Dear Wife KrisDi has abandoned me to the bitter whims of our offspring. She has left for Scenic Hopewell, Virginia or thereabouts. She’s there for a week.
Lucky for me, day time routine is easier for me when I’m alone than for her when she’s alone — my day care drop off and pick up routine is exactly the same as any other day. The mornings are the same as any other day. The only differences are the weekends and the evenings — especially bed time. It also helps that there’s no single thing I can think of that I never do — except try to manage both bed times simultaneously.
So, yesterday, we all got in the car and dropped KrisDi off at the airport. Then, I tried for 1.5 hours or so to convince Chilkoot to nap before finally succeeding (wherein we experienced such misadventures as, “Let’s try to extract a foot from the crib slats while big sister is wailing in terror at being left alone for thirty-two seconds” and “How long can this kid really alternate between ‘DADDY!’ and ‘twinkle twinkle…’ before giving up and just falling the fuck asleep, or at least actually getting upset and crying about his plight?”). I managed to coax solid foods of a non-candy down the throats of the children; I successfully checked all the bed time checkboxes. I got a kid bathed, and three loads of laundry done. I got the dishes done. I got the kids to manage their mess relatively well. And I drank a significant amount of scotch and beer. When I did finally get Chilkoot into bed for the night, he shattered his previous record by rolling around happily in his crib for two hours before actually zonking out.
Today was, “Yes, Mommy is actually gone” day. McDonald’s for dinner (for them — I had week old leftover burrito, which is vastly preferable). Morning routine, daytime, all that was totally normal. Dinner was the typical wrangling act: Go back to the goddamn table and shove some goddamn food in your goddamn mouth! After dinner we went outside and played with the water table (I actually hosed off the kids with cold water, which was darkly satisfying). Bedtime routine was fairly uneventful (although I had to threaten Chilkat if she didn’t cooperate with dental care time, she was going to bed “without anything”).
Now, I’m sitting on the couch in the quietude, sipping on a Chillwave, waiting until 9:15 PM for my webmeeting with Japan. Kids are not asleep yet, but they’re both pretty quiet.