First Full Day of Babysitting Not Going Well

I yelled at a baby. My back hurts so much I can't move. And only just barely kept from cussing out my entire family including said baby.

This is just day one and it's not over. My daughter still hasn't left for her overnight shift at her new job where I'll have to continue to watch my grandson after my husband goes to bed in about an hour until whenever grandson decides to go to sleep because she doesn't have him on any schedule. He often stays up until midnight or later.

My day started at 8am with her bringing him in my room screaming his head off and telling me he needed breakfast and changed then left to go sleep some more before her long day. Grr. I didn't fall asleep until around 4am so I was running on about four hours of sleep. But I took him downstairs and started breakfast (French toast and microwave sausage patties--something easy). While he and the 10yo were eating, I did the dishes my daughter didn't do yesterday like I told her (she said she never heard me say that).

Got the dishwasher unloaded and loaded then cleaned up a little from breakfast (never fully scrubbed the counters but wiped them off). Had to take the trash out because it was overflowing and people were just piling more and more on top which was literally falling onto the floor. This includes my husband who could easily empty it but always makes the 10yo who is the size of an 8yo and can barely lift the bags out of the can that comes to his chest.

Then washed the baby up and tried to get him to play with his toys while I finished in the kitchen but he kept trying to climb upstairs. Of course, we had to put DuckTales on for him and pretty much watched the entire second season today (again). Meanwhile, I decided to tackle the downstairs closet that was just full of crap people didn't want to actually put away.

There were sweaters/jackets hanging in there that literally no one has worn since the day we moved in and hung them up in there (the kids hoodies are usually kept on hooks on the laundry room door). I piled all of the old hoodies and jackets to go to Goodwill then went through the overflowing shoe drawers. Most of the shoes weren't even wearable with giant holes in the soles or the bottoms coming off. I pulled out the shoelaces and tossed them. Other shoes that didn't fit anyone anymore that were in good condition went into the donation pile (almost all of those were shoes I originally bought at Goodwill that were never worn by my kids).

I also increased our pile of laundry that needs to be taken upstairs because there was a ton of random clothes just thrown in there. My husband sleeps in the living room and just leaves his clothes all over like the whole room is his laundry basket (he has his own basket in our closet where his dresser is). Then I had to clean the carpet in there because a few years ago, our cat chose to keep her litter of kittens in there and the kids refused to clean up after them. I cleaned most of it out awhile ago but there was still bits of kitten poop stuck to the carpet and one of our male cats had sprayed all over (luckily mostly on a plastic bag). So I had to do a lot of bending over to pick stuff up then vacuum and run the carpet cleaner.

It took about a few hours of working off an on because I was either in intense pain or had to deal with the baby. That's when the 14yo came home after being away for two weeks. This was good because I had no idea the 17yo took off at some point. I thought she was going to be home to help me today. If the 14yo hadn't come home I would have had only the 10yo to help.

The 14yo took him upstairs to entertain him for a bit. I took a short break around 11:30am because my alarm kept blaring at me to go take my pills. I sat there until a little before 12 which is when my daughter actually left for work and woke the baby up from his nap. I was already getting ready to go downstairs to make lunch anyway. My break lasted maybe 20 minutes.

So I made lunch, cleaned up, actually ate something, then went back to working on the closet. I decided to move our board game collection in there so we can actually reach it but the games are piled in boxes in the garage. But I couldn't do that if the baby wasn't contained because he kept trying to go out into the garage which is a no. It's a mess and there's two steps to get down. I gave up before I moved all of the games.

At that point, I was utterly exhausted and having a hard time staying awake. Did I mention, I didn't get any coffee because someone used the last of my creamer and black coffee upsets my stomach for some reason. Ugh. So I changed the baby's diaper and laid on the couch to play on my phone but was having a hard time with my eyes crossing every few seconds because I was so tired.

Finally, my husband got home around 3:30pm. He took over babysitting and I went upstairs to take a nap. It was really hot so I called down to see if he would put the air-conditioner on. He said okay so I closed my window and got in bed. That was right before 4pm. It was so hot in my room, but eventually I fell asleep only to wake up a little before six, sweating and miserable.

I stumbled downstairs to find all of the doors/windows open. The AC was off and the thermostat said it was 81F downstairs. It was much hotter upstairs. Apparently my husband didn't hear me ask for the AC--he thought I said to turn down the TV. So the whole time I was trying to nap, I was roasting, waiting for it to cool off and it never did. Ugh.

Of course, at that point I had to start dinner anyway. My daughter came home from her first job and got the baby all riled up. Originally, I was just making something for myself, but the baby was hungry and my daughter started questioning what he was having for dinner. So I stopped cooking the food for me to make something for everyone else because no one (not the 20yo, my husband, the 14yo or the 10yo) was going to cook. I made them homemade Velveeta shells and cheese with peas in it and turkey smoked sausage and onions on the side.

I tried to continue making my stir fry, but I was so freaking tired. My back and legs hurt so much I can't bend over. I went out to the garage to get the stir fry veggies out of the deep freeze but they were at the bottom. My strength was just gone from the exhaustion and I couldn't pull them out or move the stuff on top of them. So I gave up.

I put up the part of my food I already cooked, cleaned up the mess I made and came upstairs without eating dinner. My daughter has to leave for her second job soon and my husband will probably be going to bed in 30-40 minutes and then the baby will be in here, getting into all my stuff and probably not going to bed for another 4-5 hours.

I'm near tears at the moment. Legit, I want to cry because I'm so tired and my day isn't over. Plus once my husband goes to bed, the 10yo comes up here because he's bored and can't use the computer downstairs anymore. So then I have both of them running all over my room, overstimulating my exhausted brain. Like I said, I already yelled at the baby at least once earlier and was getting super annoyed because he wouldn't stop whining and crying when my daughter got home and went upstairs. I just can't take the noise.

[UGH--I had two more paragraphs written, but when I tried to use spellcheck to fix an error, it just deleted the entire paragraph and CTRL-Z deleted the paragraph before it instead of restoring the lost paragraph. So now I'm even more annoyed and can't even remember what I wrote because my brain sucks.]

To recap: it's been a long day already and it's not over. Everything hurts. I'm hungry and didn't get to have my dinner that I had been looking forward to all week. I knew I couldn't handle this but no one asked me. My daughter (and everyone else) just expected me to do it because I'm the mom/gramma. I have no choice in the matter. But if I try to make the other kids help me, I'm imposing on them because it's not their job to babysit the baby. This is only day one. She wants to work both jobs for at least six months to save up money for her own place. All I can do is hope that most of her days fall when the baby is at his dad's house (Thursday-Sunday) but the days she works overnights rotates so at least half the time they'll fall on days the baby is here and I'm responsible.