Grutz says, "Well, um, here's the new reality now. Whew." or "Kicking ass and taking names?"

Day 2 of Carleen's abandons family return to work.

It hasn't been this bad.  Well, not the entire time.

The good.

Frances is taking a bottle.  Sleeps for spells.  Nolan is great.  Getting a considerable amount of work done around the house, more than I anticipated.  Meals made.  Hell, I'm brining a chicken at the moment for dinner tonight. Hell yes I had dinner made and the laundry and the kids were fed, happy, and healthy!  BAM!  

And he kids are beautiful. 

The bad.

See photo above.  When the poop hits the fan, it is intense.  Like a perfect storm, a gut-wrenching, oh-my-god-how-did-Grandma-Barb-do-this type of storm.  Crying kids hurt the heart.  Screaming baby has poop streaming out her diaper, son is crying for Mom while systematically and dangerously pulling heavy non-fiction books off a shelf above his head (something very new) and something's burning on the stove, couch spontaneously combusts into flame, dog starts speaking in tongues, toilet explodes.  At times, very critical times it seems, Nolan is NOT great.  A understandable thing in lieu of the current state of things. Yesterday, our first day sans Mom, I'd say there was about a combined 45-60 minutes of chaos.  What's that Arnie?  Oh, yes, rough!  But it passes and things work out.  I wanted to congratulate myself as Carleen got home (from her own tough job) for a pretty successful day (IMO), but then a little voice in my head said, "This is what's supposed to happen now, the new norm.  Nothing special here big guy.  This is how it is now.  No big deal."  Oh, right.

The ugly.

Me.  Lack of sleep.  Time spent with wife.  Arnie's lack of walks.  I've had tougher jobs in the past, I just can't recall any at the moment.  Bitch, bitch, bitch.....

In conclusion...

Like any new change, it takes time to get into the swing of things.  I can't expect things to be hunky-dory right off the bat.  But it is going much, much better than I thought (at least for 1.5 days!).  We'll manage.  We have to.