Second Shift

There are days I leave work not relieved my work day is over.  Because it technically isn't.  Once I leave my office, I'm preparing to start my second shift at home.  As any parent knows, work is never really over. 

I love my family, but being a parent is hard work.  Relentless hard work.  I'm tired a lot of the time because there are never enough hours in the day to do everything I need to do, let alone what I want to do.  My second shift at home is faster-paced than any day at the office.  I feel the pressure to simultaneously greet my children and hear about their day, make dinner, clean up the day's mess so we can eat at a clean dining room table, set the table and comfort my children, who inevitably start squabbling while I'm trying to make dinner. And that's all before dinner!

The rare nights that dinner is peaceful, meaning the kids have no complaints about what's for dinner and happily eat it, is really just like being in the eye of a hurricane.  It's a brief respite from the craziness where I maybe sit in my chair for ten minutes and actually eat.  Often well before I've eaten my last bite of dinner, the kids are finished and I'm directing them to clear their plates and clean-up begins.  There are plates to scrape, a dishwasher to load (thank goodness for this modern invention!), pots and pans to scrub, a filthy dining room table and chairs to wipe down, a floor to sweep and trash to take out.

The third hurdle of the evening is bedtime.  Four children who need to change into their pajamas, go to the bathroom and brush their teeth. As we settle into my bed to read four bedtime stories, I'm assessing their likeliness of falling asleep quickly and how many trips back into their rooms I'll need to make to ask them to settle down or refill a water bottle or give another hug.  That's because post-kid-bedtime and pre-my-bedtime is my sacred time to finish cleaning up and maybe have some time to myself to decompress.

This is what my second shift is like night after night.  

The hardest part for me as a parent is to not stress out over the chaos of being pulled in too many directions. It's hard to ignore the guilt for what I don't have time to do or what I feel I should be doing when all I want to do is relax.  I know this is just a phase when my kids are so little and need me to do so much for them and that one day, sooner than I can possibly imagine at this point in my life, the house will be quiet and there will be no more second shift.