What do I do all day?

Ah, the stay at home mom's favorite question! This week it was tentatively posed to me by a working mom who is at her wit's end with some of the habits her little one is picking up at the sitters and trying to keep the house in order after a long day's work. She certainly didn't mean anything by it, and I took no offense at it (though I certainly have in the past, when it hasn't been posed so politely).

I will say this...your house won't be any cleaner. Sure, you'll have lots more time to clean, but your kids will also be there a lot more time, messing it up faster than you can clean. You kids might not even be much more well behaved, because kids just naturally have bad habits and go through difficult stages, even when they aren't learning bad behavior from their daycare buddies.

At the very least, you don't have the whole "Am I neglecting my kids by putting them in daycare" guilt (You're not....but I don't know a single working mom that doesn't feel that guilt at some point). You also don't have the added pressure of whatever you have going on at work. You will be lonely and sometimes feel like your brain is rotting away.

So anyway, a look at one of my days. A monday....otherwise known as recover from the weekend (me and the house!) day.

7:50- Wake up because the phone is ringing. Hubby let me sleep in so I could sleep off some of my crabbiness from the weekend. Make my first cup of tea and sit on the couch drinking it, checking my e-mail and messages. Make sure Jordan is ready to go out the door for school.

8:30- Feed Ms. Celia the toast and raisins she is demanding. Walk around the house scooping up clothes and throwing them in the nearest hamper.

9:00- Commence my "how was your weekend" call with my best friend. She keeps me sane. We had a lot to talk about and I let Celia watch some cartoons (after all, she needs to recover form the weekend too). While on the phone I started putting away the clean laundry from Friday night's folding frenzy and realized Celia's drawers needed cleaned out. Took all the clothes out, got rid of the too small, too warm things and put everything back in, folded and neat.

9:30 Still talking on the phone, discover that Celia has found some orange drink and has poured it into her play kitchen pots. Quickly remove all orange drink from her area before she drinks from dusty pots or coats every surface of the house in orange stickiness. Get her a nice, cold, CLEAN sippy of juice.

9:45 Still on the phone (seriously, we had a lot of important ground to cover) take my seedlings outside for some sun. Discover that Celia has followed me onto the porch and is dancing around buck naked in the morning air. End phone conversation and drag naked toddler back into the house. Begin the dressing and hair fixing ritual of the day (her, not me).

10:00 Wash my face, brush my teeth, throw on some pants, tie a bandanna around my crazy hair.

10:05 - Escort toddler and all paraphernalia (her potty and new bulldozer bunnies, my gardening gear) outside. I decide to weed around the playset while she digs in the pea gravel.

10:07 - Run back inside for wipes and fresh pants for the girl as she informs me "Whoops, I peed!" Turns out she did a little more than pee.

10:10 - Round two of weeding and digging. She's bored with the bunnies and decides to color every patch of mommy yellow with dandelions.

10:20 - Realize that we are not wearing sunscreen. Honestly, I don't put it on us in the winter (like I should) so I'm not in the habit of doing it this spring. Back in the house for sunscreen.

10:30 - I've finished the playset area and move to the garden in progress. It's a thin strip of raised area on the other side of our unusable driveway. Last summer we tilled it up and let it become covered with weeds (great plan) so it's constant maintenance right now to keep the weeds from taking back over. By this time next year I hoped it's a beautiful weed free area of blooms!

10:35 - After fighting with Celia since she wants to come up with me (and trample the pumpkin shoots and daisies) I get her a bucket of water. She is entertained for awhile.

10:45 Move to new area that needs cleared for Clematis. Celia helps me dig a little there, then we dig up a huge anthill and evacuate.

11:00 - Back in the house for a snack. Chris's mom left us some brownie cupcakes with peanut butter chips. I get one for the baby and scarf down three before I come to my senses.

11:10 - Celia starts playing a complicated game with Raffie the Roboraptor and her duckies. I complete various piddly tasks like bill paying and working out Jordan's bug dental appointment next week. Also spend a good bit of time trying to figure out what's going on at Buchannon-Upshur high school as my friend is quite worried. Chris works in media so I'm the go-to source for breaking news, but he knows nothing in this case.

