I have come to dread the 5 o'clock hour in my house. It used to be that 5 o'clock was a happy time. Work was over for the day, drinks were poured, little snacks or appetizers were set out, and the transition from day to evening would be downright delightful.
Then we had kids.
Now, starting at 5 o'clock on the dot, the whining and clinging begins (and that's just me, calling DH every 5 minutes wanting to know WHEN HE'S COMING HOME). A child who was happily playing at 4:59 is suddenly a starving maniac at 5:01, unable to entertain himself for a single minute more because he is so. very. hungry. And I swear, if I have to cook one more meal with only a single arm because I'm holding our 16-month-old in the other, I might just beat myself in the head with a pot and call it a day.
Thus, I have begun my Elmo campaign in earnest. With our oldest, we dutifully followed the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendation that children not watch any TV at all before age 2. (Except for basketball. That didn't count) But once he turned 2 and we flipped on that TV, it changed my life. No kidding. With the help of Sesame Street (aka Toddler Crack), I could actually get dinner cooked and on the table, and the return to a semblance of normalcy in the evenings was comparable to when he started sleeping through the night. Such relief. And yet now, with our younger one, we're right back into that cling-to-Mommy-as-if-your-life-depends-on-it-stage, and when that gets to be boring it's the how-many-times-can-I-flush-the-toilet-before-she-comes-running-stage, or my all-time favorite, the let's-check-out-what's-in-the-cat-litter-box-stage. As much as I love cooking, and as strongly as I feel about us eating together as a family each night, it's sometimes so logistically difficult that I dread it. So there's no way I'm waiting until this one is 2 to turn on that TV. I'm praying for a quick and prolonged addiction on his part to a red monster or purple dinosaur. Wish me luck.
