Mom Solo

Solo Momming it…

My hubs works for a video game company. About twice a year, for the month or two before the game needs to be submitted for approval, they have what is known as crunch time. For me, this is when I find out what it is like to be a single mom. Now, I realize most single moms cannot afford to be stay-at-home moms, so my situation is different. Also, if something crazy happens and I absolutley need him to come home, the hubs can, so there is that as well. But for the past two months or so he has worked til past midnight and on most of the weekends and I am esentially raising kiddo alone. And I have to say, it’s rough.

Stay at home moms…people think we hang out on the couch, eating bon bons and watching daytime TV. The only TV I get to see is Disney Junior or Sprout, and lil man is not content to sit and watch by himself so I can brush my teeth or take a shower. Oh, no, it’s “mommy, come sit by me!” If I do not, there will follow a request for something that will lure me into his gravitational pull, a sweet “Can I have some juice, please?” with a bat of his long eyelashes. Then “I can’t seem to get this puzzle together…will you help me?” And I abandon hope of personal cleanliness for the next hour or so. Sidenote: his use of, ‘I can’t seem to…’ lately makes me smile every time I hear it. It reminds me of a date I was on with my husband (before we were married) when I heard a little British child at the table next to us say, “Mummy, I’m quite taken with this breakfast!” Adorbs!

Anyway, so this full time mom gig is hard. Three meals a day for His Royal Pickiness, plus snacks, and he won’t tell me what he wants unless I threaten to only feed him broccoli, and even then sometimes he tells me, “I want you to guess.” I did not get mind reading abilities delivered with my epidural. If I just make something he usually likes, I get the big saucer eyes full of tears and a sad, “but I just wanted a hot dog…not this.” I don’t give in and make him eat whatever I made anyway, but it still tugs a little at my heart (oh, how wrapped around that finger I am!).

My kiddo gave up naps around 20 months, and he rarely sits still for more than a nanosecond, so by his bath time (if I made it into the shower that day, it was interrupted about five times by little hands knocking on the glass…”are you done yet? Why is it steamy? I can’t see you!”) I am exhausted and just want to sit on the toilet seat (the throne of bathtime) and play a Words with Friends game, but I don’t. We play Mickey Mouse surfs on a whale and gets trapped in the bubbles or something else. Then there’s getting into jammies. And toothbrushing. And stories (he NEEDS three, and this one I’m happy to oblige since I am a sucker for Seuss and the like). Then we finally climb up into his loft bed together and he wants to chat and have a puppet show. I manage to get him to close his eyes and his jabberbox mouth and I’m usually out before he is. I wake up in a puddle of drool on his Mario pillowcase and watch his sweet little chest going up and down and realize I’m lucky. I get to spend the whole day with an amazing kid. One day he won’t want me by his side 24/7 but for now, I’ll take it.

And then I go downstairs and start to actually clean up the house, do the laundry, plan the menu for the week, catch up on e-mails…and once in a while say screw it, pour myself a glass of wine, and surf Pinterest and my DVR. I deserve a few minutes off! I stumble into bed around 1, read something on my Kindle app, and just as I drift off the hubs comes home. Next thing I know, I hear, “Mommy, the sun is up. Are you going to play with me?” and so the coffee flows.