Younger Daughter (~9 months old) wakes up. In the crib, at a relatively reasonable time.

I’ll pretend that this is what happens every morning. I’ll ignore the fact that both our children suffer from a debilitating sleep allergy that makes 8 out of every 10 nights an utter disaster. 

I get Younger Daughter from the crib, change her diaper, and play with her in her room for 10 minutes before bringing her out to my wife to feed. 

My wife and I recap the night. Our voices do that thing where they rise in pitch at the end. Perhaps things are improving, and we’re finally out of the sleep wilderness. 

(We’re not) 

Younger Daughter starts playing in the living room, knocking down blocks and toys with the gusto of an excavator demolishing a high rise. Within 10 minutes, she wakes up Older Daughter. 

For the 400th time we half-joke about moving. Our house is small and creaky. The radiators are a living, breathing version of a 2008 Katy Perry hit song. But we also own a house. In a great area. As far as early returns go, it appears to have been a tremendous purchase with renovation potential. 

My wife gets Older Daughter. At the moment, Mommy is number 1 in the power rankings and Daddy is not even charting. This tends to reverse every few weeks. 

I head down to the basement to “go to work.” 

Although I am technically an unemployed leech on society and/or doing the most important work one could ever do (depends on who you ask), we’ve decided to tell the girls that I work in the mornings, and that I’m a writer. 

This is technically true. But mostly in an embarrassing sense. It is factually correct that I’ve received a salary to write words. But many of these words were recaps of viral videos in 2012, or Top 10 lists about being 23 years old. I never made the leap to a serious, actual writer. Maybe those reasons will be excavated in later posts. 

During this sacred time to myself that my wife has graciously enabled, I spend 30 minutes working on this newsletter and devote the remainder of the time to taking a shower, shaving, and random household/administrative things. One day, I will exercise again.

I relieve my wife, who goes down to work for an early meeting to make actual money for our family. Now, I’m officially on the clock. 

I didn’t have time to eat breakfast. So I make myself a bowl of granola, yogurt, and berries, which I wolf down while making sure Younger Daughter doesn’t eat any of the stickers littered all over the playroom. 

The playroom was once our living room, with a coffee table and books. We even used to use coasters. 

The next hour consists of Older Daughter asking Younger Daughter why she doesn’t have any teeth while they both tussle over toys. During this unorganized “free play” time, we average about 3 near-miss trips to the emergency room per hour. 

Younger Daughter ’s first nap. Partly due to her sleeping issues and partly due to our house, she almost never naps beyond one sleep cycle in the crib (~38 minutes)¹. 

In the fall, this dilemma was easily solved by going on a long walk. Now that it’s 15 degrees every day, this has become a major problem. So our morning nap routine consists of the following insanity: 

All the while, I’ll keep a loose eye on Older Daughter. But not too much of an eye so that she notices us, and demands that we play together. 

If Older Daughter is appeased, I’ll spend this time catching up with some life stuff. I’ll read the news (confining my news consumption to 5-10 minutes a day has been incredible), catch up on articles in my queue, or listen to a podcast. 

Older Daughter has had enough of Younger Daughter napping. Since about 10:00 a.m., she has been running into the kitchen demanding that her little sister wake up, while I’ve had to distract her with some new diversion. All the while keeping Younger Daughter asleep.

When this happens my goal is to just get to the hour mark, and we’ve made it. 

Friday is the only day of the week without a set activity². We used to have an excellent music class in the mornings, but it now coincides with Younger’s first nap. 

Although my Older Daughter is exhibiting early signs of being a hermit (she is happiest at home, and probably had the greatest day of her life when we were stuck inside all day when we got a foot of snow) I insist on getting out of the house every day. 

On warmer days, we’ve gone to the park. But today it’s hovering right around freezing. So I decide to take the girls to the bookstore in town. 

This is mostly for them. My older daughter loves running around in the children’s section, grabbing books off the shelf, sitting on the comfy, kid-sized cushions, and then feigning “I’m a toddler, I don’t understand what you’re saying” when it’s time to put them away.  

