This spring little boxes with “things to do” have started popping up on my calendar.
It’s an unfamiliar feeling.
The beautiful weather and loosening covid restrictions play into this somewhat but the driving factor is the approaching end of my wife Jenny’s maternity leave.
We’re trying to get all of our routine appointments scheduled now while we have the benefit of two full-time caregivers.
Things like fixing my car’s broken turn signal and tuning up my home’s central air conditioning system take on a whole new level of significance when failing to deal with them now means dealing with them while accompanied by my two diaper-clad “helpers.”
I didn’t even mind seeing my dental hygienist last week since I was able to drop by in the afternoon instead of the ungodly-early appointments I usually schedule to avoid my wife taking PTO to care for the kids in my absence.
The looming deadline is instilling a false sense of urgency to nearly everything we do.
May isn’t even here yet but it already feels like it’s over. It will either be the longest or the fastest month I’ve ever known.
Last May I was so bored I prepared homemade tortillas for Cinco De Mayo and made a baby.
Now, that baby’s three months old and sleep isn’t really “his thing,” so time is just a vortex spinning wildly around my groggy brain.
In addition to my wife’s return to work, May is also bringing Mother’s Day, our sixth wedding anniversary, and two separate two-week visits from in-laws.
Houseguests! Remember those? Company that are constantly around!
If this keeps up I’m gonna need to buy a second pair of pants.
It’s taking some work but I’m getting used to having to look at the calendar again. Jenny told me she wanted to put a date on the calendar and I said “each day is a date. That’s what the calendar records.”
She meant a “date” as in going out together for the express purpose of enjoying each other’s company.
Seems pretty far-fetched to me but I agreed to give it a shot.
Jenny put it on our calendar as “Hot date without kids” even though we’re just going shopping for a canoe, which is the traditional way of celebrating a sixth wedding anniversary.
Watercraft shopping plans aside – I resent my calendar for filling up; I thought we put a stop to all of that.
It’s not the best time for me to suddenly have social responsibilities again.
I’m just starting to get a handle on the whole two-kids thing and I’m about to transition back into being the sole stay-at-home caregiver so I’ve already got a lot on my plate.
It’s been a long time since I had to have a kid somewhere at a specific time that didn’t first require a co-pay. Even Easter services were outdoors so you just rolled up whenever you felt like it as if you were a squirrel.
At least my daughter’s Turtle Dance Class (to bring kids out of their shells – get it?) is on Zoom so I can just point the camera towards a blank wall background and log in at a moment’s notice. Nobody even cares if she’s still in pajamas or is eating her breakfast.
But now the library has invaded my calendar with a three-week series of in-person, outdoor, socially distanced family storytimes starting almost immediately after Jenny goes back to work.
As if I wouldn’t struggle enough to get myself, a toddler, and a newborn out the door for anything happening at a time that ends with A.M., I also get to handle my own weather-dependent logistics.
It’s a delicate balance between being frustrated that covid shutdowns (and winter) kept me from doing something and being frustrated that I suddenly have something to do.
Of course, it could always rain and we’d get all the joy of having plans without the hassle of actually having to do them. There’s not much we can do about that!
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