12:00 - Lunch time. Celia requests her favorite, peanut butter and pumpkin sandwich. I give her that and a bowl of applesauce and begin my whole "huffing, puffing, bleaching down the kitchen while cursing previous owners for painting cabinets white". I do this at least once a week. I need to stop blaming them as we've owned this house for seven years now. In any case, I'm plagued by fingerprints and various food smears and do my best to eradicate them.

12:30 - Scrape peanut butter from my little girl's face, send her on her way and resume the degermification process.

1:00 - Find the girl cuddling with Raffie (the large plastic dinosaur) and declare it to be naptime. Convince her that naps are good, that she does need one, that Dad really wants her to take one. Rock her and plop her sleepy butt in bed.

1:30 - Clean out the car while listening to see if she really is going to sleep. I had estimated the car wouldn't be too bad since I did the whole vacuum and wiped down thing two weeks ago....but it's filled with crumbs and mud. Nothing I can do about that today....and not much point in it anyway. Soccer season will do that to a car. Separate trash from toys and get it looking halfway respectable.

2:00 - Check on Celia, she is indeed sleeping soundly. Gather up old clothes I removed from her dresser and put them with the stuff to go to the Union Mission. Cart all 3 bags of donation stuff to the car....pray that I remember they are in there next time I drive past the box. Clean the upstairs bathroom.

2:15 - Check my mail and messages, start writing this blog. Get various reports of chaos from Buchannon, say a quick prayer that all is a hoax like the media is reporting.

2:40 Celia wakes up. I dash upstairs and convince her to go back to sleep. An hour is NOT a long enough nap. Back downstairs to get sidetracked by my Sudoku widget (give me a break, it's making me smarter!)

3:00 Celia is up yet again. I go up and lay down with her to try and get her back to sleep. I doze off, she does not. I wake to her trying to wiggle out of the bed. So we get up.

3:30 Jordan gets home. We all get on socks and shoes and go outside. I weed around the dogwood tree while the kids play in the pea gravel.

4:00 I whip together some ice tea base and lock the kids in so I can shower.

4:20 Desperately try to motivate Jordan into finding his soccer gear and getting it on.

4:40 Tell Jordan is he and all his soccer stuff is not in the car in 5 minutes I've leaving without him. Have a big fight about how he can possibly lose shin guards, why they are not where they are supposed to be, and how I'm not buying him a new pair. Wrestle him into my shin guard (which are entirely too big) and obsess about whether I look like a skank in my new tank top.

4:45 Leave to pick up a teammate (Jordan made the cut off) and get to soccer complex.

5:00 Soccer clinic starts. As a coach, I have to be there, but I don't have to do much. I chatter with another coach about how our teams are doing and try not to stare at the ruggedly cute soccer instructor.

5:30 Have a discussion with a parent about equal play time. (My fallback argument is "Well, when you fill out your forms next year, make sure you let them know you're willing to coach. They are always looking for good coaches." That usually shuts them up since no one wants to coach. They just want to gripe about the coach.)

6:00 Try and make sure each kid from my team has a parent there (it's a zoo), grab some soccer camp forms....try and make sure everyone knows when the next practice is (same darn time every week, which is SO confusing to some) and corral my two boys to the car.

6:30 Home. Whip up some biscuits to go with the casserole Hubby threw in the oven. Father in law stops by for a discussion about the bathroom remodeling. Celia is hungry and generally wreaking havoc.

6:40 Dinner. Ah. A few minutes of everyone sitting somewhere (after I remind them to plant their butts and not move until dinner is over) and eating (after a few reminders to zip the lip and eat some food). Discuss with Hubby what we're going to do about neighbor kids playing in our yard (when we aren't out there). We decide to get moving out that gate, ASAP.

7:00 Clean Celia up, find her some pants for our walk. Gather things I need to take to neighbor.

7:10 Just as we put on shoes, massive rain storm comes out of no where. Walk is cancelled.

7:30 Send Chris up to give Celia a bath, tell Jordan he better find those shin guards. Then explain how I am not amused as he digs them out from under a chair and dances around the living room, hooting at the top of his lungs. Grudgingly allow him a brownie (only because it means I get another one) and a few computer games. I (obviously) am working on this blog again. (After another game of Sudoku)

8:00 Can anyone say bedtime?

So there's my day. Probably quite boring to most of you, but now you know what I do. On a normal day.