A New Leaf

I could go on and on about what a great time we had at Brown County, but I won't. I'll just say that the weather was perfect, I spend another entire weekend looking at a horse's ass, that no one or no thing got even one broken bone, and that I didn't see one mosquito due to southern Indiana's extreme drought.

All in all, a pretty damn good time, if you ask me. Oh yeah. And we burned rather easily through a case of Blue Moon and two bottles of wine. And two porterhouse steaks, three baked potatoes, a can of corn, a roll of sausage, a dozen eggs, a bag of hash browns, and two sticks of butter. Yeah, we ate (and drank) like kings.

On to the new, and our biggest accomplishment recently. I'll preface this with the fact that I have always had a problem with people who have kids, then take them to daycare for 10 hours a day, 5 days a week (or more). I never understood why you'd have kids so you can work to pay someone else to raise them (sorry for all of you I have just offended... it's just one of those things I never understood). With this in mind, I should advise that our schedule is rather hectic because of my beliefs. My husband and I both work 40 hours a week, and have successfully played tag-team for some time so that the kids are being raised by US, mostly anyway. Sure, we go out from time to time, and take mini-vacations a few times a year by ourselves, but for the most part, we have done the vast majority of the parenting thus far.

As you can imagine, this is at times rather challenging to maneuver and it's a lot of work. Recently at work, we were talking about child care and those types of things. The other two guys I work with who both have young kid/s also have wives that work days, like them. They both use sitters/daycare. One, in fact, still takes his son to daycare even if he is on a day off (ie: Monday = day off, Kid = daycare). This concept was very bothersome to me, until I started thinking how nice it would really be to have an honest-to-God day off. Because my day's off always consist of getting the weeks chores/shopping/etc done with two preschool age children in tow, a day off really just meant a day I didn't have to go to the office.

With this, a friend of mine who I have known for several years declared (unsolicited) that she wanted to start babysitting (she's a stay at home mom). This got my mind rolling. I started to think, it might actually be a GOOD thing for the kids to go somewhere else a few times a week. That way they get exposed to other environments, other rules, other kids, and I have a few bloody hours that don't include 1:00 am to get some stuff done. We set up a thing where she watches the kids two days a week, which encompasses one of my "days off" and one of Brian's "days off". We have been doing this just for one week, and I already feel a difference in how I feel. On my "day off" it was truly that. I had a whole day to do whatever I felt needed to get done. And it was amazing how much I accomplished! I forgot how fast I could move when it was just me! I even got in a 3 mile run, which truthfully, hasn't happened in a while.

By the time I got the kids, I felt refreshed and accomplished. I found my patience had increased greatly, and that I was more able to deal with the shenanigans a LOT better. Who says money can't buy you sanity. I'll tell ya, that was the best $32 I have spent in a very, very long time.
And I'm even getting over the guilt of dumping them off on someone else. She's being compensated, which is good for her and for me. The kids had a blast, and were worn out by the time they got home. Maybe this isn't so bad after all....