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Show Earth rotates, presidents elected Everything has schedule of its own . 7: 1 5am Being the craven coward that I am, I sneak off to my office, leaving my wife home with the kids. 7:30am Sesame Street comes on PBS and the two-year old turns into a root vegetable. 8:35am My wife dresses the children. After helping the two-year old get his head through the neck of his tee-shirt rather than the sleeve, she turns her attention to the infant. As soon as that's done, the two-year old announces, 'I have to go pot-ty.'When pot-ty.'When thats done, the infant spits up on his clothes and needs to The earth rotates on its axis once every twenty-four hours. Presidents are elected every four years in November. Everything, even my household, has a unique schedule all its own. 6:00am - Realizing that he has only moments to be out of bed before the sun clears the horizon, my two-year old jumps up and announces, an-nounces, 'Is time 'a get up now!' 6:10am Frantic that mommy and daddy aren't immediately fully conscious and dressed, the two-year old enlists the aid of his infant brother by rocking the cradle violently until the baby starts to cry. This makes the two-year old cry. 6: 12am With both children going go-ing at full volume, my wife and I have no choice but to get up. 6:30am The alarm goes off indicating in-dicating that it's time to start another an-other fun-filled day at the Cummin Cumm-in gs household. 6:35am I shower, shave, dress for work, feed the cat, feed the fish, empty the dishwasher, make orange juice for everyone, and eat breakfast. By contrast, my wife takes both children downstairs. I know it's not a fair division of labor, but so long as my wife will let me get away with the easy part, I'll keep doing it. two-year old goes upstairs and takes all his toys out of the closet. While my wife cleans his room, he scatters toys in the living room. 11:40am Lunch time! The negotiations which preceed lunch at my house make a meeting of the U.N. Security Council look like a ladies sewing circle. My two-year old always wants Twinkies and chocolate milk. My wife, being firmly convinced mat very few Olympic atheletes grew up eating junk food, insists on something healthier like cottage cheese and fruit. With the basic offers established, estab-lished, the real bargaining begins. The two-year old agrees to the fruit, but not the cottage cheese. My wife counters that he can have half of a twinkie for desert if he eats the cottage cot-tage cheese. Eventually my wife wins by virtue of the fact that she's the Mommy. 12:30pm to 3:00pm Nap Time. For the two-and-a-half hours of nap, the house is completely quiet. The infant is asleep resting so he'll be ready to stay up all night. The two-year two-year old is quiet because he knows better than to disturb Mommy during dur-ing her nap. 3:00pm After waking everybody, feeding the infant, taking the two-year old potty, and dressing both kids in play clothes, my wife is at last ready to start her day's work, . 5:00pm - I arrive home, refreshed refresh-ed and relaxed after spending a day at the office. At this point, my wife and I argue over which of us gets to cook dinner. It's a hard fought arguement because the loser gets to take care of the kids. 7:00pm Bed Time. Putting the two-year old to bed is an hour long process. It entails bathing, putting on pj's, reading lots of stories, and carting about three gallons of water from the bathroom to the bedroom a glass at a time. 8:00pm - With the two-year old more -or-less asleep and the infant happily cooing to a plastic Mickey Mouse doll, my wife and I have a few moments for ourselves. Before we had kids, we spent our evenings reading books, or discussing politics, poli-tics, or even just cuddling. Now we sit and stare at the T.V. like psychiatric patients who've had too much elctro shock therapy. After a day with the kids, that's all we have the energy for. T KEVIN CUMMINGS Corespondent be changed. By then the two-year old has gotten dirty and needs cleaned up. This cycle repeats for most of the morning. 10:00am - After giving the infant in-fant his mid-morning meal, my wife starts to pick up the toys on the living liv-ing room floor. In the meantime, the |
