I have been a stay at home mom for the past eight years and for the first time ever, my kids are both in elementary school this year. Even though my kids are away at school for seven hours a day (4.5 hours on minimum days), I still have plenty of things to do around the house, which my husband doesn’t seem to understand. I also work from home, but not at a typical job. I’m a blogger, freelance writer, and ADHD Advocate.
My husband is an analyst and he works very hard to provide for our family and I am very grateful for that. I don’t want you to read this and think I am not appreciate of the fact that I am able to stay at home while my husband works, because it’s not like that at all. Occasionally though, my husband will come home from work and ask me what I did all day and I will draw a blank. I mean, I know I did a lot that day, but sometimes, it really does appear like I didn’t get anything done, which is extremely frustrating when you’re a stay at home mom that has school aged children! So yesterday, I decided to document my entire day. Here’s how it went (and honey, you asked for it!):f
At 6:00AM, my alarm goes off on my phone. Right now, my alarm is set to the song “A Million Dreams” from The Greatest Showman, because I am obsessed with the movie and soundtrack. But eh, I can sleep a little more, so I hit the snooze button. The song starts playing again after so many minutes and I hit the snooze button, again. The next time the song plays, I get up and head to the bathroom to do my business while I check my email, which is mostly advertisements from stores. I delete them all. Then I get dressed, my outfit usually consisting of comfortable jeans and a Disney T-shirt that I’ve had since before my kids were born. I get ready for the day and debate whether I should put makeup on or not. Today, I decided not to, which most likely means I will run into an ex boyfriend while I’m out.
At 6:30AM, the alarm in my kids’ room goes off and the complaining begins, mostly from my eight year old daughter with ADHD. She shouts out to me, “I don’t want to go to school today.” “School is boring.” “Is it a long day or a short day today?” I go into their room to make sure they are actually getting dressed. It’s Campfire Day in my kindergartner’s class and I had already laid out an adorable outfit for her last night. Apparently, she doesn’t think it’s adorable though, because she is complaining that the jean jacket is “too stiffy.” After they get dressed, I help them brush their teeth and then style their hair. I put my youngest daughter’s hair in cute braided pigtails. “Why do I have to wear my hair like this?” she asks. “Because it’s cute and it looks campfire-y!” I answer. Now my other daughter is complaining that she never had a Campfire Day when she was in kindergarten.
At 7:00AM, the kids and I head downstairs to the kitchen and I pop two waffles in the toaster. I put ice packs and the Bento boxed lunches and snacks I made for them the night before into their backpacks. I give them each their gummy vitamins and my oldest daughter her ADHD medication. The waffles are ready, so I cut them into little triangles like they like and serve it to them with butter and syrup. While they’re eating, it’s finally time for this mamma to have her morning coffee! My daughters then lecture me about never eating breakfast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that I programmed the washing machine to run early this morning, so I toss the load into the dryer and turn it on.
It’s now 7:20AM and we need to get going. I ask the kids to put their shoes on, which takes them 10 minutes. No joke. I remind them to say goodbye to Daddy, who has been sleeping this entire time. “Goodbye, Daddy!” they shout. “Bye kids! I love you!” he shouts back groggily. All of the shouting has got our dog excited and she is jumping on me. I feel bad having to leave her, so I grab a treat to give to her while the kids go into the garage. I give my dog her treat and I tell her, “Okay, be a good girl! I’ll see you later!” Then it’s my turn to shout to my husband, “Bye! I love you!” “Bye! Love you!” he shouts back. While my husband gets ready for work, I walk into the garage and hear my kids goofing off in the car. They aren’t even buckled yet! “Oh my God, we are going to be late,” I shout. I quickly buckle up my kids and then drive off to school. During the car ride, my oldest daughter is telling me about the Minecraft house she built and my youngest daughter is telling me about what she thinks the Easter Bunny is going to bring her this year. Yes, they are both talking to me at the same time and yes, I’m able to understand and respond to what both of them are saying, because… mom skills.
