Tiresome

I've been thinking a lot about my recent bouts with anger. There are so many thoughts I don't know where to start. But one thing I am understanding more concretely is why I need a break from the kids. In Tom and my conversations about the difficulties of staying at home, the notion of "needing a break" from the kids always comes up. I've always kind of treated it as some kind of escapism as if wanting to get away from it all. But I think it really is a need to diffuse a situation by removing myself from it temporarily so it doesn't wear on me. I'm sure it is hard for him to go to work and come back home and start pitching in with the kids and home. But ringing in my mind is, "At least it's something DIFFERENT."

And so recently I've been quantifying that idea a little more.

I'm working the second that I wake up. I don't get a shower, breakfast and commute buffer time that I used to with a job outside the home. My children are my alarm clock. And while the morning people would just say, "Just get up earlier!", these days, Eli's 6:45AM wake up time is plenty early for me.

But aside from that lack of "buffer time", I've been realizing that Tobey's toddlerisms assault me within the first hour of the morning. The other morning, within 10 minutes of waking up, he was throwing dominoes under the picnic table. After I took them away, he started tossing his stuffed animals in the air (a known offense). By half hour after wake up, I had taken away so many toys our counter of banished toys was filling up. But more importantly, my mood was already sour, meaning it was that much easier to be sour for the whole day.

I also realized that with Tobey's growing verbal skills, there is constant chatter all day. There's not really such thing as a peaceful drive anymore as most of the time Tobey is chattering. Usually it's cute and I'm okay with it ("Oh look! A truck!" or when he starts spelling words on signs that we drive by). And sometimes it's just about automatically responding to his questions because he's just learning about the world. But sometimes, his toddler chatter and repetitive questions just don't allow for any down time for my brain or my emotions. There was once he asked me the same question so many times in a row that I had to explain to him how I already answered his question several times so he doesn't need to ask it anymore. By some miracle he actually stopped but I felt bad that I had kind of squashed what I know is just normal behavior for a toddler.

Even a change of environment is so nice to have, the value of "getting out of the house". I definitely do it when I can with the kids, when the kids are healthy or when the timing is right. But when cooped up in the house, every mess, sometimes even specific toys left out are constant reminders of the endless cleanup that needs to occur or sometimes a specific incidents earlier in the day (like a mound of wet towels when he spilled a bunch of water in the bathroom).

I guess contrast that to when the other parent comes home from work. If Tobey says, "No!" to Tom if he says to go wash his hands for dinner, it's probably the first time he's heard it that day, instead of my 20th and the continuing of a frustrating trend all day. Even if Tom is tired from the day, there's got to be some amount of freshness for the kids that he has that I just don't have come 6:01PM. I remember Drew once saying that when Hoa is impatient with Joshua in the evening, he used to say to her, "Maybe you could just have a little more patience with him." (I could just imagine the glare she gave back to him.) But then he had to spend full days with Joshua after Amanda was born and he now knows why Hoa has less patience by the end of the day. It's not that it isn't hard to come home after a day of work and face this. But at least it's different.

On that note of needing breaks, "TNO" returns (Thursday Night Off). Tom was the bane of every father's existence when I proudly told my mom friends that Tom gave me every Thursday night off for a break from Tobey (this is before Eli was born). Most every mom said, "Wow! Really? I should get to do that for me!" But now, Tom might be the bane of every mom's existence as he's wants "in" on the night's off too. We're going to alternate Thursdays off and Tom's off tonight. His argument is that he doesn't get time to do things on his own, which I guess is true. But it'd be irksome for me if he said (and has said) that he needs a "break" from the kids because like it or not, him going to work IS a break from the kids. At least he admits, perhaps after hearing Dennis admit it, that he is somewhat relieved to get to go to work. But some of us never "leave" to go to work.