The Art of Leaving the House

I used to pride myself on being a multi-tasker. One of my first jobs was working in the photocopy department at Staples, where I could have seven machines running, answer the phone, take copy orders and ring people through all at once without a second thought. It was so satisfying to be that productive. I'm learning as a stay-at-home mom that productivity is irrelevant, and attempting to be efficient at any task will only cause frustration!

Take leaving the house, for example. I dread it. I remember when Nate was first born, learning to add 15 minutes to my travel time if I had to be punctual, as so many variables could cause delays, even just in the attempt to walk out the front door. Now with two boys, sometimes I wonder how bad would it be to become a hermit? Here's how the average attempt to leave the house goes...

I get Cody's socks on, which he immediately pulls off, so I straddle him to quickly get his shoes on as well, which will hopefully secure his socks long enough to get into the car. Wrestle him down to put on his hoodie and vest - one down, another to go! Nate's much more compliant, and able to put on his slip-on shoes by himself while I get his hoodie and vest on. But by this time, the dog staring at us through the sliding door has figured out we're about to go outside and starts barking and jumping at the door, panicked to be apart of our outing, and Cody is crying at the front door because he's dressed and ready to go, so why aren't we going? And then the phone rings, and I can't find my keys or I've lost the list I made to keep my outing on track. While I'm putting on my own shoes and jacket, I sense a smell coming from the littlest one demanding a visit to the change table that would entail stripping him not only of the outerwear I struggled to get him in, but all his clothes as well. Dirty diaper changed (and I'm now hot & sweaty as I'm dressed for winter weather inside); attempt #2 to wrestle my wiggly worm back into his layers of clothing. Grab my purse, keys and list, run out the door with both boys, get them strapped into their car seats and sit down to take a deep breath. Finally able to stop for a moment I realize I have to visit the little girl's room, but there's no way I'm doing all that over again so I run my errands with a different kind of urgency, and with two boys soon complaining of hunger since it took us a half hour to leave the house! Ahhh! Can you tell I get easily overwhelmed? It's safe to say the idea of adding another child to this household is very happily placed in the "maybe one day - but not now" category.