I’ve been back into the full time swing of things work wise for a few weeks now. It came about in the form of a promotion (yay!) but it firstly originated in my need to enter back into my profession I knew, adored and loved in a larger capacity.

Guys, I am LOVING it. It has been ‘all seasons in a day’ each day so to speak – lots of rainbows, lots of laughter and lots of feeling as if I’m making an impact on students and their access to authentic and interesting learning opportunities. On the other end of the scale though there has been guilt, a bit of stress, and a lot of compartmentalization to ensure my wiry head doesn’t combust. Did I mention guilt?

If you have been reading along or know me personally you’ll know I often resort to humour to connect with myself and others. I don’t use it in a disingenuous way – I wholeheartedly just love a laugh. I thought perhaps to help you overcome the guilt and process the feels of being a working parent I would compile a very real and I hope relatable list of things that just make utter complete sense as a working parent, so we all feel at home together. This list is also things I have been learning along the way. I want to do this because this gig is hard, folks. So let’s talk about it to make us all feel a smidgen better about our life choices and power moves.

#1 timetabling drop offs and pick ups is an Olympic sport for the elite

So if you’re a single parent navigating this…how even?

If you are in a partnership navigating this, are you okay? I’m not even joking when I say that a considerable chunk of mine and my husband’s conversations at the moment are revolving around creating the perfect pick up and drop off system. Ensuring it’s not too much for one parent, ensuring that said parents can even make it to the pick up or drop off time, floundering at the last minute when parent A has to pivot their day and parent B must now do a cheeky impromptu pick up. Guys, this is very tricky stuff. And how exhausting is it?! I want to say that after the kids go to bed we are lovingly looking into each others eyes saying sexy things but at the moment it sometimes feels like we are countries in a UN meeting negotiating a peace deal.

#2 the guilt is treacherous

I thought I knew mum guilt, and then I started working full time. Eek. Wasn’t actually prepared for the depth of it tbh. When I was part time it felt like a beautiful balance. Even though I prefer the role and capacity I am at this year, the guilt is crapola. I know it’s the best thing for me and my own mental health, and I know they will benefit from having a happier mum around, and I know I’m setting a great example of what it looks like to strive and chase dreams, but it’s made a huge impact on me. I’m so thankful for those around me who have stepped in to help raise our kiddos and I feel like this is actually a bit of a ‘village mentality’ action we are taking, but it is still hard. This part isn’t funny, soz. Let’s move onto more trivial stuff that we can laugh at.

#3 chores: yikes.

So at the moment typing this, the washing machine is whirring away, the drier is drying (it’s 6:19pm) our quilt and quilt cover is haphazardly strewn in the playroom because who can be arsed doing that at 10pm of a night, there is black fluff everywhere from something (??????), definitely sand in and around most rooms from the dreaded daycare sandpit and there are over spilling hampers of clothes that have been washed and dried. So don’t stress if you are in chore hell hole because same. My mum must die in a Friday when she pops around to take care of the kids. And she must have a magic trick or spell because the chores just get done somehow (I lagged when I didn’t work full time let’s be real lmao).

#4 welcome to mental load o’clock (open at our place between 4:30-6:30pm)

Do you just have that gross part of the day? Ours is definitely 4:30-6:30 pm. Let’s set the scene. Parent A has brought children home from daycare. Parent B is either still at work, or at home hastily preparing dinner. If it’s the former, it’s a right stitch up. Parent A has to not only handle the dinner for the children but also mitigate and handle the post daycare come down and/or emotions. This usually involves a cooking utensil in one hand and a child’s hand in their other. Not a fun affair tbh.

If it’s the latter, at least you have a handicap. One parent can cook. The other parent can calm. Big LOL and rookie move if parents A and B even try to enter if a discussion about how your days were. God forbid you gave them attention for a sec. Anyway, you have a handicap but it’s still a lot – you need to unpack yourself from the day, unpack your kids from the day, get into home mode, decompress from busy work days and then be present with your babies who have missed you all day. The children are not gross (maybe they are after daycare) but just the time of day is gross I feel? All you feel like doing is sitting in a shower for 77 minutes and then following that up with a wine but you now need to perform. Let the games begin.

