Solo Parenting

I was home yesterday with the girls, because day care was closed for MLK day. The Boy was working, and Munchkin was out all day...which meant a kind-of rare entire day with the girls by myself. When they were younger, that thought was actually a little bit scary...but now it is just kind of exhausting.

They are easy in the sense that they play together, they don't have huge tantrums, are completely potty trained and ask when they need stuff. They are difficult in the sense that they never, ever stop moving, or talking, and can make a mess roughly equivalent to a small tornado moving through the living room. I would estimate that something like 45% of the actual time spent with them is consumed by picking up toys, asking them to picking up toys, cleaning up spills, wiping noses, putting dishes in the dishwasher, vacuuming and other kinds of cleaning. They are a pair of walking messes.

One thing that was true when they were newborns, and true when they were infants and is still true now...getting them out of the house is much easier than keeping them in the house. Unfortunately, yesterday was really, really cold. Much to cold to take them to the park, which is basically my go-to parenting move.

A more ambitious mother would have filled the day with a variety of arts and crafts projects intended to engage and entertain the children. I decided that I should take the to the mall and let them walk around for a while to wear themselves out.

I will say, it worked like a charm...we drove to Cambridge, rode the escalators, visited a toy store, ate some lunch and headed home, all within about an hour and a half, and by the time we got home they were so tired that they crawled into bed and fell asleep in about 10 minutes, and slept for over two hours (normal naps these days are about an hour).

Best mother ever? Yea, probably...