I went to dinner tonight with a group of colleagues. One of them asked me about the boys, and I filled them in on the latest highlights… many of them featuring A’s hijinks, of course. Another one somberly shook her head and remarked, “I honestly don’t remember how I did it with little kids at home. It’s so hard; it’s like I’ve entirely repressed it.” She almost immediately then tried to apologize for the seriousness cast over this – ahem – energy-intensive chapter of life, but I told her I actually found her observation comforting. It’s not in my head: it is objectively difficult.

The past few months since I went back to work, I’ve joked that Dave & I only have time for fun once per week. The rest of our time is committed almost entirely to simply keeping the wheels on the train at home. Take, for instance, Sundays, and our standard must-dos:

• – Baths x 4 (45 min)
• – Nail trims x 80 (10 min)
• – Pack for daycare x 3: clean sheets, refresh spare clothes &/or outdoor play gear, & diaper supplies (1 hr)
• – Pack J’s school: lunch + library book + sign reading log (15 min)
• – Pack C’s bottles for next day + solid foods for the week (30 min)
• – Grocery run and meal prep for the week (incl making baby purees for solids above – see below) (1.5 – 3.5 hrs)
• – Family laundry (2 – 4 full cycles… as in, the manufacturer of our washer would not advise that volume of clothes in a cycle)
• – Work outs (1 hr/each of us ideally)
• – And then of course: 3 x square meals x 6 x people with varying dietary needs, many x diaper changes, so much x discipline, too many x reminders, and general parental engagement

This past Sunday, we also added time spent:

• – Giving O a haircut (40 min – DIY by me while the boys are young and not discerning)
• – Wrestling O 4x/day to let us give him his eye drop for his pink eye (should take 2 min but instead takes 5 – 10 each time, followed by anguished wailing for another 5 – 10 immediately afterward)
• – Taking 2/4 boys to a friend’s birthday party (3 hrs)
• – Sending updates on Teacher Appreciation Week at our daycare (I run the planning committee but have officially reached my resource limit and regret signing up again) (1 hr)
• – On the phone with UPS trying to track down my breast milk that was shipped “overnight” (3 days prior) and never arrived after a business trip last week (30 min on the call & 5 years off my life)

Don’t get me wrong: time spent with these adorable little people is deeply, soulfully fulfilling. But then I look at the e-communication between me and Dave after the course of the day and think… if there was a way to spend more of the time doing things that enrich us as parent & child simultaneously, and less time just surviving the day, that would be okay with me, too.