Single Parent

I must give MAJOR props to all those single parents out there. I have NO. IDEA. how you do it! None.

My day today started at 6:15 a.m. Rather than play a volley with my snooze button, hitting it several times before actually dragging myself out of bed, I got up with the first obnoxious buzz (I had to switch from music to buzzer because I was regularly sleeping through it). The next hour and 50 minutes is somewhat of a blur, but I know that I got up/showered/dressed, I got both girls up fed/dressed/bundled up in winter gear, the coffee did get made, the bottles did make it out of the fridge and in to the car, and we actually made it out of the house by 8:05.

There was, of course, way more negotiating with Lily to get up/eat/get dressed/put her coat on than I'll ever admit. I did loose my cool once or twice. She did cry, declaring that she wasn't happy with me "not one little bit" and that she missed DDDAAAADDDDDDYYYYYY. (Me too kiddo!)

I got both kids to school on time, essentially, and arrived at my office before I was noticeably late. Since I'm currently working on a client press announcement (stay tuned for breaking news on Monday), my day FLEW by. Before I knew it it was a few minutes after 5, and I was technically late to start the evening child retrieval process.

Anna was happy to see me, the traffic gods were on my side tonight, and I got Lily with 12 minutes to spare. Just as I was contemplating what to fix for dinner, though, my Outlook reminder went off, alerting me to the fact that we're on the hook to bring birthday snack for Lily's class tomorrow. No nuts. No chocolate. No frosting. (No fun!) Dinner would have to wait...we were on our way to Harris Teeter for the ingredients.

I'll spare you all the details of the next hour or two, lest you be forced to relive my pain. In short, Lily chose banana muffins for tomorrow's snack, so we snagged the groceries and zipped home for a quick dinner (it's 10 p.m. though and I have yet to eat mine) pre-baking. Pleased with myself for some uber multi-tasking, I got Lily situated with her meal and a movie while I fed/bathed/bedded Anna. Once I resurfaced from Anna's room, though, I realized we were missing 4 eggs needed for the recipe. Great.

Perhaps you can see where this is headed. Sadly. I packed a sleeping baby up in her carseat, threw PJs and sneakers on Lily, and back to the grocery store we all went to purchase those pesky eggs (I still can't believe that we didn't have them in the fridge...we ALWAYS have eggs in the fridge!). BTW, call me a terrible/horrible/negligent parent, but for about ten seconds I actually considered putting the kids to bed and THEN sneaking out, quickly, to the grocery store 3 blocks away. Thankfully, it was only a fleeting thought.

We got home 20 minutes later, and I redeposited Anna in her bed while shuffling Lily off for a bath of her own. OK, the night was back on track. Or so I thought. I breathed a sigh of relief.

But just as I was getting Lily out of the tub, I heard an all too familiar cough coming from Anna's room. The cough that made her spit up last night...which required a late night sheet change, of course. I dashed in to Anna's room, picked her up and started walking around to lull her back to sleep. But then it happened. MAJOR projectile vomiting all over me. All over her. All over my bedroom rug. Yup, all over the hardwood floor in the hall. And everywhere in between.

By 9:30 I was able to get Anna cleaned up and put back to bed. The mess cleaned up. Lily -- 'til then frozen in place so horrified by what she saw -- to bed too.

Of course, the muffins weren't going to make themselves, so in the 45 minutes since then I whipped up two dozen delicious smelling (sadly very homemade looking) banana muffins. With sprinkles on top. Because even though they frown upon sugar at school, I can only ratchet down the fun by so much.


And now it's 10:15. I'm about to eat dinner. And then I will go apologize to my TiVo for breaking our date that I was SO looking forward to tonight. From a Discovery Health show about polygamy, to a BBC America documentary about legalizing marijuana, to Criminal Minds, ER and Little People Big World...I've got some serious TV watching that I need to do. But not tonight. Because the bottles for tomorrow still need to be made, the laundry needs to be switched from washer to dryer (remnants from the vomit incident), the muffins need to be packed up, clothes need to be laid out, and a few of the 2,564,892 toys that currently litter my living room floor need to be put away. And there's no one here but yours truly to get it all done.

How in the world do single parents do it? I'm 27 hours in to my single parenthood experience, and I'm already counting down until Friday night when Noah returns! TGIF will have a whole new meaning this week. N -- we miss you!!