MOMday - Last Week as a SAHM

A week from today, I return to work.   When I gave my notice almost 2 months ago,  I never imagined time could pass so quickly.  Now I am suddenly standing on the edge and it is starting to really hit me.

I have had an amazing two years at home with my little midges. I've seen every first and celebrated everything they have done so far.  In one short week, I have to pass the torch on to someone else.  Someone else who will hear the new words first.  Someone else who will do the little celebratory dancing.  Someone else who will be raising my daughters during the day while I am back at work.   Every now and then, it hits me HARD when I realize how much I will miss.  But then I think about the things I'm not going to miss so much when I'm sharing the load with someone else.  Things like when Buggie (formerly Goober - her sister renamed her) shrieks at the top of her lungs to get her own way.  Or explaining for the four trillionth time that "No - that isn't Poooooooo, it's pee" at diaper change time.   Also - part of me is secretly thrilled that someone with more experience can handle the majority of the potty training.   It's not that I don't want to be the one to raise my kids, but adding to my support system will be great.

To get Doodle and Buggie ready for their new life in the dayhome, I arrange to have a trial run this week.  It's not going to be exactly like life will be starting next week, but it will give them and our dayhome lady a kick start on getting to know each other and will give me some peace of mind in giving us time to work the kinks out.   I feel for our lady.  She has the vegetarian, cloth diapered, identical twin train about to descend on her.  I hope she's ready for it! 

Now for the preparations.  Next week, our mornings are going to start ridiculously early.   I need to start work around 8am which means we need to drop the kids off around 7am.  For two toddlers who are used to sleeping until 9:30 most days, it is going to be a shock to the system.   This is going to require us to be super prepared with the morning routine.   They will eat breakfast at the dayhome, so we only need to give them a quick snack in the morning to carry them over.  The biggest time suck, though, is dressing them.   Trying to get two toddlers dressed and ready to go on a timeline is tricky.   To help with this, I pulled out some hanging shelves we had in the garage sale box.  I figure I can spend 10 minutes on Sunday filling each shelf with their outfits for the week.  That way - we just need to grab, get it on them and go!  No hunting for missing socks or trying to match shirts and pants before the sun come up.  Suddenly one of my biggest time management stresses isn't so stressful any more!

Hmmm, maybe I should be doing this for my own outfits too...it's been a while since I had to be showered and made up and dressed properly in the morning!

Another thing I need to do this week is start batch cooking a few things to make dinners easier on us during the week.  I figure if we can have something waiting to be reheated or thrown into the oven or scooped out of a crockpot, then we will be able to enjoy our shortened family time on weeknights.

To all of the other moms who've returned to work already, maybe this stuff seems like nothing, but I am big on being prepared.  I can roll with the big stuff - it's the little things I tend to stumble on.   If I can just have my morning and evening routines planned out - then I know I can handle the stuff that lands in the middle...I hope.