Parenthood all about seeking the routine

Features

March 17, 2010

By Paul Lane The Tonawanda News The Tonawanda News Wed Mar 17, 2010, 10:09 AM EDT

NIAGARA FALLS — My mom was always sorta weird when it came to her household routines. I can recall many times during my youth when I would poke fun at the schedule she had worked out for herself.

She had to set the alarm to wake up, even if we stayed in bed, and have her coffee and read every morning. Laundry was always done Saturdays. The kitchen floor was mopped Sundays. If we got take-out or delivered food for dinner, it was generally Fridays.

I couldn’t understand why she had certain things regimented in such a fashion. Just go with the flow, I’d say, and let life carry you.

Having now been caught on the business end of life’s drift, I can appreciate the need for structure.

Things can get a bit hectic with two little ones running around the house, trying to grab dolls from each other and asking for a “Dora the Explorer” DVD to be put on while demanding pretzels, milk, attention, trips to Chuck E. Cheese and visits from relatives.

If you want to get things done on a consistent basis, some sort of system really is required. I agreed some time ago to vacuum the first floor twice a week. My wife was smart to strive for such an arrangement, because if (OK, when) I miss an assigned day, it never gets made up for.

Same goes for the dishes. Things could go great for a week or so, and then — BAM — you have a pile of dirt and crud that might or might not be staring back at you from the sink, all because you couldn’t wash the dishes when you should have.

Even bedtimes can create a snowball effect of cranky children and weary caretakers that takes days to counteract. Penny usually refrains from a nap these days, but she dozed off for a half-hour during one recent excursion to a party. That caused her to be awake that night about two hours longer than usual.

But Mommy then went into the hospital (she’s fine — she got out about five days after being admitted), and Penny naturally missed her. So, instead of sleeping until 7:30 or 7:45, she’d wake up at 6:30 or 6:45 each morning looking for Mommy. In the process, Rigby would be aroused (sometimes happy to see his big sister, sometimes less than happy), and I would lose out on those precious 60-75 minutes of shuteye.

More importantly, though, Penny and Rigby missed out on sleep. As a result, our day had to pause a bit more often for Rigby’s extra nap each afternoon, while Penny got cantankerous by the evening (and, in one case, she fell asleep face-up with her back arched over my leg). Two-year-olds are generally fun to be around, but that appeal diminishes ever-so-slightly when they’re remonstrative, and a week later we were still trying to return to a normal bedtime.

After losing a day’s worth of cumulative sleep over the past week, I, in my lassitude, get why my mom had her routines.

She wanted to stay sane.

That, plus it takes a tremendous amount of self-discipline to be a good parent. While we get some help from relatives, it’s no one else’s task to pick up the slack in the house. If you don’t commit yourself to regularly getting things done, you’ll be left with a giant heap of laundry in the basement and a living room that, as far as you can recall, once had a rug instead of a base layer of Seven Dwarves figurines.

So, while they might not technically be necessary, routines can definitely help a house function at its best.

Now if I could only work a nap into my schedule somehow.

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