But the bookstore trip is also 15% for me. Bookstores are my version of doing breathwork while the sun rises. I also want to instill a love of reading in my daughters. It’s early days, but the signs are promising so far. 

The bookstore doesn’t open until noon, so we still have a bit of time to kill. We spend the next 30 minutes or so baking brownies. When they’re done, I sneak two ³ while Older Daughter isn’t looking. 

We arrive about 20 minutes later than planned. Going anywhere with a toddler and an infant always takes a lot longer than you think, but this sequence was particularly brutal. 

First we had to deal with an 11th hour poop explosion. Then, my Older Daughter decided to initiate a hostage negotiation while going down our front steps. Finally, there was construction in town that closed the sidewalk near the bookstore, forcing us to take an alternate route. 

This was all bad news. We needed to leave the bookstore a little before 1 so that we had enough time for lunch prior to naptime. 

Scenario forecasting is something that I consider myself particularly good at. And after a few months on the job, I’ve concluded that anticipating multiple time-sensitive demands in the same way a chef, events manager, or ICU physician must do is one of the most important qualities for being an effective caretaker for multiple children. 

Staying ahead of the game is the best way to prevent crises later in the day. Now that I’ve somewhat shot myself in the foot, we’ll have to adjust. 

We play in the bookstore. My Older Daughter feels very much at home exploring all of the kids shelves, which makes me incredibly happy. Meanwhile, Younger Daughter is content in the baby carrier. The name of the game with her is to just keep bouncing her so that she doesn’t start fussing. 

As I anticipated, Older Daughter doesn’t want to leave.

It’s nearly a big time public meltdown. But with the help of a friend who happens to be there (coincidentally, their music class teacher!) we get her in the stroller and leave relatively unscathed. 

As with most people who encounter me in public these days, the bookstore staff appear to be simultaneously impressed, bewildered, and scared for me.

My wife has the girls’ lunches ready. I do the final preparation and get them in their respective infant and toddler chairs. . 

I find half a chicken breast and eat it. The brownies are still on top of the stove, so I scarf down a few of those too. 

Naptime for both girls. Older Daughter has been very Ross and Rachel with her nap, but these days she needs it⁴. 

This is somewhat good for me, because both of them napping at the same time means a break. This is somewhat terrible for me, because neither child will entertain the thought of napping in the crib. 

The solution? We go on a “nap drive.” Older Daughter needs to be bribed. I tell her that we must go on our nap drive to “wake up” Daniel Tiger (her favorite TV show) and the brownies that we just baked. When we return from our nap drive, she will get to watch a few episodes of Daniel Tiger and eat a brownie for a snack. 

I get both girls in the car. Occasionally they are both screaming so loud that the entire block can hear, indicating that I might be conducting some sort of kidnapping operation. Today, they are OK and both fall asleep within a few minutes. 

I drive around in circles for over 90 minutes with the classic earworm Goodnight, Daniel, Goodnight on repeat. 

My solace is that I make tea for this drive (I limit myself to 3 coffees per day, and hit my threshold hours ago), and drink it while looking out at the Long Island Sound. The route I do consists of some extremely nice houses near the water with virtually no traffic or stop signs. 

Looking at these large houses and the contractor’s trucks frequently parked outside, my mind often drifts to how expensive they must be to maintain and that certain showcases of wealth are really just a prison. I follow this line of thought to our future, family, financial plans, and writing ideas. Dare I say it, I feel a little bit re-energized. 

We arrive home. I wake up the girls, get them in the house, and “wake up” Daniel Tiger and the brownies. 

This is where the day starts to get a little easier. I’ll play with Younger Daughter while Older Daughter is in her catatonic Daniel Tiger watching state.

Once everyone is settled in, I’ll bounce back and forth between the living room and the kitchen as I prepare dinner. We’ve perfected a rotation of easy-ish, 20 minute recipes. The key is not for them to taste good, they just need to be edible.

My wife comes up. She was sent home early due to the corporate American ritual of being given permission to sign off early on a 3 day weekend (Monday is MLK day).

