thinking about getting back on the working mom highwire

My husband has been telling me how supportive he will be when I go back to work. It seems as though he truly understands how important it is for mom to be in the home, with the children. Not in the home cooking dinner while the kids watch tv, not in the home scrubbing toilets while the kids play on the computer. But in the home, with the kids.

But my husband, like me, wants a clean, well organized home. He wants clean clothes in the drawers and a good meal to sit down to at the end of the day. He wants to be able to walk from the living room to the kitchen without impaling his foot on a matchbox car. Add to this list of wants the few things I also need and it appears as though I will be very busy when I go back to work. I need to have a semi- calm morning before going in to work. I need to have lunches packed, all four of them, and school and work bags packed. I need to have the beds made before we leave in the morning and I need to have breakfast cleaned up before we hit the road. I need to have at least a few minutes of peace and quiet to enjoy my coffee, whether that time is found at home or at my desk in a new office somewhere. And I need to have my daily devotional time. Clearly what I will truly need  to do is set the alarm clock to the crack of dawn and drag myself out of bed before the family wakes up. Which isn't going to be that easy; the tiny toddler wakes up at the slightest noise, demanding to get out of his crib. My morning quiet time is going to have to include unplugging the baby monitor and creeping around the house like a mouse but I'll do it. It's that important to me...

OK, so I know what I need. I know what my husband needs. I know what my boys need. What I didn't know was how I was going to meet all of these needs. But my husband has repeatedly told me that it will all work out. That he will pitch in. Which got me thinking about my daily zone cleaning. If my helpful husband were to open our Family Control Journal he would see that Monday's zone is the upstairs bedrooms. But that is where the instructions in the journal end. He would have no clue what cleaning those rooms inlcudes. So I am changing my zones. Instead of simple daily zones, I will now have assigned tasks inside each daily zone. Sounds like micro managing, I know. But come on, you all have husbands. You understand.

So stay tuned. A new and updated Family Journal is to come. And hopefully I'll be back at work soon and will be able to report how it is all working out.