A Week in the Life: Peninsula Mom, a contractor with 3 kids
In this week’s feature, Peninsula Mom, a contractor with 3 kids, reflects on overwork, illness, and primary parenting, and shares the loveliest garbage truck anecdote.
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What’s your kid/family situation?
3 kids, ages 3, 5, and 7; husband; two young and very shy cats.
What is your job situation? (Job, hours, WFH vs butts in seat)
WFH self-employed as a contractor for one company, not quite full time. Flexible hours, thank goodness.
What's your childcare situation? (daycare, wraparound care, nanny, magical grandparents)
Two younger ones go to daycare. Older one (1st grade) goes to school & aftercare + after school activities M-Th.
A Week in the Life
Monday
President’s Day weekend. Everyone has the day off (including, thankfully, husband, who forgot about the long weekend until last Thursday….). Signed the two older kids up for a soccer camp 9-1, which was our first time finding day-off activities and I’m wondering why we didn’t do so before this. Brilliant day-took the youngest on a play date while husband went to Home Depot and puttered doing house chores that had been put off forever. Everyone was exhausted in the afternoon and we had quite a time trying to figure out what combination of people in which car would go grocery shopping (absolute necessity, out of milk). Got to have some rare 1:1 time going with just the oldest. Decided on takeout for dinner and hummus bowls were a surprise hit! Everyone asleep earlier than usual due to all the activity earlier, so actually into bed at a reasonable time! A rarity.
Tuesday
Back to school today! And work. Back to rushing around in the AM, husband does the elementary school drop off, I do the daycare drop. Check in with the new Executive Director. I co-chair the board of our nonprofit daycare; the past year has been a lot of flux and an interim ED; we convinced a prior, much-loved ED, to return to the center and I am so relieved to have someone experienced back in charge. I have given a lot of hours and sanity to the center for the past two years; really excited not to have that weighing on me as much going forward. Run home and try to do some work in between meetings. Multitask in calls by filling out summer camp forms; mentally check through summer camp sign up status. Curse myself for the thousandth time for agreeing to let middle kid end preschool early and start summer camps before kindergarten rather than enjoy a last summer of not coordinating multiple camps. Tell myself it will be a good confidence boost for kiddo before going to elementary school. Work until 4:15 or so and then start the pick up rounds. Get oldest first, then daycare pickup. I remember snacks and the choices are well-received, meaning everyone is in a good mood on the way home. Shepherd everyone inside, set up oldest with a math app, younger ones with PBS Kids so I can make dinner. The four of us eat together, then some playtime while I clean up. I bribe the younger two into bath with the bath paint they just got. Oldest plays and I half-heartedly work on getting him into the shower. Husband gets home as I’m reading to the younger two and youngest asks him to take over bedtime and they head off. I nearly fall over in shock and delight as I am the requested bedtime person 99.99999% of the time. Realize oldest has just been reading in the bathroom not showering and prod. I love the love for reading, but… Snuggle middle and listen to podcasts waiting for oldest (these two share a room). Once everyone is in bed, turn on a boring podcast. They protest mildly and then conk out. Second dinner with husband, then some house stuff, collapse into bed.
Wednesday
The usual morning grind, I do the daycare drop off, husband does elementary school. Come home, do some work, then off to get a haircut (first time since late July; I hate spending money on my hair and was growing out a too-short decision from last time). Back home, more work, quick board orientation meeting with our two new board members, more actual paid work. Husband is on for daycare pickup (almost never happens because his hours are usually long), I get elementary kid from aftercare. Realize I mis-remembered the meal plan and scramble to start dinner. Field a quick call from the pediatrician to follow up on some questions we didn’t get to at well checks last week. Daycare set comes home, no snacks in the car, middle was expecting a different dinner and is having a hangry meltdown. Get food on the table, try to convince middle to have a few bites of anything knowing it will turn things around but we’re at the point of too hungry and upset to eat. Two younger kids fight over my lap, further enraging middle. Finally middle has a few bites, the clouds part, and everything is better. After dinner, all three invent an astronaut game using a big box we haven’t yet recycled and there’s a rare moment of calm and no parental involvement needed. I enjoy it by frantically loading the dishwasher and then realize it’s getting late and we start the bedtime process. Not our smoothest, but everyone gets to bed. Oldest asks me to climb into the top bunk for a proper snuggle and I oblige, secretly happy because mostly we’ve outgrown this and I love getting asked. I’m also the very uncool parent compared to my husband these days, so I soak up this moment. Once everyone is down, attend to some board business and then wrap up a bit of work. My husband makes dinner for tomorrow to accommodate a special request for a recipe that is “his”. We normally are not that organized. Work with cats on socialization (they are SO shy, but the work is paying off; I was not expecting it, though, when we adopted them in December and thought we’d have two cats that permanently lived in a closet…) and crash into bed. Fall asleep reading.
Thursday
Alarm goes off but I’m mostly awake because middle climbed into bed not too long before. Remember I’m doing this weekly log and update it while pretending I’m just about to get out of bed and get ready before anyone else wakes up. Guilt myself into doing so now that it’s written down for internet posterity. Despite my best attempts, there is still an epic breakfast meltdown during which the younger two battle for the entirety of my lap again. Make it through, get everyone dressed and loaded into the car, and off to daycare. Husband does elementary school drop off. Get back home and wonder if I can take a nap after all that. Grind through some work, then attend to a few small personal finance things, including finally opening a SEP-IRA. Meet for an hour with our daycare’s new ED to discuss how the first week has gone. More work, then realize I’m starting to feel sick AGAIN after not recovering fully from two prior back to back colds. I expect to be sick for all of February at this rate. Head out to pick up oldest, who’s aftercare solution on Thursdays ends earlier than the M/T/W plan, then daycare pickups, then home. Thankfully dinner is already made, so everyone has dinner in front of PBS Kids while I plow through the last 45 minutes of solo parenting. Husband gets home not too late and takes bedtime mostly solo so I can rest. Some array of kids spends time in bed with me before being herded off to their beds. Oldest and I look at his baby pictures while the younger two do bedtime routine-another rare moment of bonding that I relish. Husband doesn’t often do bedtime solo and kids don’t often allow it, so I am especially grateful for the chance to rest.
