The first day

Shh! Its 5:45am and my house is serenely quiet. Everyone but me is still asleep, blissful unaware of the day yet to come. I have exactly 45 min.’s until Anthony and Brad’s alarm goes off and 50 min.’s until the girls are up. Then, their little worlds will switch to upside down mode. I start my new job today. I prepared everything I could last night so that we could be quick and efficient this morning without yelling or stressing about running behind. Outfits are picked out and stacked neatly in the bathroom, showers and baths were taken last night, tonight’s dinner is ready in the crock pot and lunches are made.

Yesterday didn’t go exactly as I planned. Instead of the final prep for this next week of in-office work, I spent most of the day at the Chiropractor and Urgent Care. I sprained one of my right shoulders rotator cuff muscles.  It’s not a bad injury, it will heal, it’s just painful! Oh, and the main style of movement I’m not supposed to do is lift a phone to my ear. Nice huh? On the up side, the girls spent the day with Aunt Sasha and had a blast. They went to the park and ran a few errands and got spoiled by everyone they encountered.

Once I finally got home, I noticed that Hailey was really quiet. I thought maybe she was just tired from running around with Sara and Kenna all morning so I just let her be. Finally, once we were home from running our errands, I asked her if she was ok? She looked up at me with an almost blank expression. Then, the giant crocodile tears started to fall down her face.

“I don’t want you to go away Mom, I don’t want you to go to a new job, I want you to stay home with me.”

Ugh.

All she’s ever known is me at home. I’ve done the on call job since she was 6 weeks old. The last time I had to go into an office she was too little to even know. So, we sat down together and made a calendar of the next two weeks. We mapped out where she would be, who she would be with and when Mommy would be home. We drew happy faces on the weekends, talked about when I would pick her up each night and all the fun things she’s going to get to do with her family while I’m at work. The calendar is taped on her door and she gets to mark off each day so she knows what her next day is.

It’s funny how much of an impact me being at home has on a whole range of people. Being my normal OCD self, I’ve created a schedule for the next few weeks. It’s a day by day, hour by hour schedule of who is where, when and how everyone’s getting to their spots. Sounds a bit anal for even me but there are a total of 13 people’s lives that are affected by this. I’ve discovered that I’m a stay at home mom to more than just my 3 kids.  A lot more people rely on my open availability, my flexibility in schedule and reliability in being home whenever I’m needed.

We’ll survive. It only for two weeks.

Now, its 6:15 and I need to go try to dry my hair with my left hand and figure out how to put make up on left handed. Wish me luck! I have this vision of myself at the office today with messy-ratted hair, buttons misaligned, make up smudged in all the wrong places, pacing up and down the break room reassuring my children that I will be home in 5 hours….4 hours…3 hours….

Somehow much closer to luke-warm mess than I will ever be to hot mess.