Back to LIfe, Back to Reality

I go back to work a week from tomorrow.

And woah boy, is life going to suddenly get a lot harder.

Staying home with little man these last 11 weeks has been amazingly blissful. Yes, there were days (cough-yesterday-cough) when he fought his naps and was cranky and fussy and generally made me check the clock every 45 minutes to see if it was time for TH to get home yet. But overall? Blissful. Easy. Wonderful. Delightful.

Not only is my little guy a really easy baby (for the most part. cough-yesterday-cough.), but I have had TIME. Time to do laundry. And dishes. And cook dinner every night. And pick up the house. And work out. And visit with friends. Time to do all the things that keep our little family-of-four lives running. And I promise you these things don't happen in the evenings, after TH and baby girl get home and we are eating dinner and squeezing in 45 more minutes of play and taking baths and reading books and going to sleep, only to nurse the other kid and coo and goo and make faces and give another bath and rock to sleep (sometimes again and again and again). Nope. The things that I've had time to do while staying home have all happened during the day, while little man naps or hangs out on his play mat making out with his thumb or while I wear him around the house, singing to him and occasionally stopping what I'm doing to plant a kiss on his soft little head.

But a week from tomorrow, I'm returning to the world of full-time working mom. All that time? Gone. I will once again have to figure out how to fit all the things I had been doing during the day into my limited time in the evenings and weekends, those precious windows when I'm actually home with my kids and would rather be spending time with them than folding clothes or washing dishes or cleaning.

I know we'll figure it out. I know we'll find our new normal rhythm, and a month from now (or two or three), we'll have a routine figured out where I can start to feel like we are actually doing it, like we're actually fitting everything into our lives that we need to.

But today, sitting on the brink of the return to work, the BIG CHANGE (said in a booming, ominous voice), I'm grumpy and fearful and sad.

I wish there were simply more hours in the day. Enough hours for me to do the work that I love, to feel like I'm continuing to build on myself outside of my role as a mother. Enough hours for me to run our lives, to do laundry and dishes and cook and clean and run errands and work out. And enough hours for me to get in all the snuggles and laughs and hugs that I want with both of my kids.

Life is a balancing act, and even though I know we'll regain our footing, ours is about to get rocked.