My Afternoons Are a Disaster and I Bet Yours Are, Too

 

For anyone who thinks moms have it together all the time, here’s a scene of what went on yesterday afternoon in my home.

Girl six is crying because everyone finished their homework while she was at an emergency dental appointment to try and determine if she is getting an abscess from her last cavity filling. (Spoiler alert, looks like she does which means a tooth pull is in our future). She takes forever reading her spelling words, so I am trying to shout them out to her while multitasking dinner.

Boy six is freaking out at the piano because he has a new piece and it is hard. I can’t help him, because I don’t play myself. He’s also mad no one will play a board game with him right this moment.

Girl nine is shoving her homework in my face to check in the middle of it all. Her homework takes concentration and I would have to read an entire passage (of poetry mind you) to check it, not easy when I am covered in olive oil prepping some zucchini that one kid has already declared they will not be eating.

The pharmacy just called to tell me the prescription from the dentist is on backorder (That cannot be possible for antibiotics, so I am on hold).

Dog is barking at me because she does not understand daylight savings time and is positive I forgot to feed her.

Not sure if dinner will be ready before we need to leave for volleyball practice, let alone if they will eat it. We have approximately 45 minutes to get our crap together or we will be late.

I would like to say this is an abnormal afternoon, but it is not. We are in a tough season right now with three kids who all need varying degrees of handholding. While some days we manage this chaotic scene better than others, it is never not insane. The time period between school pick up and bedtime is a mad dash of managing deadlines and running to activities.

I know I am not alone in this. In speaking with my fellow mom-friends, no matter the ages of their children and if they have one kid or four, afternoons are a disaster. After holding it together all day, the kids have nothing left and neither do we. Yet, somehow, we all press on and manage through it every, single day.

I was looking up some old recommendations from my previous life as a publicist. One of the directors I used to work with said, “Amanda has one of the best dispositions in the business and handles stress better than a navy fighter pilot landing an F18 on an aircraft carrier….at night…. in a storm…. with one engine out.”

I don’t know if that is always true at home. I yell. I get frustrated. I cry. I can say that the training of juggling a million things at once at work has made me *slightly* better at trying to navigate three exploding children at once with dinner on the stove.

In the midst of the daily storms, when I feel like we are crashing, I have to remember, I still fly this jet every single afternoon. And on the hardest days, we manage to land safely. Even with one engine out.

The truth is, so do you.

Photo: Amanda Sorena

Originally Published on Mommy Nearest