We arrive at school and it has started to rain. Luckily, I have the kids’ umbrellas and raincoats in the car. I would love to say that I was prepared for this atmospheric river, but honestly, I am just really horrible at cleaning out my car, so what goes in the minivan stays in the minivan. It currently looks like a tornado went through it. I walk my oldest daughter to her classroom and we find out that she has a substitute today. Great. I am always nervous when she has a substitute teacher, because they don’t know and understand my ADHDer’s mannerisms and behavior like her teacher does. I give her a hug goodbye and then I walk my kindergartner over to her class, where all of the kids are running around because they are super excited about Campfire Day. I give my daughter a hug goodbye and I head back to my car.
I really need to go grocery shopping, but I hate shopping when it’s raining. I check the weather report to see if the rain will let up sometime today. It won’t, so off to Target I go! Whilst I was shopping, I couldn’t help worrying about the heavy rain since my friend had told me that her house had began to leak slightly. She’d contacted Clean Pro Gutter Cleaning Minneapolis to come and clean her gutter out. Apparently, they were clogged and that meant that the rainwater had nowhere to drain to. I was just hoping that I wouldn’t come home to see a leak in our house. Anyway, today is Taco Tuesday in our house and it’s something my kids look forward to every week, so I buy the taco essentials, along with some other groceries we needed. I also make my way over to the Easter section, because I need to buy Easter gifts for my kids’ teachers, teacher aids, and classmates. I also pick up some Easter basket goodies for my kids and pick up a new chew toy for our dog. After about an hour of shopping (and thankfully, not running into any ex boyfriends), I head home and unload my shopping bags.
I head upstairs and make my bed. For whatever reason, my husband thinks our bedroom floor is a hamper, so I gather up his dirty clothes and put them in our color coded hamper system. I see he has left his comb, deodorant, mouthwash, etc. out on our bathroom counter, so I put them away. I also see his sink is filled with water. It hasn’t been draining properly lately. I gave him the Drain-O to use last week, but it hasn’t been touched. My husband also has ADHD and is very much a scatterbrain, so I cut him a lot of slack. Over the years, I’ve learned to pick my battles with him and although some things he does are irritating, they are not worth fighting over.
I go downstairs and unload the dishwasher and then load the dirty dishes from breakfast. I cringe, because I can see the kids got syrup on our granite countertop, so I clean the counters. The kitchen looks good, so I then proceed to get the Easter gifts I had bought and write all the “To” and “From” names, so they are ready to go. I also wrap some Easter gifts for my nieces and nephews and birthday presents for my daughter. She’ll be turning six years old next week!
My youngest daughter is getting too big for all of the size 5 clothes that are in her closet, so I take out all of her size 5 clothes, fold them nicely, and put them into bags to give to my sister in law for her daughter. Then I hang up all of the size 6 clothes that are hand-me-downs from my older daughter. It always makes me sad when I switch out their clothes, because that means that the kids are getting older and are not my little babies anymore.
I get a text from my husband, reminding me to clean our guest room, because his mom is going to spend the night later this week. Our guest room has sort of become my husband’s Man Cave. He set up his virtual reality gaming system in there and he sleeps in there when the kids go in our bed. He is a keen gamer and loves to play online multiplayer video games, so he has all the gaming equipment and accessories you could possibly need. Although, just when I thought his gaming obsession could not grow anymore, the other day he told me that he was thinking about investing in a VPN. He read some reviews of a few different gaming VPNs in this make a website hub guide so apparently he is tempted to get one. A lot of gamers find that using a VPN can speed up the gameplay process apparently. To be honest, if it makes him happy then I am all for it! While I’m washing the bedsheets, I put away his games, dust, vacuum, clean the bathroom, and hang up fresh towels. I also get three dirty glasses that my husband left on the nightstands and pick up a pile of his dirty laundry that was on the floor in there. Gross! Then I make the bed. The room looks great! Nobody better go in there and mess it up!
By now, it is lunchtime and I’m starving, so I make myself some Bagel Bites. (Not the healthiest choice, but they are fast and easy to make and they taste oh-so-good!) While I’m eating at my desk, I post questions for the My Little Villagers Facebook page and check my email. I get an email from my ADHDer’s teacher, saying that she has been using their Google Classroom inappropriately by chatting with other students. Great. I write back, letting the teacher know I will have a talk with my daughter after school and that it won’t happen again.
