The green-eyed monster

I'll admit it, I'm jealous. These are the days I loved staying home with the kids. When finally, finally!, we could leave the house, go to parks, enjoy the sun! When after naptime we could go outside and take a walk, play with chalk, and wait for the bigs to come home, and then stay outside until Daddy came buzzing up the street and everyone would run to meet him. It's not a debilitating jealousy, fortunately, where I'm angry or resentful. Just more of a wistful one, where when Dave tells me about his day, I'm happy they had a great time, and wish I could have been a part of it.

But on the other hand, I feel like I'm doing things with the kids that I never did before. Last night I actually ran around at the playground with Abby, Max and Ava, instead of just sitting and watching Nolan's practice. At bedtime, when Abby and Nolan were still reading their books, I climbed into bed with Max and he told me stories about Batman, about sharks, and we played the staring game, except while he stared, he told me to blink, and then I lost. Before I was with them all the time, but never really took the time with them. Now that I'm not with them, I think I appreciate them that much more.

And, there's other things that I don't have to do. Like make breakfast, lunch or dinner. Or do laundry, vacuum or clean the toilets. Yardwork. Much of anything around the house, in fact. Dave has wholly and sufficiently taken that over. Some things are hard to give up... it turns out I like doing homework with Abby, and I'm pretty paranoid that we're going to miss a baseball practice or game. But mostly, I go to work, I do my job, I come home and eat dinner and hang out with the family. Not a bad gig if you can get it!!