Upon seeing their Mommy, Younger Daughter hoots in delight. Older Daughter squeals and runs over to her, abandoning Daniel Tiger. 

The next few minutes consist of my daughters desperately competing for her attention. It is in these moments where it becomes clear that our arrangement is unnatural and a bit of a lie. But I also recall that, at least in my opinion, women on average are probably better suited for the interpersonal communication and emotional intelligence that has increasingly defined today’s knowledge work economy.

This is where I stop talking, as further expounding is likely to get me into trouble with pretty much everyone.     

My wife and Older Daughter bake mac and cheese squares. Older Daughter is in a phase where she pretty much only eats mac and cheese. For months we’ve exclusively been giving her boxes of Annie’s (our preference) and Goodle's mac and cheese (her preference) from Costco.

Before Younger Daughter—and by breastfeeding extension, my wife—were beset with a dairy allergy, we used to bake these squares all of the time. But given the circumstances, we haven’t made them for about six months. We figure it’s probably time to steer Older Daughter away from eating powdered cheese every meal, so decide to re-introduce the squares. 

Older Daughter stands in her toddler tower, a veritable sous chef executing my wife’s instructions. Watching the two of them interact, it’s as if they’ve done this routine for years.

The dynamic between my wife and daughters is something I didn’t realize how much I’d enjoy bearing witness to every day. 

We sit down for dinner. I assume that eventually we’ll eat later than 5:15, but I’m personally in no rush to do so. 

Predictably, Older Daughter does not want any of the mac and cheese squares. Instead she tells us she needs to have what her sister is eating; a baby food blend from Little Spoon. Little Spoon makes both my wife and I feel useless, but we conclude it’s a temporary value add in our whatever-stage-capitalist society. The fact this blend is purple is apparently something that Older Daughter must sample.

I begin to wonder if there is an RFK-approved way of making purple mac and cheese. 

After a hectic clean up blitz (due to our house, we cannot clean up the kitchen after the girls go to sleep without waking them up), my wife initiates bathtime. First up is Older Daughter. 

While they do bath, Younger Daughter and I play “concert.” This consists of me putting her in the baby carrier and blasting 2011-2013 EDM hits, which is her current favorite genre.

Younger has developed dance moves and even sometimes fist pumps. When we visit family at the Jersey Shore over the summer, she’ll probably demand the full MTV experience. 

My wife puts Younger Daughter to sleep; I bring Older Daughter into her room to begin her long wind down. We do puzzles for about 20 minutes. My wife comes in and relieves me, so I can spend 20 minutes brushing my teeth, catching up on email, or sitting on the couch doing nothing. 

We never know what the night holds, so having this time to reset has been mentally crucial. 

I begin the 3 act play that is Older Daughter’s bedtime. We’ve resolved to rectify the insanity that has become putting Older Daughter to sleep. But we also don’t want to do anything that will obviously wake up Younger Daughter. So we’re caught in a bit of a holding pattern. 

Most of the time though, I really don’t mind. Because I often prioritize Younger Daughter during the day by necessity, it is nice to spend 1 on 1 time with Older Daughter. Even if this alone time is 30 minutes of her rolling all over me, trying to sleep on the floor instead of her crib, and making me tell the same story 50+ times. As infuriating as it can sometimes be in the moment, I know I’ll eventually come to miss this time deeply.

Older Daughter is finally asleep. I open and close the pocket doors to her room as quietly as possible as to not wake up Younger Daughter.

Occasionally my wife and I will watch a show. (We’ve been watching Nobody Wants This for the past 9 months, despite there being only 20 episodes) But normally we’ll just talk, do any necessary planning for the next day, maybe have some dessert, and read. 

By 9:00 p.m. we’re usually completely drained, and turn out the lights. We also know it’s only a matter of time before the night shift makes its resounding introduction in the form of a screaming child. 

We tell ourselves it’s all incredibly worth it. About 80% of the time, I believe the cliche.

The rest of the time I’m already asleep.