Josh is on call this weekend, which means I will be mostly solo parenting. I will admit that as I sat at my work desk on Friday afternoon staring down 60 hours of managing my motley crew by myself, I wasn’t exactly in dreamy anticipation mode.
Parenting is wonderful and surprising and has magical moments. It’s also really hard sometimes and can be lonely and boring, particularly when (ahem) one has moved and no longer has friends nearby that made these kinds of weekends a much more social experience.
When I started thinking about what was actually making me feel anxious/negative about the upcoming swathe of time, I came up with:
- concern that I will spend too much time yelling/disciplining
- the feeling that I will be lonely / bored with no concrete plans or friends nearby (I did have a couple of bday party invites, but they were not parties I could take all 3 kids to, so I declined
- a bit of pre-emptive exhaustion at the prospect of the physical labor/vigilence that G’s current age/stage requires
I mean if all of that doesn’t scream FRI-YAY, what does!?
But I also started thinking about how few of these weekends I really have with my young children. After all, toddlers are only toddlers for a year or so. G will be 2 in — well, less than 50 weekends. I am going to be past the ‘little kid’ stage in a millisecond. I now know how fast it goes, even if the afternoons sometimes stretch into virtual eternities.
(The Days Are Long, But The Years Are Short — yes and yes).
SO. I put together a tentative plan, will text the neighborhood WhatsApp group in hopes of finding some human (adult) connection, and am generally looking forward to the next 48 hours or so.
I also decided I would share this weekend on Instagram Stories for posterity (here). I am not promising curated images or TV style reporting to the camera (I find that really intimidating!), but I hope to share something real.
So, feel free to follow along. I will do a “Weekend In the Life” roundup once it’s over, for those of you who aren’t into Instagram (I only watch a very few select stories, so I get it!).
Off to run (yes, at 5:30 AM on a Saturday) because I have learned the hard way that if I do not get an early workout in on these kinds of days I will only live to regret it. Catch you on the flip side!
1 Comment
I think many of my difficulties with my weekends stem from a) having no time to plan prior to Saturday morning, and b) the expectation that I get work done on the weekends. I am unable to “just” devote day 4h to work on Saturday morning because my brain just doesn’t work that way, I wouldn’t get to exercise, I wouldn’t be able to go to my daughter’s activities, and my work flow tends to keep rolling in and piling up over the course of my weekends via emails. I look at your schedule and… omg it is so empty!! I can’t remember the last time I devoted an entire day to my family without some crap work to do to somehow fit in. Anyway, sorry for the rant. I’m on call and plan to study at home at day if I don’t come in while my husband and daughter go to activities and birthday parties.