Every once in a while I have one of those moments where I look at my kids and think, holy shit! I really did it! I managed to have a kid at the eleventh hour! And not just one super cute kid, but two identically adorable kids! How did I get so lucky?
Other times, I’m like, if you wake up in the fives one more time, little ladies, I am gonna go on mom strike. My husband and, come to think of it, the godfather of our children, whose judgment I trust implicitly, have both said to me many times, “You wanted this” in response to my whining. Touche, boys.
Case in point, these little cuties will not nap for mom—not in their room anyway. During the week, it’s not a problem because my mom or my husband put them down for nap while I seclude myself in my writing corner for work. I am like the Emily Dickinson of cloud-marketing content, and I don’t mean in terms of talent, but in terms of my ability to hole up alone in a room for hours on end writing about things I can’t even see out my window and have never experienced IRL.
But on the weekends, it’s my watch, and usually that means we take a 2-hour car nap. My kids are so well versed in the art of the car nap that they will chant CAR NAP CAR NAP CAR NAP in unison when they start to feel out of sorts.
I have a love-hate relationship with car naps.
Cons: Dudes, I’m tired too, and because I’m chauffeuring your adorable butts around, I don’t get a break. Instead, I stress out about the state of my tires and whether other drivers are really paying attention. Also, there are often some really dicey moments of car nap mood wise, where one toddler is screaming “WIND!” (that means roll down the window) while the other screams “NO WIND!” equally loudly. Another favorite is “MUCUS!” (that means music, sadly) and “NO MUCUS!” And I am spending far too much time and money at the Dunkies drive-through.
Pros: Podcasts, mainly. And also, I love the adventure of driving aimlessly around winding country roads to see how they connect. On Sunday I drove north to Putney, then west through a series of adorable little Vermont villages like Saxtons River and Athens, mainly on dirt roads. Summer in Vermont is the idealist of seasons and places. Also, I no longer go to Starbucks, so I feel good about that. Because on the New England value system of commercial coffee choices, Dunkies always scores much higher than Starbucks, based on nothing but loyalty and that one hilarious Casey Affleck SNL spoof.
I used to pack value-add activities into my days so that I would feel as productive as possible. I had a complicated algorithm to determine what made an activity worthy, based on input factors like “time spent” and “mascara needed” against end-game goals like “lose 10 pounds” and “make more money” and “have baby.” Even a seemingly passive activity like a silent retreat fell under the productivity category “get more spiritual.”
Productive is no longer my M.O. My M.O. now is sleep — and if I can’t sleep, at least my kids can.