I am currently writing a children’s book for children with learning differences, but I haven’t worked on it in a while, so I decide to work on it, but while I’m typing, I smell dog pee. I look down and see that my dog has peed on her bed. Gross! So much for writing my book! I throw her bed into the washing machine and then see that I have forgotten to take the clothes out of the dryer, so I set it to speed dry to get the wrinkles out and when it’s done, I put away the laundry.
I get another text from my husband, asking me to start working on our taxes. Fat chance, babe, because it’s now time for me to pick the kids up from school. I get the kids and ask them how their day was on our way back home. One had a really fun day and the other apparently had the most boring day ever. In the car, I also lecture my daughter about using the Google Classroom inappropriately. When we get home, I help my youngest daughter with her reading homework while my oldest daughter gets started on her math worksheet. Doing homework with my kindergartner is a breeze, so we are done in about five minutes. I go to see how my oldest daughter is doing and I catch her hiding a calculator from me. I get mad and lecture her. Then I help her with the rest of her homework, which takes about one hour. I cringe, because I now have to tell my daughter that she needs to do extra homework, because she has her drama play at school on Thursday and so she won’t have time to do homework that day. She complains, of course, so I bribe her with small prizes, and she accepts it. Whew!
I let the kids have some screen time while I make dinner. My oldest is playing Roblox while my youngest is watching toy videos on YouTube. Once dinner is ready, everyone is at the dinner table happily devouring taco after taco. I make sure to save enough food for my husband, who doesn’t get home from work until 7:00PM.
While I clean up dinner, my oldest daughter asks me if she can play Minecraft, because she promised her friend from school she’d play with him at 6:00PM on something called Skyblock servers that is apparently a challenging minigame within Minecraft. I tell her she has to read for 20 minutes first, which she actually happily does, because she loves the Dog Man book I got her. My youngest one asks if she can play games on my husband’s iPad, so I tell her she can after she has worked in her kindergarten workbook for 20 minutes, which she does.
While the kids are playing games, I’m making their lunches and snacks for tomorrow while I’m mentally thinking about all of the things I need to do this week. At 7:00PM, my husband comes home from work and our dog jumps all over him. The kids and I greet him with a hug and a kiss and I let him know his dinner is ready for him in the fridge. It’s time to wash my daughters’ newly pierced ears with the sea salt solution, which takes about 15 minutes.
It’s also time for bed, so the girls say goodnight to Daddy and then head upstairs with me. I give them each Melatonin to help them relax and fall asleep easier. They shower, get their pajamas on, and brush their teeth. Then I tuck them in, sing them each two lullabies of their choice, and kiss them goodnight. I set out their clothes for tomorrow on their desks and head to my bedroom to take a shower and get into my pajamas, which usually consists of cozy flannel pants and an old T-shirt.
I go downstairs and put a load of clothes in the washing machine and program it to run early tomorrow morning. My husband is either playing on his phone or watching TV. I ask him how his day at work was while I clean up the mess he made from eating dinner. Seriously, the dishwasher is right by the sink, yet he never puts his dirty dishes in there. I’ve tried to tell him that dirty dishes attract pests, and pests mean pest control like https://www.pestcontrolexperts.com/local/texas/, but clearly he isn’t phased by this! I make us some popcorn while I update him on various things, mostly stuff about the kids. After I run the dishwasher, I plop down next to my husband on the couch and we watch TV shows while we eat our popcorn. By 10:00PM, I am falling asleep on the couch because I am totally beat, so I kiss my husband goodnight and get up from the couch.
He takes my hand. “Why don’t you slip into something more comfortable?” my husband asks me with a wink.
“I am comfortable,” I answer.
“Okay, fine,” he says grumpily as he continues to stay up to watch TV.
Then he turns to me. “Hey, did you start on our taxes?” he asks.
“No,” I answer.
“Why not? Were you working on your book?” he asks.
“No,” I answer.
“Well then what did you do all day?” he asks.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!