A Parenting Hack: How One Hour has Changed my Week

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cartoon-1296854_960_720Mondays are hectic, no?  I always find Monday to be a bit of a whirlwind, especially if the weekend has been full of blissful, unstructured downtime.  I just had one of those weekends- a weekend of yard work and flag football, pop-over guests and walks downtown.  Those are the weekends that fill me up and remind me yet again that it’s the simple things that mean the most (The Disease of Being Busy, remember?).  So when the routines of a Monday come back into play, it takes my sensitive side a bit of time to catch up.

I’ve been lucky to have a career with flexibility, and the benefit of fitting in my work around my life, instead of the reverse.  My practice has changed and evolved as my family’s needs have changed and evolved, and it’s only been in the last couple of years that I’ve gone back to working more of a full-time schedule.  For me, that means that for the past two years, Mondays look like this:

For a time, I didn’t do school pickup on Mondays.  I worked straight through, 11am-7pm, and would come home just in time to tuck in my young children.  With only a short time together before they went to school in the morning, I felt like I was missing out on way too much of their day; my heart always felt heavy on Monday nights.  Soon into that school year, after a few tears and a lot of soul-searching, my husband suggested that I modify my hours slightly to accommodate more family time.  Namely, making the school pickup and 10-minute walk home a part of my day.  Brilliant.  Such a simple solution, and yet it was a modification I couldn’t see when looking from the inside out.  It was the forest and the trees and all of the other cliche wisdom.

So I began blocking off an hour in the middle of my Monday (and was once again oh-so-thankful for the logistics of our neighbourhood), so that I could pick up my kids from school and walk them home before heading back for an afternoon at the clinic.  Our walks to and from school are without a doubt my most favourite parts of the day.  In those ten minutes, I rarely get a word in edgewise; they spill their guts, share their dreams, tell their stories.  We walk, we laugh, we talk, interrupted and carefree.  And this has completely changed my Monday, and therefore, my whole week.

A one-hour change.

That’s all it took.

Sometimes the simplest changes produce the biggest results.

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This has tipped my balance

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My mama guilt has been running high as of late, pun intended.  You see, for the past three months, I’ve been focused on a lofty running goal: the Around the Bay 30K, a Southern Ontario pinnacle event in distance-running.  I’ve done the full 30km race only twice; once in 2004, with the youthful abilities of speed and recovery on my side, and once in 2008, as an under-trained newlywed, happy to be running alongside my husband.  Since then, running has been bumped down my priority list.

But now, two kids and a decade later, it’s been bumped back up.

My kids are a bit older, and we’re beyond the all-consuming baby/toddler stage, so I’ve had the time to rekindle my love affair with my sport.  For the last year, that’s meant mostly solo miles, with the highlight of one run per week with my dear Michaela.  Our ultimate goal is the 2019 New York City Marathon, but I felt my mid-week motivation waning as the cold weather and dark mornings descended upon us in the late Fall of 2017.  When my wheels came off in June last year, I knew things had to change if my New York dream was to come true.  So, in November, I joined a new training group, thanks to the advice of my friend Sarah.  And it’s been a game-changer.

This group does their long runs on Sunday mornings.  Although this is nothing new for me, the difference is that my long run used to hover around 15km, but for the past three months it’s been almost twice that.  More milage means more time required, and my quick-run-while-my-children sleep Sundays have been put aside for the last number of weeks; this has tipped my balance.

Balance is a fine line that I tiptoe along, often trading sleep for other priorities.  I’m sure many of you are in the same boat.   And so, with minimal family disruption, the bonus being other like-minded people who think it’s normal to get up before 5:00, my alarm clock rings at 4:45am on Tuesdays and Thursdays; my run is done and I’m back home before the rest of my house wakes.  The same can be said for my 6am 10k on Saturday mornings.  But as my Sunday group long runs have progressed in distance, I’ve had to rally my village.  My husband has been on his own for breakfast duty and hockey practices, for transporting kids and mobilizing sleepy children into cold vehicles.  My father-in-law has helped juggle back-to-back practices for two kids on two ends of the city and my neighbour has stepped in to carpool when other plans fell through.  The village for my children has become the village for me. It-Takes-a-Village-to-Raise-a-Child-6001

But there’s guilt.

Guilt at missing kid’s activities.  Guilt at putting it all on my husband’s shoulders.  Guilt at asking for help.  Guilt at doing something that’s all for me.

But there’s also joy.

Joy at doing something I love.  Joy at running times that seemed impossible only months ago.  Joy that my children see me value my health and my fitness and myself.

Joy that I didn’t quit when it GOT DAMN HARD.

Bring on the taper, let’s chase more joy.

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This is my heart rate data from my last long run in this training cycle (33km).  Most of it was done in the pre-dawn darkness of Sunday morning.

“You are the joy of my life”

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I was snuggling with my five-year-old daughter before she went to bed the other night, as is our normal routine.  She’s got a chiropractic-approved mattress in her bedroom, but for the last couple of months, she’s insisted on sleeping on a double air mattress on her floor.  This came about after my brother and his family visited at Thanksgiving; we set up the air mattress for additional sleeping space while they were here and, well, she’s staked her claim and insisted that the air mattress is her preferred sleeping spot.  So, there we have it, an expensive mattress sits unused while a cheap air mattress is favoured and cherished.  Kids are weird.

But, back to my story.  After we read bedtime books, we shut out the lights, and I lay beside her for a snuggle.  This is one of my favourite parts of the day; the part where she tells me her thoughts and asks me lots of questions.  This is uninterrupted, one-on-one time, the stuff parenting dreams are made of.

“Mom,” she whispered, her sleepy face snug up against mine, “you are the joy of my life.” joy

My heart filled and my tears welled up.  She said it just like that: “you are the joy of my life.”  Could there be a more perfect statement?  In just seven tiny words, she articulated the feelings I’ve had for years.  Joy, yes.  Joy of my life, definitely yes.

My eight-year-old son is also still in the snuggle-with-mama stage of life.  Last week we walked to school hand in hand, and I marvelled at the little boy who is growing up right before my eyes.  “When do you think you’ll be old enough that you don’t want to hold my hand anymore?” I asked him.  “Mom,” he said confidently, “I will never be too old to hold your hand.”  Oh, my sweet boy, how I hope that’s true.

My husband and I have been talking recently about how we’ve found ourselves in the “sweet spot” of parenting as of late.  We no longer have the physical challenges of babies and toddlers and we’re not yet into the emotional challenges of tweens and teens.  We can take our kids anywhere without worrying about naps and strollers and baby food, and yet they still want to be with us, with the full, unbridled enthusiasm of youth and naivety.

This is very likely our final Christmas with two Santa-believers still intact, and you can be sure I’m going to soak it all in, just like I’ve tried to do throughout their childhood.  I’ve heard that “the days are long but the years are short,” and I’ve found that to be true as this parenting train has rolled along, picking up speed as it goes.

Oh yes, you are the joy of my life.

the days are long