photo by Mykl Roventine
I’m really good at math. Five is more than four.
We welcomed Little Belle in October of 2009. She joined EB (now 5) and Little Man (2 ½) to make our little family of four a big family of five. I returned to work when she was 3 months old, right after the holidays. Very quickly, I discovered the definition of Chaos.
It wasn’t just having three children that made me feel nuts. It seemed like the whole world was crashing in on me. Every single morning began on the rocks as we all piled into the car only after much yelling, cajoling, begging, and someone throwing a tantrum (that someone usually was me).
The early evenings were just as bad. Picking up my munchkins at 5:15 and arriving home at 5:45 usually resulted in a stress level Orange (mine and theirs). Everyone was tired and somehow it seemed that dinner time, which tends to show up around our house every night, would just take me by surprise. Unfortunately, all too many evenings this meant a dinner consisting of something I’d sworn (pre-kids) that I would never serve on a regular basis. Dinosaur chicken nuggets, anyone?
And this set the tone for our entire evening. Rushing to eat. Rushing to bathe. Rushing to pj’s, and hardly a spare moment to visit, relax, or read a book. The opposite of fun. A few weeks of that, and I was ready to throw in the towel.
Except that I didn’t know where, exactly, I would throw that towel. Because the laundry basket was already overflowing.
In the midst of this chaos, I considered a range of options. Everything from quitting my fabulous job and returning to private practice so I could hire out all the non-fun chores, to going to a part-time schedule in order to ease the stress of our days. Deep down, though, I knew that neither of those choices was right. Both would involve making a permanent change to address a seasonal problem.
But I needed a solution, STAT.
So, late one evening I decided to spend some focused time dividing my daily schedule into bite-sized pieces (15-30 minute chunks of activity). Then I analyzed each minute detail to determine where, exactly, was the greatest source of angst. Which part of each day was causing me to cringe? Which part caused me to say, “If only….”?Through that exercise, I discovered that the Chaos all hinged on how our late afternoons developed. On a normal day, the extra 90 minutes of unstructured playtime at school from 3:45 to 5:15 was a brutal end to an already exhausting activity-filled school day. And MY attitude was becoming toxic. I found myself looking forward to my kids going to bed almost as soon as we walked in the door – not because I didn’t want to spend time with them, but because the time I was spending was so laden with To-Do’s and demands. I had no time to decompress. And neither did they.
I also realized that on the occasional days when, for whatever reason, I picked up my kids a little earlier, the world was a different place. They still had some gas in the tank to play once we arrived at home without devolving into World War III. And I had the freedom to change clothes, address the baby’s needs, and start dinner for everyone else without also playing referee. I could breathe.Once I discovered the problem, finding a solution was relatively simple. Our Sara. Our darling, precious Sara, who has been a sitter/nanny/godsend for us in varying capacities for more than two years, had the availability to take over that time of day for me. Each day, Sara now picks up my kiddos from school around 3:30, brings them home, does snacks, room cleaning/bed making, reading, outdoor play, art projects, and whatever else the kids may need/want on a given day. Their activities depend in large part on how tired they are, whether they are excited to play together or just want some quiet time. Sara also does some light cleaning – unloads/loads the dishwasher if necessary, or guides the kids in picking up the living room if things are a little disorganized from our morning. Some days the kids want more attention, and on those days Sara’s focus is solely on them. On the days that they are happy to self-entertain she’ll often call me to find out whether she can do something to start dinner.
The point is this: with a little thought, I was able to find one small issue that was causing big problems for me, fix it, and reap enormous benefits for my family and my own mental health.Now, let’s be honest: Laundry still piles up at our house because it has to be done on the weekends. I’m still on my feet at 9:00 every evening washing bottles and laying out the next day’s clothes. And I’m still awake every morning at 5:00 just to make sure that everyone gets out the door on time. But those things weren’t causing me the kind of systemic angst that the chaotic end to my out-of-the-house day was. By addressing one relatively small scheduling challenge, the other 99 don’t seem nearly as daunting. For me the key to not waving the white flag on this lifestyle choice is making sure that any feeling of being out over my skis is fleeting, and that I act swiftly when it seems Chaos and Strife have outstayed their welcome.
Maybe my Afternoon Chaos story speaks to your soul, but you don’t have a Sara who you can ask to pick up your kids from school. What about the darling junior high or high school girl in your neighborhood? Maybe she could meet you at home in the early evening and hang with your kids for an hour while you change clothes, get dinner started, and breathe? They will adore her, and your mental state surely will be better for it. Or maybe your Big Issue is completely different. No matter the source of the problem, I am confident that all of us can find one inefficiency in our daily routine(s) that would benefit from a small tweak to the Master Plan.
So, let’s recap:1. Dissect your day. Break it down into small enough pieces that you really can identify your Big Issue – the one that toxifies the rest of your world most.
2. Realize that it isn’t as big as you thought.
3. Implement a plan for a regular, predictable, effective form of relief that focuses only on that single issue. You can do this with limited resources. Sometimes just knowing that help (in any form) is on the way makes the in between time more bearable.
4. Recognize that over time, your Big Issue may change. Your plan of action doesn’t need to be permanent. If needs change, your fix can change, too. You may even find that a couple months of relief is all you need to feel like you have things back under control.
Now that I’ve come clean with one of my uglier moments, and a resulting little secret to a more manageable balance, tell me – what is your Big Issue? Have you come up with a fix? Or are you still feeling like the world is crashing in and need to take a break to dissect your own kinks?
Jaime is a wife, practicing attorney, and mama to three precious
munchkins ages five and under. She enjoys the intersection of all her
lives, and has just started writing about the joy she finds in trying
to Have It All at Sand In My Coffee.
