Things you learn when your husband sticks around the house more than usual

People always want to know why being a mom is so dang hard, why their mom friends never return phone calls and can't find time to email or make it out to coffee. Here is a prime example.

This morning, Peter thought it would be a good idea to open the blinds wide in the kids' room before he went to work so that some sunlight would come in because he knows that sunlight kills germs.
A good idea, in theory. In practice, here's what happened.

Our house is old, and thus most of our blinds are broken and basically hanging on a string or missing parts. To top it off, the kids are young, and so they like to try to grab the blinds, thus destroying the bottom corners on both sides. The stick thing that turns the blinds on one of the windows in their room is missing.

My normal morning routine is to open the blinds of the window that faces the side of the house in the morning, and the one that faces the back of the house in the afternoon, when the sun isn't directly hitting it so that their room doesn't heat up too much making their naptime unbearable. Because they grab the blinds on the side that doesn't have the stick that opens them anyways, I use the string to simply pull them open and shut it at the end of the day. On the other window, I use the stick to open the blinds, leaving them down because the kids can't reach them due to a big rubber bin that stands in the way. It works just great. AND there is a reason behind the whole process: naptime is hard when the kids are too hot in their room so I do what I can to ensure a cool room before lunch. It's also hard when their room is too bright.

Peter is tall, so he got the stick down from the first window, connected it to the second window, and opened the second window's blinds (the one facing the back)-- the hot window. THEN he took the stick and re-attached it to the first window and got ready to go to work. He couldn't understand why it annoyed me so much, and with good reason. After all, it appears that all he did was open some blinds and let some light in. I tried to explain it, but to no avail.

So, here's the part he is missing:

Come eleven o'clock, when the kids are eating lunch, I will go in their room to shut the blinds and straighten up for their naptime. The room will be hot, so I will have to turn the AC up even though the rest of the house is borderline cool, which I hate. I will remember that he had used the stick thing to open the blinds so I will have to go get a chair to switch the sticks out on the two blinds and close the other one. When I get the chair, the kids will see me do it, and they will want to help. Both of them will try to drag chairs into their room also. I will realize that a chair does not fit through the halfway closed door to the position of the crib, so I will have to move the crib to open the door fully to pull the chair through. Before I do this, I will try to see if I can reach the stick with just the kids' stool, which DOES fit through the door. It wont, so I will try again with the chair and proceed to have to move the crib. While I'm tottering on the chair, the kids will want to climb on MY chair, probably pushing me off at some point. I will send them to their own chairs, which will prompt fighting over whichever chair they both want to sit/stand on. This will cause one of two things: an injury or a fight, either of which have the same result: I will have to stop what I'm doing and go down and regulate, through some method of discipline that will no doubt take several minutes. Because this is all happening pre-nap time, they will be more inclined to go into a total meltdown when I discipline them instead of just moving on once it's done. During the meltdown, one or both of them will lose control of their bowels from all the commotion and I will have to stop and change them and/or mop up a mess on the floor.
I will then realize that they have not eaten and I have not fixed the blinds. I will put them back at the table to finish their food but by then they will be so tired they wont want to eat OR stay at the table. Meanwhile, I will put the stick on the blinds, close them, and then put the stick back where it goes on the other blinds. This action will be interrupted every few moments by one or both of the children running into the room with a question, complaint, etc.
I will get off the chair, push it through the door, and move the crib back. Then I will push the chair back to the dining room table where my kids will see me pushing a chair and shout "we want a tent!" Nothing will deter them from this tent idea, so I will build them a tent in order to scarf some food down as fast as I can before they go to sleep so that I can do what I need to do while they are unconscious, only to discover that they are so tired and cranky that they are fighting about who broke the tent and who can stand under it.

I will lose my patience, send everyone to bed, and then spend their entire naptime making and eating my own food, cleaning up theirs because I wasn't watching them while they ate since I was busy with the blinds, and then picking up tent remnants etc. The kids will be hot and uncomfortable in their room so they will wake up earlier than normal, probably just as I am finally lying down to sleep, and be cranky and annoyed for a good part of the afternoon.

All this, folks, because my husband innocently wanted to open the blinds his way instead of just letting me do it. From start to finish, it will have taken me between 15 and 60 minutes to close a blind, and in the process I will have completely disrupted my kids' schedule and everything I wanted to accomplish in that time.

And that, my dear readers, is why moms are always late, forget everything, and never return phone calls. That. Right. There.