These Days

My husband’s alarm wakes me in the morning and I not-so-gently nudge him to actually get up instead of pressing snooze. I’m the type of person who gets up on the first alarm. He is not.  

“What time is your first phone call?” I ask him, hoping it’s not too early today.

“8:00” he tells me. 

“Is it a video?”

“Yep,” he says. 

I sigh and roll out of bed to get ready for the day, watching the time so I can be dressed and out of the room before he logs onto his computer in the office (a small desk at one end of our bedroom). I don’t want to be like his coworker who accidentally gave everyone a glimpse of her husband in the shower. These days it’s important to note when the laptops are on and stay clear. 

I check on my oldest in her room and encourage her to brush her teeth before school. 

“I’ll be ready on time. I know when school starts.” she tells me. “And anyway, they can’t see my teeth up close on the screen.”

“Yeah, but I can,” I tell her.

At 8:30, she shuts the door to her room and logs on to her fifth-grade classroom, sitting at the desk we set up for her under her loft bed. 

The younger two have already been up and playing downstairs for a while. The youngest woke at sunrise, dressed himself in shorts and a t-shirt, (even though it’s practically freezing outside), and wandered into my room where I told him he could go play downstairs. The middle followed him and I hear their happy imaginative play and the clank of Magnatiles while I get ready. Then I head downstairs and give them an announcement.

“Mommy’s going to get laundry going, then we’re starting school!” I say in a singsong voice. I homeschool the youngest in kindergarten and the middle in second grade.

“But we’re playing!” my son exclaims with exasperation.

“And I’m hungry!” my daughter pipes up. We go through this routine practically every morning.

Somehow I had hoped they’d magically fed themselves. But it was not so. I feed the children waffles with syrup and pick up our current read aloud at the kitchen table. “But after this, it’s math time,” I tell them. They both groan, which they know irks me, the former math teacher. We summarize what we’ve read in our story, Blue Willow, and I ask for predictions on what will happen next. I read out loud for a while and they beg me to keep going, but my voice is starting to fade (and I’m not a huge fan of reading out loud).

My oldest wanders downstairs, shoving her hamster in my face so I can acknowledge its presence. “We’re starting a Heritage Project,” she tells me, cuddling her hamster back against her. She gives me details about interviews she needs to do, family tree information we need to dig up.

“That sounds fun,” I say, petting the hamster. “We’ll have to figure all that out later.” Her break is over and she brings her pet back upstairs.

The younger two and I move to the formal dining table in the other room and go through the date and days and numbers of the week, then bring out paints to demonstrate symmetry (See, math can be fun!). They want to keep painting whatever they want, so I let them. My daughter paints a house, and my son makes blobs and mixes them together, forming one big brown blob. I love watching what they create.

My husband wanders downstairs to grab a cup of coffee and the kids beg him to play a game with them.

“Just a quick one, “ he says. “I have another call in ten minutes.”

They crowd around my husband’s arcade game and snort and giggle at each other. I clean up the table and check on the laundry. After a few minutes, my husband turns off the game and goes back upstairs for his call.

“Let’s do reading!” I say.

“I’m hungry!” my son announces. “Is it lunch time yet?”

“Remember breakfast?” I tell him. “We’re doing language arts first.”

“Fine, but then lunch,” he crosses his arms and glares at me. I pull out our reading curriculum and he works on matching games and grins when he finds a correct match. My middle daughter works on drafting paragraphs next to us at the table.

My oldest marches downstairs, declaring herself on lunch break. The other two happily abandon their work and I make lunch, bargaining with the kids over eating a well-rounded lunch instead of just corn dogs. They end up eating corn dogs and some Halloween candy. My husband comes downstairs and grabs his lunch, joining us at the kitchen table for a bit before he has to take another call.

Lunch break is over and we move on to Science and Social Studies. We read books about rocks, boil sugar water and set it up to make rock candy. The kids beg to watch an episode of the Magic School bus, and luckily I can find one to match the current topic. Then they listen to stories of settlers in the new colonies while remodeling their earlier Magnatile creation . My oldest comes downstairs and joins in, her presence signaling the end of the school day.

I tidy up our work from the day and my husband pops back downstairs, announcing he’s going for a walk. The kids grab their sneakers and walk out the door with him. They’ll go swing at the playground for a bit, while I putter around the house by myself, do some laundry, wash dishes, sit and read or write. I relish the silence.

They come home, my husband goes back upstairs to work, and the kids take turns practicing piano. They check their daily checklist to see what chores need to be done, and I smile as I hear them laughing hysterically upstairs as they supposedly put their clothes away. Their feet pound on the stairs as they come down at once and practically run into me.

“Can we blow up balloons?” they ask. “All of them?”

I think about it for a second, but can’t see any reason why not. We used what we needed for science the other day. The rest of the balloons in the bag are extra.

“Sure, go ahead,” I tell them. They start huffing and puffing and hand me balloon after balloon to tie.

“We’re going to fill up our rooms!” my daughter declares with a big grin.

“Sounds like fun to me,” I tell her. I don’t mind balloons all over the place.

They take their balloons upstairs and I hear more giggles and stomping overhead. My husband comes downstairs and we strategize Christmas presents, figuring out what we’re going to get this year. We talk about ideas for the house, possibly finding a new kitchen table.

I make tacos for dinner and we gather around the table, the kids explaining how they decorated balloons with markers and helped each other draw and write words. My oldest has decorated a balloon with a mermaid, the middle a fairy, and the youngest a sky with clouds.

Dinner is over and everyone cleans up. The kids play for a bit before we send them to bed. Then it’s time for my husband to catch up on some e-mails, and for me to work on reading and writing. Tomorrow we’ll wake up and repeat a similar version of today. Then we’ll do it again the next day, and the day after that.

This isn’t what I envisioned our days looking like this year- everyone staying at home, all three of my children doing school here, my oldest on a computer all day, my husband upstairs in our room, but I am enjoying this season of being together. We aren’t rushing to get to school on time, or juggling multiple soccer practices, or filling our social calendar. Instead, the kids are playing together, we get to see each other multiple times a day, and we’re talking and growing closer to each other in our own household. I know many families are not in the same position as us, and I know how blessed we are to be in this place in our lives together. So while there are many things going on outside our home, I'm savoring this time together as a family.

Image by Phoenix Feathers Calligraphy

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in this series "Savor".