Manic Mondays

I always feel fresh and inspired on Mondays. It is the beginning of a new week and another chance to start checking tasks off my endless to-do list. I always pack a lot into Mondays because I want to start the week off on the right foot. I feel like if I accomplish a lot on Mondays, I will set the tone for the rest of the week and continue to get a lot done each and every day, thus feeling a continued sense of accomplishment and motivation to keep plugging along.

This Monday was no different. I had a list of tasks for the day and it was two pages long, which is always a scary sign. My husband and I had been out of town all week visiting family, so in addition to being tired and having a one year-old that was slightly off schedule, we were both feeling a little disorganized, which always makes Mondays harder. How are you supposed to get up and feel fresh and recharged if you are sleep deprived and your house is a mess? Needless to say, I was looking forward to the challenge of knocking out my two page list in one crazy busy day.

My Monday was going to start off with a few meetings at my office, which is not the norm, so it also meant that I had scheduled our babysitter to come and watch Bruno from 8am until 3pm. Even though the meetings wouldn't take that long, I knew I could use the extra time for other things.

Just knowing that my son would be cared for lifted a huge weight off of my shoulders. I would still have a lot of things to get done, but knowing that I didn't have to try and juggle my one year-old as I frantically scrambled all over town somehow made the two page list of tasks seem less daunting.

I began to get an unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach by the time it was 8:30am and there was still no babysitter. My husband called and left her a message on her cell phone and while we waited 15 minutes for her to call back we began the dreaded discussion-"Plan B." This is the horrible game that parents are forced to play when their childcare falls through at the last minute and they have to decide what is the best option when they are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Since I am a SAHM we fortunately do not have to play this game much-this was actually our first experience with it-but that does not make it any better.

We became frantic and started calling everyone we could think of who could watch our son for a few hours so that we could at least both go to our already scheduled appointments/meetings. Finally after 20 minutes of phone calls we got lucky and my friend Robin came to our rescue. I had watched her son Mitchell in the past when they were on vacation so I didn't feel too guilty about calling in a favor. What I did begin to worry about though was my little man. This was not part of our schedule. He hadn't been to Robin's house for a play date in a while-what if he didn't remember her, or her house, or her kids? What if he wouldn't nap in his pack and play? What if he freaked out and screamed for the whole three hours?

As we packed his stuff and loaded him in the car my husband reassured me that Bruno would be fine-"Kids are more resilient than you think, Daph", he said. Besides, Bruno and Mitchell are friends, they will probably just play the whole time, I wouldn't worry about it anymore."

I tried to heed my husband's words, but as a mother you worry, it's part of your job. I no longer worried about what happened to the babysitter or why she didn't show up, I only thought about my child and if I was doing what was best for him, even though it might not have been what I originally planned.

Needless to say the "hand off" to Robin went well. I walked in and put Bruno down on the floor in her living room and he ran right into her playroom, long enough for me and my husband to slip out.

After our meetings were done, we headed back to Robin's to pick Bruno up and he was as happy as a clam. Robin said there were no tears when we left and he even napped in his pack and play for her for two hours. Not only was my son fully intact, but he was happy, and even though his schedule had gotten completely thrown off, it didn't bother him one bit because he didn't know the difference-he was too busy just being a kid.

As stressful as this manic Monday was it reminded me that sometimes it is good to mix things up a bit. How will my child ever learn to adapt to situations and roll with the punches if I never give him the chance to? As much as I like keeping him on a schedule, my husband was correct to remind me that sometimes I don't give my son enough credit, even if he is only one.

You can learn a lot from these unexpected situations that parenthood constantly presents and it's not the situations themselves that mold us as parents, but the way we handle these situations that determines the way we parent; I think we all need reminding everyone once in a while that life is not perfect and that being good parents means conveying this message to your children as best we can.