The Missing Spouse

This moment was captured while we were at the Chicago Botanic Gardens on Saturday. Beautiful right? Except that my husband had one kid climbing on his back and I had the other slightly larger and older kid climbing and sliding down my back. Notice our tired faces. Yet, our faces were one of happiness, as in, It's a gorgeous day, we are out and about, and for once we do not have two kids running around. We can actually lay down here on the grass for a good 5 minutes. 

My husband just started a new job last week that he loves. He is perfect for this job and I love the fact that the job that he has been looking for has been treating him so well. He actually gets to work with normal thinking adults!! Yes, there is such a job that exists. He found it and that is all that matters. For all the searching and patience that he has had over the last couple of months in finding this job, we are truly blessed.

Here is the hard part. He works the evening shift, and I am gone in the daytime. His days off are Tuesdays , Thursdays and Saturdays. 

Let me stress again that he is working the evening shift, I work the day shift. I come home Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays scrambling for something to make for dinner for the boys that will be healthy, not boring and above all, not boring to eat. Plus, in our shift as we move into a new place, we have either my dad to come over and watch the boys. That is a not an easy thing for my dad to do all the time , since we live sooooo far away. There have been times where I come home so mentally exhausted, and I really needed my husband there, yet he was working. How can I be mentally exhausted yet put on the cap of the fun mom? Fun mom was there at 8 am, but my kids get swollen eyes since she looks at the computer all day mom. That is the mom that comes home at 6pm.

I do have one fun thing that I have invented last week. I have discovered that if I just sit still on the floor and do nothing, that gives my kids a chance to climb on me and jump off from my head. I really don't care if it hurts to have kids stand on my shoulders or head, so long as I can sit on the floor and not think for 5 minutes. I feel like I have become one of those gorilla moms from the zoo. They just sit there with their huge mass of a body and proceed to let their little gorilla babies climb and jump on top of them. That is me, gorilla mom. Take it or leave it. 

Then when the kids go to sleep, now I can turn around and talk to.....no one. My husband comes home late at night, so I watch How I Met Your Mother and laugh to myself. I would call my husband for a chat, but I don't want to disturb him. 

This is tough, this two parents working full time business. Not because I am taking care of the kids myself, that is not the issue. I just miss my partner. I miss my husband.