The other day my husband and I were reminiscing about how glorious our weekends were before kids. We’d wake up hungover around 10, eat some kind of delicious garbage like a deep-fried Monte Cristo, and then take one thousand naps on the couch.
This past weekend, two kids later, we did everything but that.
Weekends are life-sucking for parents — at all of the stages the children go through.
When you wake up hungover on the weekend with a baby, you have a giant shit sitting in a diaper waiting for you. Try not to vomit. The only nap you’re taking is if you can barter with your partner to swap nap times.
But when it’s your partner’s turn to nap then you have to do the parenting gig all by your damn self. Good luck not dying.
And it only gets worse as the kids get older. You can’t leave a toddler unsupervised for more than ten seconds because they’ll try to eat laundry detergent or your hairspray can. You can’t put them in front of the TV either because they can’t sit still long enough to watch Elmo get tickled.
Not funny.
And weekends only get worse once the kids get older because . . . All. Of. The. Activities.
Fridays aren’t meant for kicking your feet up anymore once your children get a tad older. Nope. They’re for physically and mentally preparing yourself for soccer-momming, Girl Scout selling, Science Olympiad, and whatever the hell else you have signed your child up for.
Instead of sleeping in on Saturday morning, you are up by 6, driving your child across the damn state to compete — in anything — and in everything. You and your partner get to divide and conquer because Lord knows child number two has to partake in all of the activities, too.
Once you get home from devoting your Saturday to your children, you then get to press repeat on Sunday.
So, be careful! Don’t overindulge in those well-deserved cocktails on Saturday night! Maybe try a La Croix instead.
Activities aren’t only for Saturdays like when we were kids of the 80s and 90s. Nope, Sundays are dedicated to everything for our children, too.
This leaves little time to do all of the grownup stuff we should be doing like meal prepping, scrubbing the pee off the floor where your son missed the toilet, and folding the one hundred tiny, shit-stained onesies.
Nope, those things get overlooked once you have one big kid in the house. You feel like you are in constant catch-up mode, sprinting to get your household under control. Only, that’s freaking impossible.
So, you continue on this wild ride — which does not feel like a nice, slow carousel, but more like the Demon Drop.
Yes, of course, we all love our children.
We have to say that before we complain about parenting, don’t we? But that doesn’t mean weekends aren’t completely life-sucking now that those precious little weekend-stealers are here.
I know there’s someone out there thinking, “She’s going to miss all this when her kids are older and on to college.” You’re probably right.
But for right now, I’m going to wish for those lazy weekends of yesterday.
Weekends where we could go out to dinner on a whim, snooze on the couch, and yes, even meal prep. Whew.