I have worked many jobs in my day.

My first job was a grocery store cashier when I was fourteen. I wore a mint green vest and a floppy clip-on bow tie. (Publix: Where Shopping is a Pleasure.)

I once worked at a university campus during the summer, and one day a week, my job was to walk around the campus and flush every toilet. An entire day spent each week just flushing toilets. (I eventually grew to love it and still have not ruled it out as a potential career one day.)

An indie coffee shop that I romanticized in my head, but in reality the owners would take pictures of the crumbs that I missed when sweeping and email them to me at home.

A hip barber shop where I had to talk about things like beard trims way too seriously for my liking.

I’ve worked in many, many different offices. Real estate law. Entertainment. Alumni Services. Property Management.

Out of all of these jobs, in all of those fields, I can safely say that none of them kick my ass as much as being a stay-at-home mom does. It’s like the weirdest, most demanding unpaid internship ever, with either the best boss or the worst boss, depending on how many naps have occurred that day.

Feel like taking a closer look?

Come join me and my daughter Lucy for a day! Don’t wear anything nice. Ignore the barking dog. Don’t try to pet the cat. And bring some something sweet, please.

6:26AM: We room-share, so I awake to a 17 month old towering above me, saying the word “Up” repeatedly.  I pretend to remain sleeping until I feel fingers poking my eyes and hear, “Hi. Hi. Hi.” When I open my eyes, my daughter shows me the monkey finger puppet that she sleeps with and says, “Monk.” I nod in agreement.

Like many parts of life with a toddler, I am unsure if this is real or some kind of hallucination brought on by madness/sleep deprivation.

But it is very real.

6:45AM: First diaper change of the day. We usually get the music started pretty early, and today, like every other day this week, Lucy has requested to hear the song, “Hot Hot Hot.”

You know the one: “Ole Ole Ole Ole. Ole Ole Ole Ole. Feelin’ hot hot hot.”

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It is her favorite song of the moment, which means we will listen to it on repeat until I have to pretend that the remote control is broken. But for now, at 6:45 in the morning, we merely listen in peace and I put cream on her butt as a steel drum plays.

7:30AM: Entire Pot of Coffee Breakfast time.

As I’ve mentioned before, we’re in the midst of an intense doll phase right now, and Lucy likes to do everything with her “babies.” Joining us today: Nudie and Baby.

We also seem to be entering into a new phase: Holding a Random Object While Eating.

It’s a curious thing. Basically, any object she spies will be demanded to be held for the duration of her meal (“Hold? Hold? Hold?”). A banana. A carton of yogurt. The broom. A copy of The Old Man and the Sea, which is inexplicably on the kitchen table.

She seems to be able to sense when I am feeling especially reckless or extremely tired, and on those days, she demands to hold an egg.

Today is an egg day.

I alternate between helping Lucy eat, pretend-feeding spoonfuls of oatmeal to Nudie and Baby and sneaking gulps of my hot coffee, while also deflecting Lucy’s repeated requests for whipped cream and cheese. (“Hey! Nice egg! Really nice egg! Oh careful. Careful. Gentle with egg. Oh…oh dear.”)

The end of the meal is signalled by the abrupt arching of the back in the high chair and the ceremonial throwing of spoons on the floor. I wipe down the gang and then eat Nudie and Baby’s leftover oatmeal.

It is cold and in a very tiny bowl. As I eat it, a man bellows in the background, “HOW YOU FEELIN’? HOT HOT HOT.”

8:30AM: I ask Lucy if she wants to go outside for a walk. She does. She really does. I check weather report. Discover the forecast is freezing rain and snow despite the fact that it is April. I sob internally, and we remain indoors. My husband walks the dog, who is also not thrilled with the freezing rain.

8:45AM: I begin the painstaking process of deciding what to wear for the day. I decide to go with my fancy sweatsuit (it’s plum instead of grey), which I wear when I want to channel early 2000’s J. Lo, which is most days.

When I place my hands in the pockets, I find a magnet from the fridge, several pieces of tape, a broken crayon and a small rock, all confiscated from the baby at some point in time.

You try and do just ONE photoshoot of yourself in your J. Lo tracksuit, but nooooo….

8:50AM: My husband heads off to work (“Bye, dear! Don’t forget to take out the trash and also pick up ten cartons of ice cream on your way home!“) and Lucy and I head to the living room for play time.

We chat about the dolls, the dog, about board books, about colors and I am struck with this total amazement at the fact that I’m talking with someone who, just months ago, was this little, tiny baby who couldn’t sit up. This fact completely blows my mind, and does so at random moments throughout each day.

I’m jolted out of my wonderment by a mini-meltdown because the purple block can’t fit on the green block. 

10:15-10:30AM: I pretend to clip all of the dolls’ nails to demonstrate how fun it is to have your nails trimmed, and then congratulate each doll on having her nails trimmed so nicely. I pretend to clip my own nails, and the dog’s nails. I ask the toddler if she would like to have her nails trimmed. She does not. This ritual is performed on a daily basis. 

