A morning in the life of a working mom

I wake up at 4:30 in the morning so there’s enough time to exercise, drink a little coffee and get ready *hopefully* without any little children distracting me.

I successfully make it through my morning routine and I’m actually about to leave 10 minutes early for work. I’ve been 10-30 minutes late everyday this week. But then mom-mode kicks in. I was feeling guilty about not helping out around the house all week (the guilt is my own doing and  is not warranted – I’ve already worked 65 hours and commuted 8 hour in the past 5 days alone and my week isn’t done yet – but I can’t get myself to believe that for some reason) and then it begins.

I realize the dishwasher needs to be emptied and I decide I will help Jason out a little and empty it before I go.

Then as I’m putting dishes away, I realize I need to wash my pumping supplies. So I hurriedly wash them.

While doing that, I realize there’s a a few other non-dishwashable items that need to be washed in the sink and I figure I might as well just do those too since it will only take another minute.

I finally finished washing the dishes and realize the counter needs to be wiped down, so I do that real quick.

When I finish that, Elizabeth starts crying. I hurriedly run into the room to give her her pacifier, hoping I can let my husband to sleep for another 20 or 30 minutes before he needs to start caring for the kids.

That’s useless. I rush back to the kitchen warm up some water for a bottle since I pumped and have no milk (and I don’t have time to feed her anyway – now I’m 15 minutes late instead of 10 min early).

Then this level of stress begins to rise. There’s a wailing baby in one room, I am over 15 min minutes late to leave for work and I hear Eli at the bottom of the stairs yelling “mommy, Brooklyn’s up. Can you come get her?”

I put the refrigerated milk into the warm water to help prepare the bottle for my husband as he’s changing Elizabeth.

I move to the living room to gather my things for work when Eli asks if he can have a banana. He’s just tall enough to reach to the tip of the banana but isn’t quite able to get it off the banana tree. I sigh quietly but say “of course” happily.

I walk over to him in the kitchen while Jason goes to get Brooklyn. I peel the banana for Eli and ask if he could be a super helpful big brother and maybe start feeding Elizabeth the bottle. He starts crying, saying no he just can’t do two things at once, it’s too much.

Then Eli proceeds to have a meltdown about a string of banana stuck on the banana. He gets it off the banana but then it’s stuck to his hand. This just makes him more angry. He is standing in front of the garbage can throwing a temper tantrum over a banana string.

As I walk out the door, I hear Brooklyn saying mommy over and over again as she is coming up the stairs. I try to not feel horrible that I won’t be seeing her for the entire day and she just doesn’t understand why I’m gone all day.

Elizabeth is still wailing because she really wants to eat, and I don’t blame her – she hasn’t eaten in 10 hours which is like an eternity in baby time.

And Eli is  still having a temper tantrum in the kitchen over the banana string.

How does 10 minutes early turn into 25 minutes late that quickly? 3 kids and mom guilt – that’s how.