August 8: Busy at Work, Busy at Home, and NO Mother’s Helper (again!)

Oh, Mondays. These used to be really rough for me but my weekend was not that spectacular so I welcome getting back into a normal routine. We did not do much of anything on Sat or Sun. The highlight was taking the kids to a nearby park and having all four of them tear down the little, medium, and big slides. Twin Husky was flying down the medium slide head first, laughing his butt off. Both Twin husky and Twin Crazy would go down the little slide and then topple over onto the bark ground which they thought was hysterical, and me and Big Bro thought even more hysterical. The weekend was very cold and gray. Twin Husky got some more biting practice in. Poor Twin Crazy, and also Red. They are beginning to fear him.

 Highlights of the morning:

• Red woke up first and climbed into our bed, playful. She seems like in a great mood
• Red and Twin Husky make it down with Hubby for breakfast
• I hear Twin Crazy screaming… because she woke up alone in her room.  She was really pissed off that she woke up and her brother was not there.  She feels like she’s missing out on something.   I fetch her and she has a good time combing her hair and my hair.

• I wake up Big Bro and start to gather clothes for the day. He has definite opinions. He needs to have a picture on his t-shirt or else it is rejected. We have so many plain t-shirts that just never get used.
• downstairs the Twins are busy eating applesauce, bananas and Cheerios. They are talking up a storm and having fun with Red.
• Big Bro is in a great mood.
• Getting them dressed was no problem. Red and I played a game where I was helping her with her socks but she kept giving me the foot that was already “socked”.. “I don’t need THAT guy [referring to her foot], I need THIS guy [referring to her other foot].” “I’m giving you THIS guy”. “No, I need THAT guy.” It was really cute. She is in a great mood. She even had time to put on a tattoo that she was excited about.
• I gathered clothes for daycare for Twin Husky [this is something that I should do the night before to make the time more efficient in the morning….]
• Shoes on! Let’s go!!!
• Red says she wants to see Daddy go on the ferry and then all of us go to Big Bro’s school. I say we can only do that on days that I work from home. That does not seem to satisfy her much.
• Drop off #1 went without a problem. She whisked them away because it’s really cold outside
• Drop off #2 went well. Big Bro brought in a book “101 Dalmatians” and his teacher said “Cool! Great book. Do you want me to read it?” I love that place. We will likely have Red start in the same school in September.

Today for work I will need to double-task and hustle. I am double-booked in the AM where I need to get a deck ready for distribution for an internal team, yet I also have an internal call to strategize for a new proposal we will be developing. It will be hard for me to multi-task on this so I need to hit-the ground running when I get into the office to get the first done before the second begins. But I’m hungry. I guess it will be more coffee and trail mix. Later in the day I will need to reach out for more business development for the meeting in October. WE have a status call tomorrow that I will need to be ready for.

Highlights of my Working Day:

• Ran into the office, did not have time to eat (trail mix) or put on make up…. I updated the go-to-market materials and quickly sent off to our internal team – I had just 20 minutes to do this since I had a call at 9:30
• 9:30 conference call to discuss the potential proposal that we will likely bid on; it will be a very big project across regions and we have 2 weeks to pull it together. Three directors and I got together to talk about the business need and think about what work we’ve done that we can leverage approach / thinking of the business issue. It will be very interesting if we get it.
• Quickly put on some make up and grabbed trail mix. Headed to next conference call
• Internal call on the go-to-market materials I sent that AM. I received some great feedback and spent the next several hours incorporating. Grabbed some lunch take-out and ate at my desk while working. Sent all materials to our team and our partner.

Today went reasonably well. I think I do better (mentally) when working in the office vs. at home. I was busy, had the heater on in my office so I was nice and toasty, and I was extremely comfortable in my garb (nice soft long sweater, leggings, high heels — sexy but comfy).

Me and hubby are headed home now; ferry is great, sun is finally out. Dinner? Just talked about this with hubby and we are leaning on spaghetti and meat balls (Costco). I’m looking forward to pick up with the kids and hearing their squeals (Twins) when we arrive.

 Dinner and Bedtime:

• Pick up for Big Bro went great; Pick up for Twins and Red went fine. Today they drew outlines of their hands. Our daycare provider does the minimal in terms of creativity so I was surprised at this and made a huge deal over it.
• We started dinner – pasta and meatballs. Kids were really hungry/cranky so we gave them some raisins and crackers to hold them over.
• While it was cooking I started to dance and play follow the leader with all the kids to our electric keyboard. It was a lot of fun.
• 6:30 came and went. It looks like we were stood-up again by our new Mother’s Helper. I have two loads of laundry in our back bedroom that need to get folded, more laundry to start, and an entire sink of hand-washables. *I&^$*&^(*#^$)(&^
• Everyone ate well. Even Red. So much so that Hubby made the kids ice-cream cones. Ryan was very frustrated that he wanted more. Threw himself down on the ground with a tantrum.
• Hubby went out front with the kids so Big Bro could ride his electrical jeep and the rest of the kids could run off the sugar. It was freezing. It’s so cold out here where we live.
• I in the meantime cleaned up from dinner, started doing more laundry, and got the PJs and milk out for the Twins
• Bedtime for Twins was fine. Singing twinkle twinkle and itsy bitsy spider. Twin Crazy likes to take part with her hands. Twin Husky was too cranky to participate. Both “brushed their teeth” which was cute.
• We usually do a round of kisses with the Twins but Twin Crazy did not want to get near Twin Husky. I guess they were fighting a lot today and I think she may be scared of his biting. When he gets pushed to far he lashes out with his teeth and does a throaty grunt.
• Big Bro was great tonight at bedtime. I read him a book and he caused no problems. He laid down with his head in my lap and I was loving it. Red was a different story. There were issues with her and the potty, and issues with her getting into PJs. Then she came in and out and put the hallway lights on. Then she came out and needed a towel to dry her hands. As I type this she is now out saying that she is scared. “Just pull that blanket up to your chin honey…. you have to go to sleep now.”  I think I hear her now sighing and dreaming, upstairs, at the top of the staircase landing.    Don’t tell me that she’s asleep in the hallway!

Today ended just fine. The house is a mess but we had fun with the kids. Laundry is going, this post is done, and I will now put another ad in Craig’s List for yet another Mother’s Helper. This time I’m going to stress dependability and will probably ask for references.

Till tomorrow –

– Mama K