11:00-11:25AM: Listen to “Hot Hot Hot.” I start to really find my groove with the rhythm on the eighth time around and by the ninth, I’m full-out shouting, “So we can boom boom boom boom” without a single trace of irony.

11:30AM: Lunch. See “Breakfast” except Nudie enjoys avocado, scrambled egg and sweet potato, Lucy holds a red spatula and my coffee is cold.

In the background, I hear our cat making strange sounds and scratching at the wall. I know this means that she has done something horrible in the hallway. After lunch, this is confirmed and I clean while Lucy practices saying, “Pee-yew.”

12:00PM: Nap time.

Oh, nap time. Sweet, sweet nap time.

If I’m going to lose it at some point during the day, it’s at nap time.

You see, I love nap time, but I do not love the process leading up to nap time. Yes, I use my handy dandy nap time method, but the older Lucy gets, the harder it is to time the nap correctly. And despite spending an INORDINATE amount of time obsessing over nap and sleep schedules, I never time it correctly.

Depending on how wrong I am, the getting-to-sleep process can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an entire afternoon (as in: attempt, fail, admit defeat, try again in an hour, fail once more, repeat, repeat, until toddler can barely stand due to exhaustion and I am weeping/stress-eating stale marshmallows in a corner somewhere).

If I had to sum up our average napping process in one picture, this would be it. 

In my head, it goes like this: a running commentary that is acutely aware of each passing minute and the potential for overtiredness.

The more overtired, the less likely the chance of a nap. No nap or a crap nap means we’re in for a rough night with lots of wake-ups.

A rough night means a cranky, tired child in the morning and a mom who can barely function and cries when we’re out of applesauce.

A cranky child all day means a bad nap again, and a bad nights’ sleep and onwards and onwards it goes until this nap is basically make or break for Lucy ever graduating from high school.

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You sound like a really fun person, you say, while silently adding my name to the List of People to Never Have PlayDates With.

The whole anxiety thing? Yeah. I’m working on it.

But today I’ve done a decent job and we read four board books and I nurse Lucy to sleep without any tears/stress-eating. I even manage to trim two of her toenails after she falls asleep.

Adrenaline junkies, I don’t care what you say: there is NOTHING more terrifying than attempting to trim a sleeping toddler’s toenails.

Once baby is down, it’s PARTY TIME! clean a whole bunch of stuff time.

Things I SHOULD Do When the Baby Naps:

• Nap
• Exercise
• Drink water
• Eat vegetables
• Organize the huge pile of outgrown baby clothes that has been sitting in the corner for months
• Read a book (I’m on a Lori Lansens kick lately and loving it. Read The Mountain Story. Please.)
• Write
• Deal with my eyebrows because WOW

Things that I ACTUALLY Do When the Baby Naps:

• Run around like an actual maniac for the first 30 minutes trying to clean everything in sight
• Do the first round of dishes from the morning, clean high chair tray for the first of 20 times in the day
• Wash the 62 spoons that were somehow used in two meals (Why does each toddler meal use upwards of 20 spoons? Still trying to work this one out.)
• Prepare for the next round of toddler snacks and meals and our dinner
• Drink coffee
• Eat peanut butter and bread
• Attempt to write but end up watching a YouTube video about road rage
• Pet dog for an extended period of time
• Stare intently at baby video monitor the entire duration of nap

2:35PM: On video monitor, I see baby sit up in bed. Despite my urgings otherwise, she then stands. I race to put away all of the things that she will destroy (laptop, mug of cold coffee, baby monitor, butcher knife covered in peanut butter, etc.) and dash into her room. I greet her and she is happy. We discuss her Monkey and Dog finger puppets once more, and I make Dog kiss Monkey. This is a big hit. Repeat x15.

Greeting her from her nap is one of my favorite parts of the day.

3:00PM: Afternoon snack. Lucy requests to hold a large silver spoon.

3:30-5:30PM: Having already done many of our usual play activities in the first half of the day, we do the following in the next two hours:

• I place selection of board books face-up on the ground and ask Lucy to find specific titles.
• Lucy removes all towels and washcloths from bin and strews them on floor.
• “Hot Hot Hot.” Raffi. More “Hot Hot Hot.” More Raffi. Back to “Hot Hot Hot.” I begin taking a deeper investigation into the lyrics of “Hot Hot Hot” and am starting to believe it is a metaphor for going to hell. 
• I read the first two pages of eight different board books before hearing, “No. No. No” except for Elmo Shake a Leg!, which is read six times in a row.
• Place different hats on head. Place hat on dog’s head.
• Put dolls’ clothes on different stuffed animals. This amuses me more than it does the baby.
• Deal with a mega meltdown because I won’t let her play near the cat’s litter box.
• Turn light switch on and off 320 times.

Somewhere around 4:00pm, I realize that I’m just about ready for bed.

