Solo Parenting When Your Partner is Home

In mid-January, my partner had knee surgery to try and repair some missing cartilage in his left knee.  The procedure was arthroscopic, so he was home that afternoon, but had to stay off his leg for six weeks.  That means six weeks where it couldn't even touch the ground.  No balancing on the toes, no baby steps; zip, nada, zilch.

We live in a two-story house with the main bedrooms on the upper floor.  The laundry room is in the basement.  For the duration of his recovery, my partner moved downstairs into a twin bed kept in the spare bedroom.  This meant that he couldn't access the upper floor (where our son's bedroom is located) or the basement.  It also meant that I was stuck doing the laundry for the next six weeks; a chore we normally split.

The big guy does a fair amount of travel for work, so I'm accustomed to picking up the slack while he is gone.  I make sure that I can get dinner on the table every night for the boy and myself, and I try to pack his lunch every day using meal leftovers.  However, something usually has to give, and between getting our son to do his homework, getting him fed, bathed and into bed after a full day at the office wears me out.  When my partner is out of town, I usually don't clean the kitchen.  Oh sure, I'll load and run the dishwasher in the first day or two, but then I rarely get around to emptying it and the dirty dishes just stack up.  Yes, I know this is gross.  But who is going to complain; an 8yo boy?  I hardly think so!  So, the night before (or some times the morning of) the big guy's return, I spend a few hours madly cleaning my collective filth from the week and he comes home to a semi-respectable house.

However, with him recovering from surgery, I couldn't fall back into my slovenly ways.  If I didn't clean the kitchen before I left for work, it would stay that way and I would get disapproving looks in the evening.  After a couple weeks, he was able to hobble around the kitchen on crutches and prepare some easy dinners.  That left cleaning the kitchen to me.  Have I mentioned I loathe washing dishes?  There's a very good reason we have the "I cook; you clean" policy in our household; I cook 90% of the time, that means 90% of the time I don't need to do the dishes!

I'd like to think that these six weeks of forced domestication helped me manage the household chores better.  However, after the six weeks, the big guy was given the OK to start walking again; and by week seven was already traveling the entire week for work.  During that week, the kitchen returned to its' usual state of disorder.  So much for new habits.

Original DC Metro Moms Blog post

De in D.C. can also be found sporadically posting recipes that she cooks in her kitchen (and doesn't clean up) at her personal blog, A Spiced Life.