On days I don't sub, I wake up at 6:15 to my alarm (Josh is already up & in the shower) and go wake up our three boys. I unlock the phone box (an old gun safe we use to lock up the boys' phones at night) as I walk down the hall from Wyatt's room to the twins' room. "Good morning, boys. Time to wake up," I sing at them. One of the twins will usually pop right up, grab their phone and get in the shower. The other will sleep a little longer until it's their turn in the bathroom. I usually have to wake Wyatt up at least three times before he'll get up and get dressed. He's my slow mover.
Then I get dressed (uniform: yoga pants, sports bra, t-shirt and hot pink crocs) and wash my face. Usually by the time all three boys are awake (6:45am), Carly wakes up. She departs her slumber starving, and follows me around my room as I make my bed and get ready for the day begging me to go downstairs with her and make her a bagel. During this time she also opens her advent calendar (it's for American Girl dolls, but it's the Walmart brand and every piece has been so adorable!) Eventually we make our way downstairs and get her food going. Typically I also eat at this time, trying to be present for the boys as they get ready to leave. They leave the house no later than 7:20, the twins alternating driving. Phone, keys, wallet, backpacks is the checklist I recite for them to make sure they've forgotten nothing. They don't eat breakfast which hurts my feelings (haha) and are gone. They drop Wyatt at the middle school on their way to the high school. (Next year they'll be together at the high school- Wyatt a freshmen and the twins seniors!)
This morning I had to put together a list of ADHD behaviors I see in Logan & Wyatt in all different settings for Dr. Diamond who is working on their diagnoses. So I looked back in my journal for my notes on ADHD from "ADHD is Awesome" and consulted some checklists online as well to make sure my list is as thorough as possible. When that was done I jumped in the shower then rushed downstairs to make Carly's lunch and do her hair. We managed to leave by 9:00am, remembering to bring her Christmas mug for the hot cocoa party this week (which she then forgot in the car-doh!), and then played Word Game while we waited in the drop off line. (Word game is on my phone- it gives 7 letters and you have to make as many words as you can from it. She's obsessed and I love playing it with her.)
Before our turn in line, she gets her backpack on and I kiss her face. Everyday it never fails that I think, "What if I never saw her again" and I kiss her forehead or cheeks. Dropping your kid off at school shouldn't be emotional everyday, but I can't help but think of all the parents in America who dropped their kids off and never saw them alive again. Sigh.
On the drive back to our house today I called my sister to catch her up on all the latest gossip and see how she's doing. Her morning getting her crew out the door was good and my middle niece Daphne has her first gymnastics class today. When I got home they facetimed so I could see her leotard. She's so cute and if I could bottle up her voice, I would. It's so freaking adorable.
As I chat with my sister, I move through the house tidying, sorting bills & paperwork on the bar and cleaning up the kitchen from breakfast and lunch making. When we hang up I am tired, tempted to take a nap, but there's too much to do for sleeping.
I scroll my phone and eat a few Christmas chocolates I bought in bulk from Winco, then I buckle down to get some things on my to do list done. I start with deferring my student loans which are going to come due next month. Until I have a job from my degree, I simply can't afford to make payments on those loans. Then I answer a phone call from Jack who had counseling mid-morning and now has a headache and wants to come home.
When he gets home he comes upstairs to check in with me, and he tells me it's snowing outside so I open my bedroom windows and sit down to type out my "Day In the Life" for the morning. He scrolls his phone in my reading chair next to me and I type as the cat (Hadley) snuggles up in his lap, even though I sit in the same chair all.the.time and she NEVER snuggles up with me. (I am so jealous!)
Pretty soon it's time to go get Wyatt for his ADHD assessment, so I ask Jack to make me a sandwich as I put on my shoes and vest. I then head to the middle school where it is raining buckets as I make the trek from the parking lot to the office. I get Wyatt signed out and we head to the doctor. My purse is full with my journal, a book and the lunch Jack made me (in addition to the sandwich, he got me grapes, BBQ potato chips and some of the muddy buddies I made last night) so that I can eat and journal or read while I wait for Wyatt's one hour appointment to be over.
While Wyatt is in with Dr. Diamond, I eat my lunch and read The Snow Child (an annual winter re-read for me). Soon Logan walks in (he has the same appointment in the slot after Wyatt) and Wyatt's appointment ends. He told me that it was an interactive IQ test, not done on the computer, and that it made him feel really dumb. We laugh a little and he explains that she kept asking him to remember things and he just couldn't do it. I reassured him that doesn't make him dumb, it just means that he likely has ADHD, as we suspected. Short term memory issues are big in ADHD. Regardless, he's happy to have it done! We leave Logan at his appointment (he drove his own car there) and I drop Wyatt at home before heading to the elementary school to grab Carly. I sit in the parent pick up line, my eyes heavy, listening to Atomic Habits which my sister and I are going to read together and then discuss.
As I pull up to grab Carly, she is standing in the rain with her new clouds umbrella. She's so cute I can't stand it. She hops in and tries to holler a happy birthday to their old librarian. She's so thoughtful. On the drive home she is dysregulated and grouchy about not knowing that it was spirit week. She's mad I didn't tell her about Ugly Sweater day Monday or that today was Fancy day. (She's literally wearing a dress, high heels and gold earrings... so I'm not sure why she's mad...not to mention that she doesn't own an Ugly Christmas sweater) As I continue driving and listening she starts telling me that a friend of hers is getting gifts for some people in their friend group but not her, and then I know why she's really upset. We grab the mail and head home, and as soon as we walk in the door, she's crying and upset again.
