These are the rules of a solo parenting day:

1. You’ll need to brew more coffee than normal, despite there only being one coffee drinker in the house. Why? See the following.
2. The kids will wake up even EARLIER than normal. Like 4:20 a.m. for example.
3. They’ll want something right away, before coffee has even entered your blood stream, before the rest of the world has even considered prying their eyes open. (Bronson at 4:45: “Me want breakfast. Me watch the news and eat breakfast.” Mumbling to myself: “Even the news isn’t up this early.”)
4. When you decide to go to bed at night, both kids will wake up as you’re brushing your teeth.
5. Both kids require 100% focus to be consoled. You’ll wish you were an octopus.
6. For sleeping you’ll have one of two options: have at least one child in your bed with you, or fall asleep in your child’s bed, while he stays awake, of course.
7. The child that normally sleeps through the night will revert a newborn-like dependency, waking multiple times each night, usually causing your second child to wake as well.
8. Your children will screech and run away more in public because they know you’re just wasting time and avoiding home where you’ll be required to play the same game for the 100th time that day.
9. Your children will get sick, or you will. Again, only two options.
10. After the first several hours of the day, your spouse will say good morning on Skype while clearly just waking up in his child-free bed.
11. Some days your children will take multiple tubbies just because it contains and entertains them.
12. T.V. time doubles. You’ll doze on the couch.
13. Your child will scream in your face when you doze on the couch.
14. You’ll read a lot of Laura Numeroff books. Can you tell?
15. You’ll realize in a normal day of parenting it’s a team effort, and your spouse is very useful. You’ll feel grateful for his existence, and ticked that he gets to leave.
16. Your children will tell you they miss daddy. If you try to comfort them, they’ll just start yelling “NO. I want Daddy!” You’ll join in.
17. The pre-recorded video your spouse made of him singing to your kids will be very useful in stressful moments. For 10 seconds. Then the kids will fight over it, shoving and hitting each other to hold the iPad. You don’t have to be a full year old to want to hold an iPad.

    

18. You won’t ever get to talk to your spouse. Your children will steal the phone and hang up. You’ll call back. They’ll take it away again, or yell loud enough that there’s no reason for you to continue to try to talk. They’ll hang up again.
19. You’ll get extra cuddles because there’s only one person around to offer. You’ll have a brief moment of being glad you’re the one who is home with them. You’ll get hit in the head with a thrown Lego.
20. You’ll waste precious down time writing silly lists instead of sleeping because you drank a whole pot of coffee before 9 a.m.