The Dinner Dilema.

How the heck do families manage to prepare, eat & clean up dinner every single night? I just don't understand how one *finds* the time for this each night. Nevermind the fact that I hate cooking (gasp!) and am not very good at it, either.

A day in my life:
4:30am- wake up, nurse my son
4:45am- get ready for work
5:30am- leave for work, drive....
6:00am- work like a dog, pump, repeat until 4:00pm, then leave.
5:00pm- get home after picking up my boy :) feed the dog, put everything away, refrigerate pumped milk, clean out son's bag, rinse out bottles & soak in water, put stuff away, play with son.
5:30pm- feed my son his solids.
6:00pm- clean up after solids, play.
6:30pm- start bathtime/bedtime routine, nurse my son, but him down for bed.
7:30pm- pack my lunch for tomorrow, get everything ready for tomorrow, wolf down a bowl of cereal, clean, so chores.
8:30pm- relax.
8:35pm- get ready for bed.
9:00pm- bedtime.

And.... That just took all of my "relax" time for the night.

Balance.

I am struggling to find it lately. I am into my busy season at work, and I am finding it difficult to out in the extra hours I need to at work, and still have time to enjoy the evenings with my family. Last year, it was common for me to get to work at 7am and stay until 6 or 7pm, then work from home for a couple hours in the evening. (yeah... Rediculous.)

Well, I can no linfer stay late since I have a son to pick up after work now. And of course I don't want to spend my only hours with him working! Today I got up at 4:30am and got to work by 6am, worked till 4:30pm, and worked for about an hour from home after dinner. (we did actually eat a real dinner tonight!)

I am exhausted. It has been a good day though. Not only was I super productive at work but I also managed to dona bit of cleaning this evening, too! That's a pretty successful day. My eyes are closing on me... I am so tired!

Time to hit the sack soni can do it all again tomorrow.

Goodbye long weekend...

We need more three day weekends in our society. Just saying. Now it's Monday night after a long Labor Day weekend. Do I feel the dread of another crazy/hectic week? Of course. But tonight is different, my son is going back to his regular babysitter tomorrow! I am definitely thrilled about this, and it's one less thing to stress over. Let's be honest- the person who cares for your child=the most important person in my day.

On another topic, being a working mom is hard enough, being a working & breastfeeding mom is harder still. I remember during maternity leave, my husband never (okay maybe a few times) got up to help overnight- since I was on leave & he was working. He promised me that once I went back to work he would be willing to help more at night. Well, you can guess what happened. Now that I'm only nursing once at 5am and my boy wakes up around 3 or 4... I figured the hubby would be willing to help soothe the baby. Yeah. I figured wrong.

Why am I supposed to be able to function on less sleep- not only function but do more than I have ever done before on less sleep than I've ever had before?! It's so no fair. But no one said it would be fair. So when my husband complains that he's tired, I will have to remember that. Next time. For now a swift kick to the shins seems to be working. (kidding).

Being a parent is hard, period. How do people manage being parents and still be husband/wife to each other? I haven't got the time for both. Ugh. Good night....