Dinner gets put on the table and then another UN peace negotiation begins: the Please Eat Your Dinner Treaty. Basically at this point if they are even open to having a cheeky nibble, it counts. Even if it’s just a bit of grated cheese and an ‘almost off’ strawberry, whatever trevor. Weetbix is also a fan fave in our house. We persevere.

After you have taken a few deep breaths about the moldy strawberry and cheese and then after a few more deep breaths after they tell you ‘I’m still hungrayyyyyy’ it’s time for a bath. You’ll almost always accidentally make it too hot so then the tap will just run with cold water and then the kids hop in and turn this into a fun game of drinking the water out of the tap. Don’t even bother starting a Tap Needs To Turn Off peace deal. At this point, it is simply not worth it.

Bedtime is now upon us. The finish line is almost there, and you can begin to smell it! The silence! The wine! The chocolate you can eat publicly in the kitchen and no one is going to accost you. I actually rate this moment. I often put our son down and Josh will often put Thea down. It’s a cute time and pulls life into perspective – given they drift off the sleep without complaining about the heat/cold/noises/itchy sheets.

#5 email notifications on the steady rise throughout the week

This may be very niche but does anyone recognize the surmounting red email notifications and knowing how much it bothers you, you absolutely just do not have the time or care to even mark them as read because you know they are all from David Jones, Big W, Target and other various shops you signed up to get the discount for when you were a stay at home mum to snag a bargain? Cos same. I signed up to so many online stores accidentally and innocently when ordering things online during #iso that I am just unhealthily bombarded by spam that I just ignore. And then I get overwhelmed by Thursday so I rage delete them all.

#7 strong disdain for dress up days at daycare

When Henry first started daycare, I was so excited for these days. The potential of what the dress-up would look like, what he would actually dress up as, the cute costumes, ah such bliss. Now, as a seasoned and full time working mum, these days fill me with dread to a degree. Why can’t my kid just wear their usual t shirt and shorts combo that I have already put aside for them to wear? Can we partake even if we just add a fun hat, silly sock or quirky accessory? Can Spider-Man really double dip into all the days? Because that’s all he wants to dress up as anyway?!? But we carry on with the dress up because I do not have the stomach to sit at work all day, knowing our kid has missed out on dressing up like their peers. So we journey on, accept the peace deal even though it’s costs us literal dollars sourcing said costume, stress and our sanity. We then pray over the peace deal, asking God to make sure our kid actually wants to put in the costume in the morning and show up to their end of the deal. Ya feel me? I feel like you do.

#8 thrive, survive, revive.

Do we thrive everyday? Probs not. Do we survive everyday? Flip yes. Obviously! We are awesome. I guess my prompt to all you working unicorns, is asking are you reviving everyday? Are you tapping into those moments with yourself or perhaps others to reconnect to yourself? To reconnect with your passion? To reconnect with your reason?

I only ask because I have found this to be a fundamental key. I may not be crushing it everyday, and some days do just feel like outright survival with the meetings and passing kisses and being stretched beyond measure and capacity; but a major key in this game is coming back to the centre. Coming back to that spark. Coming back to those reasons you’re in this space. Keeping our eyes forward and up (see what I did there?), keeping focused on our impacts on everyone who crosses our paths during the day. These reasons and sparks will not heal you from the guilt, the tiredness, the struggles and the demands, but they will remind you who you are, and how amazing you are.

We get to demonstrate revival each day. When the sun rises, we are asked to also rise in revival, to step into a new day of utter chaos to lead, manage, handle and conquer. What a privilege and what a responsibility.

I hope this blog was relatable for you. I can sit here and write about all the hard stuff but I love writing in hope too. It’s hard and impossible, yet somehow it happens. That is the most magical thing of all, and no treaty, peace deal, agenda, council or delegate can make what you make happen each and every day. I’m proud of you and hope you revive with guilt free wine and mcflurries, often, because you earnt it.