February 28.

I was supposed to be going back to work next week.  (Looks around to see if anyone is listening).  I kinda wish I was.

I’m bored.  I had a feeling this might happen.  Baby is fully weaned, enjoying his formula and waking up usually only once a night now.  He’s not taking solids all that great but we are getting there.

The weather sucks.  I’m not usually to complain about our climate but this has been a particularly long winter. At least it feels that way.  I don’t even mind the snow, but the bitter, bitter cold makes it very difficult to go out for walks with the kids.

I haven’t run in a week.  My ankle is still sore.  I finally got on the exercise bike last night for 45 minutes and worked up a sweat and that felt good.  But I miss running.  I miss the freedom.  I miss that 30-40 minutes of solely me-time.

And that makes me feel guilty.  In five weeks I’ll be working 4 days a week and leaving husband with 3 kids.  I’ll have all day to be with adults, to be “on my own” and to miss the kids.  Yet right at this very moment, I wish I was going back to work next week.

My brain, like my body after not running for a week, feels like mush.  I have a stack of New England Journal of Medicine magazines that I need to start reading, but I can’t focus for more than a few minutes without a child demanding juice, or a snack, or a diaper change.  I honestly don’t know how parents do this day-in and day-out.  I don’t know how my husband does it.  I’ve been home for 5 months and I’m starting to go crazy.  I knew this would happen but it felt too soon to go back to work in March.  Now April feels a million miles away.

Even as I write this the guilt is overflowing – the older kids are watching Sleeping Beauty and the baby is jumping jolly.  Lazy parenting at its best.