Wake Up

The kids woke up early today. Too early - 5:30am to be exact.
That's actually typical but last night I had band practice
and then when I got home decided to try the whole blog thing
so I didn't get to bed til after 1am. I feel pretty good for having less than five hours of sleep.

It's such a drag to have them be early risers because there's not much to do at that time of day except plant them in front of the television. It's just that I'm barely functional until 7:30am at least. Then I make them breakfast by 8am (today it was mini pancakes with butter and maple syrup) and usually have them both dressed by 9am when it is time to take my oldest son Spencer to preschool. Today he doesn't have to go to school until after 10am because of a delayed start time due to the bad weather. I often wonder how working parents deal with snow days. I mean when there's no school you better have a babysitter on hand or a very understandable employer who let's you take the day off. It's the two words no parent wants to hear: no school.

Spencer broke his collarbone in Decemeber (that's a whole 'another story right there) and didn't go to school for a week and then was off for winter break for two more weeks. So I had three weeks of a 4-and-a-half-year-old and an almost-2-year-old. Punch in at 5:30am and hopefully clock out around 8pm when the little ones finally go to sleep. Then I spend the next couple of hours trying to carve out some personal time be it watching bad reality TV with the wife, listening to music and try do some writing or - as was the case last night - have band practice. Wednesday nights have been officialy declared band night so it's one thing I can always look forward to: it gives me a sense of balance, allows me to hang with some adult men (there's not a dirth of stay-at-home-dads in this neck of the woods so kid playdates are usually spent with women - which has proved to be very insightful in many ways), and release some stress via the loud punk rock action.

They say we might get two inches of snow here tomorrow so I better go browse the internet for some decent indoor art/science projects to keep the boys entertained come Friday.

Tomorrow is also the day I'm scheduled for my vasectomy.
No more kiddies for me. No sir. Two is plenty and almost more than I can handle. My heart goes out to the single mothers/fathers out there - you are the true heroes.