Practicing to be a Single Mom
Pool runs, tomorrow's meat prepped early, dinner sorted, a wedding dress altered, and a week and a half of solo parenting to rehearse for -- all handled by S in one day. With a smile on her face. Plus my unsolicited thoughts on how Apple begged for its own antitrust bill.
The kids went to bed three-ish hours late, at the conclusion of their movie, with strict instructions to sleep in. Naturally, J was up at 6:30am. This would normally spell disaster later in the day, but after a bowl of Cheerios, she collapsed on the couch in the living room and went back to sleep. Disaster averted, maybe? We'll see.
The rest of the kids didn't emerge from their dark, quiet bedroom for hours after their normal wake-up time – entirely in accord with my hopes and instruction.
S, like a champ, packed up lunch, the 5 + 1 kids, and carted them all off to the pool for the afternoon. She dropped a couple of the kids off at home afterwards, before she then returned our guest to his family (two-hour round-trip drive) and knocked out some errands. Prior to that, she prepped all of the meat for grilling tomorrow (she's out-of-town all day tomorrow to see a friend), and she figured out dinner plans for this evening, because she won't get home until aftel dinner time. She's also making various arrangements related to her upcoming week-long trip to Texas for her sister's wedding, such as making minor alternations to her dress. S characterizes all of this as "good practice" because I'm going to be out-of-town for a week and a half, during which time she'll be playing full-time single-mom.
Makes me exhausted just thinking about it. S is amazing.
