VACATION AT HOME
I have spent a month at home this week (on vacation) and I am ready to go back to
work. In the ongoing argument on which is harder, staying at home with the kids or
juggling work & the kids, staying at home is much, much, much harder!! Did I say
much harder?
Now I know working moms are all going to get mad at me for not giving credit for all
that stressful work; ghost writing your boss's presentation, faxing reports, or putting
on makeup at 75 miles per hour, but I have lived it this week and keeping kids 24/7 is harder than my normal job which is, I am sole salesman for United States and Canada
for the Gretsch Guitar company and also website administrator for Gretsch.com. Yet,
my wife Julie has my utmost regard and respect for how she deals with staying at
home with the kids day in, day out.
Herein is a snippet of this week at home watching Olivia our 3 year old and Davis
our 1 year old.
7:14am - "Daddy, daddy, wakeup it's light outside. Can we go to K-Mart now? I need
a toy," says Olivia.
7:15am - ditto
7:16am - ibid, ditto, ibid, ditto, ibid, ditto, ibid, ditto, ibid, ditto,
7:17am - I wake up and push away a sea of toys including Winnie, Tigger, and Mickey
among others. I dreamt last night that I was taken hostage in Vietnam and soldiers
had bayonets to my back. I had been sleeping on a Barbie.
7:33am - Olivia states, "I don't want breakfast, I ate yesterday. Ha, ha, look at
Davis daddy, he has your sock in his mouth."
8:16am - After breakfast, some PBS and some games, I am completely out of things to
do for the day.
8:17am - Olivia brings me the complete works of "A Bug's Life" in hardcover. Twenty
six grueling Kroger special editions to read to her while Davis proceeds to break
a lamp, push over a plant, bump his head and stuff a complete, peeled banana into
the VCR.
9:51am - While on hold with the video repairman, I make a mental note, should I ever
become a terrorist, to add Kroger to my list.
10:00am - The kids program "Arthur" comes on and darn it, I've never learned so much
from an aardvark who wore glasses. Davis goes down for his first nap.
10:07am - Davis wakes up from his nap fully energized. He resists eating my offerings
of pears, then cheese, then bread, then crackers, then chips, then cookies, then
raw, unbleached sugar, yet he proceeds to feed off the carpet in a way that would
make Hoover, Electrolux and Orkin green with envy.
11:31am - We head to the park for a breath of fresh air.
11:33am - I join the ranks of 15 other frazzled parents and three $30-an-hour nannies.
We mostly stand around watching our kids, all the while saying things like, "I have
never heard her say anything like that before, wonder where she heard that word,"
"He 'usually' plays well with other children," and "They say advanced and gifted kids
tend to have behavior problems."
12:45pm - We arrive home for bath time. Davis bumps his head, Olivia gets soap in
her eyes, 28 toys get washed thoroughly and I feel smug because even if I failed
to clean them properly, hey!! some parents in this world don't even care enough to
get their kids wet.
1:00pm - We all settle back into the family room for a nice game of "See who can
get stitches first."
And just think.. If I was at work, by now I would have taken 2 calls, checked email
thrice and rearranged my stacks of papers.
Billy Murphy -- 3/19/99