently (H better than P), so it's not like they are in my face all the time. Usually. And when Jamie is home, he has all of this stuff called 'energy' and is excited to see the kids who he hasn't seen every minute of the entire day thus far, so he plays with them or we play together as a family. One of our recent games is he times the kids running around the house and I am the pit stop for a bite of an apple. (It makes no sense when typed, but promise me that the kids love it and can do it for an hour.) (This is also the only time H will actually eat a fruit.) (Don't worry, we make them chew and swallow before we let them run). Or we go on 'bear hunts' or make shadow puppets- all 'fun' activities when you have someone to share in your pain pleasure.

Tonight though, since Jamie is gone, I got to be part of every game! We played Jail (I was the prisoner and their stuffed cats licked me and wrapped me up???) We played Drill Mom (I realize how it sounds), where they literally chase me around with two toy drills while I fend them off with a toy hair dryer for about fifteen minutes straight. And that's only because I quit after fifteen minutes, the other night we played it for a solid half hour and could have kept going for God knows how long. Then after Drill Mom, I was back in jail, but it was time to eat so they all had to bring me food. The kids AND their stuffed cats. And this is when I became a slapstick comedian, spitting out food, making funny faces, flicking food across the table, using weird voices, saying silly all the time, all to the GREAT delight of H and P. P was laughing so hard that she couldn't breathe at one point. And this was all fine and good and we were all having a great time but...it just goes on and on and on and and on and on and on and on until I eventually make it stop. I swear they could have brought me fake food for hours. And so on and so forth. Incredibly entertaining stuff for the kids, painfully boring stuff for the mom. I know that none of this makes me sound like the worlds best mom over here, but these are the feelings I'm feeling and this blog is nothing if not about keeping it real bro.

The last few days have given me a revived appreciation for single moms or the friends that I have whose husbands travel all. the. time. Allthetime. Like every week. I seriously don't know how they do it. I would be insane. Insaner I should say. So the point of this post is- Jamie come home.