My days are divided into two distinct sections: before the kids are in bed for the night and after the kids are in bed for the night.
I love my kids (2.5 year old daughter and 6-month-old son) with all of my heart, but post-bedtime life is just a little bit easier.
Consider this: I’ve never once told my wife, “Let’s wake the kids up a little bit early today, we could use a break.”
In an earlier column, I described the universal exhale all parents make after closing their kid’s bedroom door for (what you hope is the last time of) the night as a “restorative sigh that feeds tired parents’ souls.”
If you don’t have kids, the best analogy I can use is the moment after a landing airplane safely slows to taxiing speed on the runway. And not after a smooth flight.
After a flight with at least three bursts of turbulence that not only caused the pilot to turn the seatbelt sign back on, but also had the flight attendant scurry to the back with an abrupt but not panicked stride.
The sort of landing where at least five passengers burst into applause including one who’s clearly dumbfounded when the other people in her row don’t join.
That exhalation sheds an alertness-based tension you weren’t even aware you had until you felt it’s release.
I hesitate to immediately dive into a new activity once the kids are in bed because it’s still too fresh.
Knowing I could be immediately sucked right back into either kid’s room, I typically collapse onto my couch and scroll through my phone, then get shocked at how quickly the night is passing when I next look up forty minutes later.
It takes a good-sized buffer between my pre-kid-bedtime and post-kid-bedtime lives just to regroup. It’s the closest thing to being “off duty” I get outside of the one hour a month I spend going to get a haircut.
When we were expecting our first child and I imagined my life as a stay-at-home dad, I had big plans for all of the things I’d get done during nap times, but naps aren’t bedtime and my kids know it.
My 6-month-old son never demands to be held all night long but at least once a week he makes it clear that if I want him to nap, I’d better clear my schedule and get comfortable in our La-z-boy rocker.
My daughter keeps moving in and out of “I don’t need a nap” phases but my sanity requires it so I’m going to keep grinding out the naptime routine for as long as possible.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done some awesome things during my kids’ naps. Once I even assembled an entire lawn mower AND a standing cooler cart during the same simultaneous nap!
But I can never depend on their naps lining up. That’s why I never EVER take it for granted when I’m able to get their daytime snoozes to overlap.
With one kid I could plan on accomplishing basic things during nap time like showering or eating. But, with two, I can only assign that time to things I’d like to do but usually don’t actually get to do, like: reading the newspaper, writing, or refilling the ice cube trays.
Our naps aren’t defined well enough like bedtime. They miss the natural boundaries that natural darkness provides.
Blackout curtains and white noise machines are great but even a two-year-old can see through their ruse on a bright summer day with birds singing outside and trucks clattering past the windows every few minutes.
Try as I may to convince them (and myself) otherwise, there’s only one bedtime a day. That’s why it feels so nice when you stick the landing.
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