the underwear drawer

back to your regularly scheduled programming

It sounds terrible to say this, but when you work many hours a day away from your kid, there is a strong inclination when you do spend time at home to spoil your kid rotten, not unlike those divorcee dads who get get custody of their kids every other weekend, and on those weekends are all, hey kids, now let's have the funnest time ever with the funnest dad ever, new toys and candy for everyone, because who loves you, baby? That's how I feel lots of the time. Like Joint Custody Dad. Not this week, though. This week I felt like Tony Danza in "Who's the Boss?"




Now that my week of vacation is drawing to a close, I am getting increasingly sad. Nothing like spending 24/7 with your child to create the misconception in your head that he CANNOT SURVIVE WITHOUT YOU. Why, no one else could possibly catch on to the fact that crying = hungry and poo smell = poo in his diaper. These are things that only a MOTHER can know. In many ways, going back to work now is much more difficult even than going back to work after my maternity leave. When he was six weeks old he was in larval form, he didn't know if I was coming or going, and honestly didn't really care that much. Now he knows and cares. Now he has a personality. Now he gets upset when I walk out of the room. And these are the things that will conspire against me to make things hard Monday morning. Hopefully he'll stay asleep and we can avoid some scene (read: me sobbing).




I know that people always say that staying home to be with their kids is much harder than their jobs, and I don't know about the specifics of their jobs or their kids, but I have to say--my job is much harder than this all has been. This week of childcare and domesticity has been exactly what it was billed to be: a vacation. And I don't want to incite ire from either side by having this interpreted as me saying that Stay At Home Moms have it easy, or that Career Moms are somehow made of stronger stuff or anything like that (repeat: I AM NOT SAYING THAT)--all I'm saying is that this week, taken into context, has been a lot of fun for me. And hopefully, Cal had an OK time too.




I'm ready to go back, though. I didn't get as bored as I expected I might, and I'm not exactly end-of-summer-vacation-type excited to go back--but ready. I've been having work-dreams throughout my vacation anyway, so I guess part of my mind never really left the hospital. After a brief hiatus, back to real life, you know? It's fine.




It's still kind of sad, though.

Currently reading: "Marley and Me." It was cheesy in that Hallmark, "Tuesdays with Morrie" kind of way, but I did cry at the end. Come on, the dog dies, I'm not made of stone.