Friday
This will out me to anyone who reads this & knows me: every Friday morning I get up a little before 6 to watch the garbage trucks come by with my middle, who has been obsessed with garbage truck for 3 solid years now. We live in the Bay Area and have curbside trash, recycling, and compost so three bins and three trucks stopping. We always sit in the back of our car and watch while I drink a coffee. During the lockdowns of 2020, we befriended the compost truck driver and he now always stops to chat. He’s given my middle a hat from the sanitation department, a hot wheels garbage truck, a chance to sit in the truck… Truly an extremely kind human and seeing him makes our week. After we wave to all the trucks, back inside for breakfast and the morning rush. It’s unusually cold where we are and for the first time since I’ve lived here, I can see snow in the hills. Kids are so excited just to see a dusting. I am cranky it’s as cold as it is-I hate winter and delight in living somewhere that usually isn’t cold. Back home to try and get a little bit of work before the monthly daycare board meeting. Partway through the meeting, switch to the phone, hop in the car, and get middle from daycare for speech therapy. Finish up the meeting during the session, then we race back for elementary school pickup-this year I purposely didn’t sign up for aftercare on Fridays after realizing last year that it was just too much for my eldest and a break was really necessary. Surprise hang with a school friend where we go to the library and a cafe while burning time before getting the youngest. Daycare pickup, then back across town to pickup takeout, and home. Dinner, bath, bed rush. Still feeling under the weather, especially after 5 hours of trucking around town, so try to minimally participate in bedtime, kids won’t really allow it. Littlest needs me for stories and a quick cuddle. Still, off duty before it’s too late and realize I need to do some board work before I can curl up and pass out. Instead I fill out this form and procrastinate semi-productively.
The Weekend
The cold I’ve been battling for the past month comes out in full force and I’m knocked off my feet. Spend most of my time feeling massively guilty that I’m not more help while husband shuttles me back to bed. Work on coming to grips with how deeply I’ve bought into the idea that I must be the caretaker for all at the expense of my own health. On a normal weekend, we would be meeting up with friends at playgrounds, taking everyone to soccer and entertaining the youngest on the sidelines, and trying to generally be out and about since everyone gets along better outside. Instead we are mostly home with a heavy dose of screen time to survive. Everyone is cranky at best. I finally decide to take a sick day on Monday and shove off some responsibilities so I can rest with no one home and maybe feel slightly less guilty.
Reflections
What was your biggest success this week?
Signing kids up for a President’s Day camp rather than just push through a long weekend with everyone bored at home. This was my first time and I was a little apprehensive it wouldn’t be well-received, but both kids really enjoyed it. I tend to get in my own way about finding help and ways to make my life easier. I blame being raised in Puritanical New England, where allowing your life to me maximally difficult is seen as a virtue somehow. I’m working on it, pretty unsuccessfully. Getting the reminder that we are all happier with a little break was really helpful.
What was your biggest obstacle?
Being sick when you’re the family backstop is so, so hard. I just want a couple days off of parenting so I can rest, but our lives just aren’t structured to allow that. Husband has the “big” job with long hours so I do a lot of solo parenting (though less than it used to be), and so for the kids I am very much the primary parent. It’s hard to shift them to my husband when I need a break. I also struggle with not getting involved when I’m in the house but trying to take a break, which muddies the whole situation.
How are you making it work?
At the expense of my sanity? I dialed way back on work during the pandemic when my youngest was an infant and my husband got a big promotion. I ended up quitting my job and then slowly eased back into this contracting role I have now. When I was working a lot less, I picked up a lot of volunteer things to fill the time and now don’t feel like I can give them up yet I am working a ton more plus I’m also the parent who does all the things (doctor, dentist, summer camp planning & sign ups, speech therapy, etc). I’m also the chauffeur for everything and I do double pickups pretty much always. Sometimes double drop offs. We really need extra help but the idea of finding that help, managing that help, having someone else in my space… it feels overwhelming. Then again, so does what we’re doing now, so…
This is all so relatable; right down to needing help but it feeling overwhelming and befriending the garbage dude during the pandemic. Thanks for sharing!
Loved this profile! It feels so similar to my situation.
"We really need extra help but the idea of finding that help, managing that help, having someone else in my space… it feels overwhelming. Then again, so does what we’re doing now, so…" Yes, yes, yes! People will tell me I need to outsource more when I mention periods of overwhelm, but it's not always as easy as it seems. In the past I have outsourced cleaning and childcare, but they both take work and logistics and I'm always the one making the arrangements which feels like just another to-do. Even if I DO outsource it to my husband (he handled finding someone to do lawn care last year), since he's away so much I need to have my hand at least partially in everything since if/when adjustments need to be made, I'm the person at home "on the ground."
As the parent making almost all of the logistical decisions (appointments, school communications, birthday party arrangements) and doing the majority of home management since my husband travels for work ~40% of the time...I just kept nodding while reading Peninsula Mom's story.