Where I present a night in the life of an ordinary father

It’s no secret that parenthood has mad moments – so here’s a night in the life from last week. Be prepared – this is a parenting adventure, so there may be ample talk of tears and other bodily fluids.

Work, this past week, has been rough – a formerly “well-known” process has, simply fallen apart. Of course, this process falling apart has lead us to have multiple issues with other teams, meaning that everything falls on me to get the process working. Which means redefining the process. Which is no fun. Also, I like writing in sentence fragments.

So, we come to Thursday. Typically Thursdays are long, but ok days for me. I do “my thing” in the morning and leave before anyone is awake. Duffy shows up with the kids & we have lunch, and then, after work, I head out to band practice.

I went about my morning routine, walking the dogs and motivating myself to run when two things happened – the power went out and my daughter woke up. Now, we still don’t know why the power went out¹, but all I was thinking was that I wanted a hot shower. This meant that I either got into the shower right then or I skipped my run and went to the gym. I chose to take it easy and hop into the shower.

No sooner had I got into the shower, though, than my daughter worked her way in. See, we try to placate her, when she wakes up early, with TV, because we’re the most awesomest parents in the world, but without power, there is no TV. Explaining that fact to a toddler is, well, pointless.

So, she joined me in the shower because, otherwise, she’d have the ability to wake up her brother, and that’s best avoided.

I showered with Leila, but she got pretty pissed at me when I turned the water off – if Duffy wanted to shower, I wanted her to have some hot water. So she screamed and screamed and screamed. This startled Duffy into action because, well, a kid screaming in the bath might be the start of something more than “just dramatics.”

Anyway, I got myself dressed and out the door, where work beckoned. And it was just as hectic & brutal as it had been . . . but noon came, and with that Duffy and the kids.

When you’re trying to feed two heathens toddlers, a Chinese buffet works. You dictate the size of the portions that they see, so if they’re more in the mood for fruit or rice or noodles or fried deliciousness, you’re not wasting food. We ate – and the place just hired a new sushi chef, and, damn, was he good.

In the middle of lunch, Duffy checked her email and looked up, crestfallen. Instead of band rehearsal, I was coming home right after work so that Duffy could get away for a Mother’s Night Out & go on a ghost tour of Gettysburg. She deserves this . . . I mean, she has to put up with me just about every day – she needs a night to herself every now & then. Well, the person they had hired to give the ghost tour had hurt her back and was, therefore, unable to give the tour.

We ate our lunch – lots of sushi for Duffy & myself, lots of melon for Leila, a few cookies for CJ (again, most awesomest parents ever), and I tried to talk her into a night out with her sister. She just didn’t know, so it sounded like we were going to have the night together. Fortunately, a little while later, after I got back to the office, they found another ghost tour operator, and things were back on.

So, I left the office & got home, changed, and took the kids to the park. If the kids weren’t home when mommy left, that’d be better – and my hope was to tire the kids out so that they would have an easy time and I would drink wine and goof off get some work and writing done.

We walked to the park and did the normal thing² until I got a phone call from the wife. We had forgotten that they were due for their flu shots . . . so I started to pack up³ and walked back home with the kids in their wagon as they screamed that they just wanted to go down the slide one more time.

I got to the doctor and they got their shots like pros – seriously, there were some signs that they didn’t like getting stuck with needles, but no tears, and we left with lots of smiles.

I got home and Duffy was already gone . . . I started to think about dinner when CJ handed me the DVD of The Empire Strikes Back, so I put it in. The two of them watched the movie for a little while as I heated up some leftover pizza and thought about other plans for Project: Dinner.

Placing the two kids in their seats, I gave them some frozen veggies (they seriously prefer their vegetables frozen – their pediatrician frowns on the practice a little, for fear of a choking hazard, but the peas & carrots that they’re eating are smaller than their windpipes, and if they’re going to choke on something, I’d rather it be something that will thaw) and tried to get them to eat some pizza. Except there was a movie on.

So, being a professional dad^TM, I sat on the couch, holding a piece of pizza as the two of them watched their movie, played with their toys, and came by every now & then for a bite.

The dogs hated me for this.

Eventually, someone was smelly as we approached bedtime, so I took her upstairs to put her PJ’s on. CJ, at this time, was still quite into the movie, so I let him stay, watching. This was a mistake. As soon as I got Leila’s diaper off, CJ realized he was alone & the breakdown started. I hurried through the diaper change, grabbed a fresh diaper for the boy & PJ’s for the two of them and rushed back downstairs.

I put an overnight diaper on CJ and then went to put Leila’s PJ’s on when CJ noticed the band-aid from the flu-shot. He pressed it (because, really, there’s a random thing on your leg, what else would you do?) and it hurt. So that mini-breakdown that we had because he thought he was alone (which I’m certain would have been worse if I had actually taken him away from The Empire Strikes Back) was now a full-blown scream-fest. But, well, this is to be expected with a not-quite-two-year-old.

After some soothing and some “pew pew” noises to match a blaster battle on the TV, and maybe a zerbert or two, I managed to get everyone into PJ’s and we finished watching Empire.

By 8pm, signs of “the tired” were evident . . . on me, on the dogs, and especially on the babies. So we went upstairs to the bedroom, armed with sippy cups of milk. Leila was asleep by 8:30, when I turned off the TV and started to get a little more serious about getting CJ to sleep. He must have fallen asleep fairly soon after, because I woke just after 9 with a start, with a baby nestled in each armpit.

I put them in their nursery without waking them, went downstairs to prepare sippy cups on ice for any overnight, and got back upstairs to find a waking girl.

Leila is infuriating when she first wakes up – because she’s pleasant. She just wants to be awake and happy and to explore . . . except it was bedtime, so I brought her over to the bedroom & rocked her as I watched TV (because she’s absolutely powerless against my shoulder, still – and when she first wakes up, she forgets that she’s supposed to fight ever laying against my shoulder if she hopes to keep herself awake). By 10, she was back asleep, but in putting her back in her crib, I woke the boy. So the boy came over & we cuddled & watched baseball.

Then the cough started.

It wasn’t from the boy, but from the girl – I brought her back over and made the biggest mistake of the night. She was somewhere between awake & asleep, and cranky. So, I gave her some milk, because milk always puts her to sleep. And it worked.

Duffy came home at about 11:30 from her ghost tour to find me in bed with both kids . . . and that’s how we went to bed.

Around 2, Leila woke the two of us up by coughing . . . and kept us up for awhile.

At 4, the alarm went off . . . and I reset it . . . I didn’t really want to run (it was cold outside, I just knew it), so I went to lie back down . . . if I didn’t fall asleep shortly, I’d get up and run. If I fell back asleep, well, my body needed it and I’d get up in an hour & just run less.

At 4:15, it happened.

Leila started coughing again. And, because she was exhausted and coughing, she was miserable. Nothing was consoling her . . . she was running a fever because of the flu shot. We decided to give her some children’s Tylenol, in the hopes that it might sooth her. I filled a syringe, but she wouldn’t cooperate, so Duffy held her still while I forced the medicine into her mouth. As soon as I turned my back to them, to wash out the syringe, she puked.

All that was in her stomach was milk, and now it was all over everything.

We cleaned up – Duffy took Leila in the shower. I got all of the chunks I could and threw everything in the washing machine.

Leila passed right back out after the shower, I got another 20 minutes of sleep before the alarm went off & I had to get up. CJ was pleasant.

That next day at work . . . well, I have absolutely no clue what happened. At all. Wait, no – I left early and mowed the lawn. I may have had some wine to drink that night. Just maybe.