6:00PM: Husband returns home. We eat dinner (some form of crockpot/Instant Pot mush), during which Lucy holds a jar of peanut butter and asks for yogurt even though she has already eaten three of them today.

7:00PM-ish: We begin the bedtime routine, which includes bath time for baby, a quick shower for me, and forgetting to brush the baby’s teeth. We select pajamas for Lucy, which is actually a nerve-racking situation.

Oh, really? Why’s that? You ask, not really caring but you have a few minutes left on your lunch break, so what the hell. 

Well, friend, here’s the deal:

We have been going through this fun phase for the past few months where maybe one night a week, Lucy is inexplicably wide awake and raring to go in the middle of the night. This usually lasts for three to four hours. Sometimes five. She’s in a great mood, just suddenly wide awake and ready to play from 2:00-5:00AM. And no amount of soothing will get her to fall back asleep.

(Does this happen to anyone else out there? Anyone?? CAN YOU HELP ME?)

It’s great. Really great. If you ever want to feel hungover for a week straight without touching any booze, this is for you.

So, due to these fun little night spells, I have become a bit superstitious about what the baby wears to bed, based on if we’ve had any recent bad nights of sleep in it.

So, for example, if Lucy wore the sleeper that looks like a Santa suit last Tuesday and then was wide awake from the hours of 2:00AM-6:00AM, then the Santa suit shall be banned. At least for a week.

Which is a shame, because it’s pretty freakin’ cute. But it must be banned. If it is then worn again and another bad night ensues, it shall be thrown onto the fire for all eternity.

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Fire for all eternity, totally makes sense, you nod politely, while pointing to the invisible watch on your wrist and slowly backing away.

8:00PM: Bedtime for baby.

I select four board books for us to read, but three of them are rejected instantly.

Instead, we read Thomas’ Snowsuit four times in a row. I lie with her and we look at the stars that the nightlight projects onto the ceiling and I whisper to her that she is the best baby and that we love her and that we can never listen to “Hot Hot Hot” again.

8:45PM: I emerge victorious extremely quietly after the baby has drifted off to sleep.

8:47PM: Every siren in the city decides to race by our apartment, the dog gets off the couch for the first time in hours and barks for ten minutes at a shadow at the wall, our neighbors across the hall bust out the hammer to hang what can only be a gallery wall made up of approximately 74 pictures, and my night anxiety about the baby waking up begins.

8:50PM: I begin my evening chores.

These include dishes (I often feel as if I am never NOT washing off a high chair tray or scrubbing a plastic bib), kitchen clean-up, sweeping and coffee prep for the morning.

Hello old friend. 

Ideally, I try to meal prep a bit for the next day. In reality, since this usually means that I will need to chop an onion or peel and cut a butternut squash (quite likely my least favorite thing in the world to do), I often decide we will instead have scrambled eggs for dinner the next day.

This happens now.

10:00PM: I drag open my laptop and try to think of funny things to write, all while staring at the baby monitor and willing the cat to stop making those weird noises in the hallway.

My husband, who is a writer, works on his latest novel in the same room. This means we sit in silence with the occasional question asked (“Do you think I should go with the frame narrative for this section?” “So should I do that article on what kind of moms the Sweet Valley High characters would be?”).

(NOTE TO SELF: YES BEGIN WRITING IMMEDIATELY)

I try to stay up late writing, but usually after it hits 11:00PM, I pull a Shining and look down to discover that the past five pages I’ve typed are merely the words “FEELIN’ HOT HOT HOT” again and again.

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11:45PM: We call it a night, and silently creep into our bedroom where our daughter is sleeping. Read approximately two pages of a book before my eyes blur over.

My mind, however, remains racing, ping ponging between a wide variety of subjects, including:  should I take up running even though I hate running, is the baby is getting enough iron in her diet, should I start investing even though I have no money, should we move to the country, will a nuclear war break out, why do people hate strawberry milk when it tastes so good.

1:00AM: Finally fall asleep after reaching the conclusion that I will not become a runner.

2:32AM: Baby wakes up.

Attempt to soothe her without nursing but after 30 minutes, think, Oh eff it, I’ll try to wean tomorrow and nurse back to sleep.

4:20AM: Baby wakes up.

Immediately nurse back to sleep.

6:37AM: I awake to a 17 month old towering above me, saying the word “Up” repeatedly.

And so another day begins…

Whew! We did it, folks!

Thanks for joining me on a typical day in the life of a stay-at-home mom.

(Just kidding. I don’t have any stay-at-home mom friends, so I have no clue. I assume others are listening to “Hot Hot Hot” and weeping about nap time? Right?)

Now I want to hear from you:

What’s your day like? What song is your child listening to on repeat these days? What food do you stress-eat when your baby will just NOT go down for a nap? Do you stay up for hours after your child has gone to bed, despite the fact that you complain about being exhausted all the time?

And most importantly:

HOW YOU FEELIN’? HOT HOT HOT!