Cold, dark, quiet nights; warm, bright, noisy days

I am sitting in my kitchen right now, with the new chill of autumn settling in throughout the house. The kids are finally asleep. It seems like I work all day for this moment that I can finally sit down and figure out what needs to be done for the night.

For example, today I started my day, after only 4 hours of sleep, in utter chaos preparing the house for 5 little 4-year-old kids to come over and have preschool from 9-noon. The house was bustling and noisy and there was never a dull moment. Then, around 4PM, the exhaustion started to set in from no sleep the night before, and I started to wonder if it would be terribly cruel of me to convince my kids that it was already bedtime. Of course I knew they would be too smart for that trick, but I toyed with the idea.

But, now here I am, cold and alone, around 9PM, and I feel quite the opposite. It's lonely without the noise and the constant requests and having one or both of my kids climbing all over me. Jordan is working yet another ruthless 30-hour shift at the hospital. His schedule goes something like this: 30 hour shift, sleep, 12 hour shift, sleep, 30 hour shift, sleep, 12 hour shift... you get it. And while I want to be supportive, I can't deny that it gets really lonely being the spouse of an intern. I wake up alone, take care of the kids and all of the household needs all day, even mastering the art of mowing the lawn with a baby on my hip, then I prepare dinner with kids climbing on me, crying at my feet, just so we can sort of have a sit-down meal together with just the three of us, which means that the baby is strapped in her high chair demanding more food with her high-pitched squeels as she splatters the food she has across the room and onto the ceiling and anywhere else she can aspire to fling it, Beckham is bouncing around in his chair making various requests, and I am frantically running to and fro meeting the demands and wiping up spills and wondering why I even bothered to cook in the first place as I holler into the dining room for Beckham to stop teasing his sister and making her cry or I'll send him straight to bed, as I grab for more napkins and try to remember to breathe.

Then, when that fiasco is finally over I juggle the kids for bath time and bedtime, which feels more like a circus routine, really. As I bathe Ava with one hand, I am using the other hand to keep Beckham from pummeling his sister and knocking her over face-first into the water. Then as I am getting the baby out of the bath and holding her to one side of my body, I am wrapping Beckham up in a towel as he spins and hops like a little jumping bean, and then I carry them both like sacks of potatoes to his bedroom mostly so Beckham doesn't get distracted on his way out the door and disappear down the stairs, as is often the case. Then I set Ava down to put on her diaper, turn my head to answer Beckham's question about where his clean pajamas have been placed (since I have not gotten around to folding them and putting them away, of course) and then turn back to find Ava crawling away quickly. As I catch up to her she giggles in delight not only because she has escaped but because I haven't yet put her diaper on and she's peeing across the floor. I catch her right before she topples head-first down the stairs. Then I wrestle with her to get her diaper on while simultaneously telling Beckham how to brush his teeth even though I'm convinced he knows how to do it without my coaching ("okay, now the top, now the bottom, now the front ones, now the back ones, now behind the front ones..." and so on). Once that whole drill is over, it's story time, song time, Ava's final feeding of the day as she drifts off to sleep, which is exactly when Beckham hollers for water from the other room waking her from her newly found sleep. I find myself finally putting her to bed, finally getting him his water, finally coming downstairs to start my night's work and, then, something happens.

Everything stands still.

It's quiet.

I have dishes to wash, laundry to fold, bathrooms to clean, assignments to submit. Instead, I sit. And I take a breath. And I wonder why I was in such a hurry to get them to bed all day. It would be nice to have a nocturnal pet right about now. Like a cute little skunk to scamper around at my feet as I clean. Because while I know I can stay busy around the clock, my tasks don't keep me from feeling isolated and alone during these long nights in my quiet house. I could call someone, but most everyone I know has family time in the evenings. So, instead, I blog. And I know that you, reader of my blog, are regretting your decision to check this particular post because it is long and treacherous and uneventful in the grand scheme of things, but this is how I finally connect to the world tonight. I write. I get the word out there that I am burnt out, but ready for more! Bring it!

I used to have a "weekend husband" for this very purpose of not wallowing in loneliness. My friend, Alison, and I were in the same boat. Her husband went to school with Jordan. We were both new moms at the time we met (in fact, we both had our first baby the first week of medical school), so Alison and I would get together in the evenings to share our chaotic mealtime with one another, complain together about how much we hate medical school and not having a husband around. We'd make weekend plans with one another since all of our other friends in the area had "family time" during their nights and weekends, go figure. We understood one another and leaned on one another for much-needed support. She has since moved to Texas and we have moved to D.C. I need to find myself another "weekend husband" quick. This is going to be a long year.