If I were ever on a reality show, the best time for taping would be around 3:00 PM when all the kids are home and throughout the night until 7:45 AM the next morning when they are out of the house. This is when all of the magic happens—and I don’t mean in the bedroom.
When the kids I’ve missed so dearly all fill the home once more, with their stories, and fighting, and begging and eating—this is when my real job begins. It is a constant parade of activity and noise and feeding and wiping and refereeing until finally they are all tucked into bed. But, wait, my work doesn’t end there. The night time is a blur of shenanigans that only a mother can truly appreciate. I only say that because my husband sleeps right through this entire part of our life. Like a sane person.
My three-year old always takes a nap during the day, so he can be fresh and alert until past 11 EVERY NIGHT. So he usually is in bed with us, watching TV thus forcing us to turn off whatever we’ve saved all week on the DVR and turn on Teen Titans. Which, admittedly he probably shouldn’t be watching either but it’s called compromise, people.
Once he’s asleep, I spend an hour or so doing whatever administrative household-type work that can be done from my phone, and folding laundry. Sometime between 12-2 my five year old usually wakes up—sometimes he needs to go to the bathroom, sometimes he is itchy from eczema, other times he just wants to tell me he doesn’t like it when it’s quiet, or his brothers are touching him. Something like that.
The baby typically wakes sometime between 2-4, crying for an “eebaba” which we assume means he wants to eat a bottle, so I prepare him one and put him in my bed before he wakes the others. He drinks the whole thing and soaks through his diaper onto my clothes, so I have to get up and change him, me, the sheets…
My six year old wakes up between 4-5 every morning. We tried putting him to bed later but he is just an early riser. He would get up and make all kinds of noise until everyone in the house is awake hours before they need to be. A few times he gets up and wanders around the house quietly—usually putting on the television downstairs and generally minding his own business. Or, at least that’s what I thought he was doing.
It started when I noticed random lights or fans on in rooms no one had been in, or things generally out of place. Then the other day, I found an eaten fried chicken wing under his bed, so I figured he must have brought up a snack. That night I found an empty soda can on the floor of the baby’s room. I put the baby in his crib and I feel all these rocky little crumbs everywhere. I turn on the light and the baby’s crib is full of fried chicken bits. I guess at some point, my oldest must have climbed into the baby’s crib and ate chicken and a soda? My husband was like, “Oh, I doubt that’s what happened,” so I said, “Okay, then we have a strange person hiding in our house eating Popeye’s in the baby’s crib.”
There is no real conclusion to this story. Just wanted to let anyone who may be considering me for a reality show know the best time to send over the camera crew, for their scheduling convenience.