The Wild Mother

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Weekend Boundaries

Oh the weekends. My 2.5 favorite days of the week occur on the weekend, which means that Monday through Friday AM, I am purely focused on getting to the end of the Friday workday so that my weekend can begin. My wife and I are smart about our weekends. We shoot for sleep, rest, play, and family time. 

Since sleep is thrown to the wayside once you have a kid, early on we decided that she sleeps in on Saturdays, and I sleep in on Sundays. The other is up early with our son to play, feed Lincoln, relax, prepare breakfast--whatever keeps him distracted so the other mom sleeps peacefully, rejuvenating herself from the previous six days of non-stop go. 

Most weekends we dodge making plans. Our empty calendar weekends (most of the time) allow us to do whatever we want (except for chasing our son--that is ALWAYS on the calendar). Whether that's lounging around our house Saturday and Sunday in sweat pants and t-shirts, and ignoring the world past our property line, or choosing to pack up the car to quickly head to the mountains for a day to play, the hours are ours to do what we want. We both demand downtime, and we hope our son will carry this his whole life. It's important to set boundaries in order to rest, recover, and just BE.

Turning off my phone when we are all under the same roof immediately lowers the weight I feel on my shoulders. It's a way for me to feel more in control of some stressors I deal with (political shit on social media; texts, phone calls and emails regarding work; my calendar; etc.,).

One stressor we do seem to gain on the weekends is our son's nap times. Our son is a diligent nap avoider. Remarkably, he takes very good naps at school. He also sits for all of his meals and snacks (or so they tell us). At home? Nope. He's not going to nap unless you drive him in the car, walk/run him in the stroller, or drug him. As much as we joke about it, we choose to not drug our son just so he can catch some zzz's. However, I have figured out how daycare is able to get him and all of his classmates to nap so well--herd mentality. When they all nap, Sawyer has no option but to nap. There's no one to play with! 

So how many make up a herd? According to Yahoo Answers, it would be 4+. Shit. We're  gonna need a bigger house if we're going to have four kids.

Oh the things we parents do just to get our kids to sleep.

Shhhh!! He‘s finally asleep.