Her brothers have eaten all the rest of the muddy buddies. I send her to the bathroom to wash her hands and assure her that I have some (I never ate mine that Jack packed me) and she can have them. #motherhood am I right?
I get her set up with her tablet for a little screen time unwind with a snack, and take some deep breaths as I continue opening mail. There's a letter from our bank talking about fraudulent charges I didn't know about, so before I know it, I am going through our bank statements with a fine tooth comb, line by line, making sure that there's nothing else I didn't authorize. Thankfully it's just one charge and they seem to have caught it. Sigh. I swear it's always something.
Jack leaves to go get some job applications and turn in the one he's filled out, then Logan arrives home and leaves to do the same. I get Wyatt going on some missing assignments; have Carly do her math homework (multiplication facts and a division worksheet) and unload the dishwasher while I turn all her clothes right side out for the wash. Josh arrives home after a 504 meeting for one of his students and starts dinner (homemade macaroni & cheese and ham). God bless him.
I go upstairs and start changing our sheets while Carly showers as dinner cooks. She has never really gotten back to her normal chipper self, and all mama's know that water can work wonders. So she showers and gets in pajamas and goes to play in her room. Meanwhile I am cleaning up our mess of a bedroom that has been neglected all day while Logan takes a personality test of some kind that Dr. Diamond wants him to fill out (with 264 questions!) in addition to the IQ test. Eventually I put away all our laundry and get my to-do list on my phone sorted out.
Since 2020 my memory has not been as good as it once was, so anything I need to do or remember has to go on my to-do list or it's not getting done. It feels good to have it in order. When dinner is ready Logan hollers up the stairs for me and I grab Carly and we head down. I cut her ham while Jack serves up macaroni to everyone. The kids call this "crunch macaroni" since Josh crumbles up goldfish to put on top of it, and we are shocked at how much they all eat. We used to make it in Alaska all the time, but haven't made it in probably two years. It's a hit! We somehow end up talking about potty training and poop (have kids, they said) haha! As we finish up dinner (I am always the last one done) Wyatt goes up to shower and Jack & Josh get ready to go on their evening walk with the dogs.
But then Logan gets a phone call from their friend Brennen who needs a ride home from work. We say yes because we love that they are such good friends, and Brennen is the one who told Jack to tell us about his suicidal ideation back in September. After we say yes, an argument begins because Jack has his six months (in Washington state you have to have your license for six months before you can drive with anyone other than your immediate family in the car) and Logan doesn't. But Logan's car gets the best gas mileage, and Brennen lives way out of town. Finally the boys decide they will go together; Jack will drive Brennen to his house, and Logan can drive on the way home, when it's just the two of them. But even once the decision is made, Logan still calls Josh to tell him that Jack is horrible at driving stick shift and is going to ruin his car. Josh assures him the car can handle it and that Jack will only get better if he practices. They exhaust me.
When they get back, I am upstairs putting Carly to bed. She brushes, takes melatonin and while we usually read books, tonight she is tired, so she climbs into bed while I play JJ Heller's "I Dream of You" album, singing Edelweiss and In The Morning before giving her the biggest hug and quietly closing her door.
Josh needs to buy his grade team Christmas gifts so we head to Walmart, leaving the three boys up gaming/being on their phones. It still blows us away that we can just leave the kids at home. We meander through Walmart, getting batteries, distilled water for my CPAP and stocking stuffers for the kids, in addition to gifts for Josh's teammates. Then we hit Dollar Tree for gift bags for Josh's students and I also find a Santa mug that Carly can take to school for her hot cocoa party on Friday. It's much cuter than the old, chipped reindeer mug she had planned on bringing.
When we get home, all the boys are already upstairs in their beds, exhausted. Jack is just getting over a cold and Logan is starting to develop one. I bring Jack's depression meds up to him, get Logan some Nyquil, and bring Wyatt batteries for his remote. Once we take their phones & put them in the box to charge, and they're tucked in, we unpack our purchases (we had a $200 total budget for stocking stuffers, in addition to $200 per kid for gifts) and get things put away. Then we head to bed for the night, locking the doors, putting the dogs in their crates, shutting the curtains, turning off the lights, running the laundry one more time, and carrying all the keys upstairs. (We bring the keys to bed because driving fast & crashing was Jack's plan for killing himself and until he has been great for a long time, we don't want him to have unrestricted access to the keys at night.) I also have to move the elves. Thankfully between the five of us who are helping this year, we have only forgotten them once! Not bad!
I get upstairs and wrap Josh's coworkers gifts while he gets ready for bed, then realize I have forgotten to take my pills and trudge back downstairs where I take my pills with a spoon of applesauce like a child because I always get the feeling they're stuck in my throat if I take them with water. Then I run the dryer one more time (our old, sad dryer has to run at least twice to get the clothes dry, and before that, we have to spin our old, sad washer one extra time to really wring out the clothes) and head upstairs.
I wash my face, floss and brush and climb into fresh sheets in my favorite night gown, so happy to be in bed. I scroll my phone for way too long before finally opening The Snow Child to read a few pages before I succumb to sleep. By then it's midnight and I know tomorrow morning is going to come too soon.
*My night didn't end there- I was awoken by Carly around 4am asking me to put her back to sleep. She needed a warm washcloth for her eyes, so I got that for her, then tucked her in, playing a few more songs before going back to bed myself.
