Tags
children, family, fatherhood, food, life, parenting, sahd, sports, stay at home dad, writing
Day 6. I couldn’t even see straight last night, so there was no chance of me writing a blog post! The fatigue that I have been experiencing since I finished college and have been back to ‘work’, minding the girls all day, is epic. It’s a combination of having two little rascals, who want to play with me constantly and not going to bed early enough. I’m working on improving both situations!
Yesterday was a nice day though. We spent some time in the garden because the sun was shining all day and got a few things done. Seren took more photos with our camera, some of which are pretty cool, but I’ll post them another time. My wonderful wife let me ‘sleep in’ until 10:30am, which was the first time I stayed in bed past 8am in well over two years, I think! I put ‘sleep in’ between quotation marks because I don’t think you can ever truly sleep in when you’ve children. In Ireland, it is more appropriately referred to as a ‘lie in’. Chantal took Seren into the playgroup (with Olwyn), then came home and played with Olwyn, put her down for her morning nap and then I got my lazy butt out of bed and took over. You see, I stayed up Monday night until about 4:30am, watching Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final between Vancouver and Boston. I know, silly right? In my defence, it was the first NHL game all season long that I stayed up to watch and it could have been the last one, so I felt it was necessary. As it turns out, Vancouver lost and didn’t win the cup, so I have to do it again tonight! And tomorrow I can’t get rescued by Chantal, so I’m a little apprehensive, but tonight’s game is definitely the last one, so there is motivation and incentive.
Day 7. Another good day. Busy, busy, busy! It seems to me like, as soon as you finish one thing, there’s a whole selection of other things that need to get done, to choose from. I wonder if one can ever really get it all done? And just when you think you’ve caught up and there’s free time, someone gets sick, or won’t sleep properly, or you’ve forgotten about that load of laundry, or you need milk from the shop, etc., etc.
The reason I say this is because I had to take Seren to the doctor today (nothing serious), then to the pharmacy, plus Olwyn wouldn’t nap because Seren insists on coming into the bedroom with me, promising she’ll be quiet, but of course, never is. How can a 3 year old keep quiet? They can’t! Also, I don’t want to always feed them tinned beans and scrambled eggs, or fish fingers, or frozen pizza for lunch and dinner, so I’m cooking, cleaning, fetching, shopping, comforting, playing, cooking, cleaning, scolding, chasing, walking, running and so on and so on… Please don’t mistake this as a complaint, it isn’t. I love being with my children more than anything. The only thing that would make it better, is if Chantal were with us, or more family for that matter. One thought of being in the office I used to work in is all I need to remind me of how lucky and precious this time is, that I get to spend with them. Not all parents, let alone fathers, get nearly as much time with their little ones as I’ve been blessed with. I’m just trying to express my feelings about how incredibly taxing it is. And it is.
I’m only in the second week and I’m already considering bailing out on this journaling malarkey! I’m not going to quit though. No, but I definitely need to pare it down a little, so I can get to bed a littlie earlier.
So here are the highlights. I made blueberry and ricotta pancakes for lunch and all I can say about that is, too bad for you! You’d be hard pressed to go wrong with blueberries and cheese in the form of a fried cake, then covered in maple syrup. Oh my, it was good. The best/worst part about having food that you love, is that your children might not eat all of theirs. So what does one do? Well, one has to eat his children’s unfinished portions. After all, it would be an awful shame to throw out perfectly good food. Sometimes I think that the number one cause of male beer belly syndrome, isn’t beer, but children not finishing their meals. Clearly we have no self-control when it comes to good food.
Seren and Olwyn were hard at the drawing today. They love their arts and crafts (most of the time). Seren was so sweet, making drawings for everyone. She was even trying to learn how to spell her name! I was so impressed… and proud. We didn’t get a chance to go out into the garden today, or to the playground, but I kept them involved and active all day. We had chicken korma for dinner, using the leftover chicken from last night’s roast chicken and roasted potatoes dinner, that I made. That was also delicious. After dinner, the girls were so tired and stuffed, that they sat quietly beside the bookshelf, just reading books to themselves, while I did dishes and tidied the house. They were asleep by 8:15pm.
It’s 9:15pm now and I’m nearly ready for be too! I’ve decided that it would be irresponsible of me to stay up and watch the hockey game, even though I really want to. “Who cares?”, I keep telling myself. “You’ll find out who won and can see all the highlights when you’re having breakfast and besides, the celebrations will be nearly live anyway! Go Vancouver!!
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. If a recipe calls for butter to be whisked into a mixture… melt it first! That’s what I hear anyway.