The Half-Marathon of Parenting

I did it! I did it with no tears, very minor amounts of bribery, and I accomplished it before my wife did. I successfully put all 3 children down for bed with no assistance while my wife was celebrating not being pregnant anymore. I really don't know what else to compare this accomplishment to. I mean its not like climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, but then again its also no easy task. So given the time of the event to occur (roughly 2 hours of alone time) I will go ahead and compare it to my recent half marathon finish. While this may seem like a novice task for you seasoned veterans out there. Let me at least try to build the credibility of this up before you don't acknowledge it as a huge win.

This is how it feels.

I love my 3 kids all dearly, but to sum them up quickly my  kids are as follows: Emotional 5 year old Girl, Volatile 3 year Girl, and Hungry 1 month old Boy.  The dynamic kind of works like this. The 3 year old almost runs the show in the house. She is the wild card. A large girl that weighs about 3 lbs less than the 5 year old and a propensity to pull hair and hit the 5 year old when the parents are out of the room. The problem is the 5 year old just sits there, takes it, and cries. Meanwhile the 1 month old is one of 3 things (along with the percentages of time throughout the day): 1) Awake and calm 10%, 2) Awake, Crying, Hungry 45% 3) Unconscious 45%.

As you can see there's essentially a 50% chance my little dude was going to be awake, hungry & crying for the 2 girls' departure to dreamland. the planning involved to accomplish such a task is tough. Not only do you have to focus on the little guy but you need to make sure the older ones are worn out enough to sleep, but have calmed down enough to be ready for bed. It was about 2 hours or playing, bouncing, shooshing, & correcting, but it happened. The 2 girls faded off to sleep with little intervention from me. Well, the 3 year old has the equivalent of restless leg syndrome in her entire body and it takes her about 30 minutes of flopping around in bed and asking for candy before she dozed off. Regardless, they didn't cry and it was magical.

I think I even surprised my wife when she came home and stuff was cleaned up. I rule.

Anyone have any amazing single fathering stories they'd like to share? Leave them in the comments or contact us and we'll let you blog about how awesome you are.