A tribute to all mothers - Facts about raising kids

Its been half a year without a single post! How come?

The reason for this slackness: I was on paternity leave since beginning of this year looking after our two boys (Philip, three and Felix, twenty months). Initially I thought this was going to be my most productive time since kindergarten. Getting smart on thousand and one things I had not have time to deal with when still working and of course publishing blog articles on a weekly basis - at least!

Well, I wasn't even close.

The first fact: The flow

The human brain - the male version at least - needs a minimum of 15 minutes to focus on a topic to an extent that it is in a position to start producing anything with rhyme and reason. Work done with a shorter cerebral start-up phase will inevitably result in crappy output littered with bugs. You end up disposing your work and starting all over again.

This mental stage of full concentration is of paramount importance to anything of quality, some refer to it as "the flow".

The second fact: The distraction

After 172 days of extensive empiric study I found that human beings (at least under the age of 20 + 6 months) produce three types of distraction that are highly qualified to interrupt your sacred flow. I categorize them as follows:

Disaster prevention:

A once proud shelf packed with stuff
restructured to now serve as a
baby safe workstation

This is the greatest threat to your flow since you have to react immediately. Under this category fall e.g. attempts to drill open power outlets, utilising curtains as cloaks while they are still attached to the curtain rod, well-intentioned watering of shoes with your beer bottle, etc..

What makes those incidents even more dangerous is the fact that the removal of the threat (to which they adamantly cling to) e.g. locking away the screwdriver or hiding the "watering-can" almost always triggers fierce and enduring clamour.

Very bad for your flow of course.

Childrens' program:

Every now and then you notice a pair of little hands pulling at your leg. Time to play with your child! This is the most enjoyable distraction, also because you have the opportunity to turn any "game" into an educational event. This is where you actually learn them things.

Even if you might doubt, I assure you, when e.g. asking your kid to point to a pair of shoes in his picture book if he rushes off returning with a pair of his own shoes you are as excited as if - after three weeks of refactoring- all your unit tests are green.

This type of distraction is most dangerous to your flow because it is also delightful.

Scheduled tasks:

Finally there are certain tasks you have to perform at specific times or in certain intervals, e.g. fill the drinking bottle with fresh tea every hour, have them consume their breakfast, lunch, dinner as well as various light snacks on time, lull them to sleep at 12:00 and hopefully at 19:00. And of course probe the nappy's content every half an hour.

If you omit any of those tasks not only will the kids turn nasty with time but also your wife will give you hell. By the way, whenever you hear a mother talking to her husband on the phone it is most probably her making sure he took care of those scheduled tasks.

This kind of distraction is the best to manage of course.

Here used to be a light fixture until
Felix discovered his "Tarzan ambitions".
I didn't like that chandelier anyway.

The third fact: There is no flow

When looking after kids your brain gets chain-distracted. You don't get your 15 minutes to enter the flow. Full-stop. End of the story.

The forth fact: You give up

After two weeks you don't even try to get into any kind of flow. Why? Good lord, you have kids! Silly question! Loool!

A tribute to all mothers on this planet

This leads me to the title of this post: "A tribute to all mothers on this planet". Now I am in a position to attest: Raising kids is more than a full time job since that would imply 9 hours of work with 1 hour lunch break, right? However, you get up with your kids, you spend the entire day with them and you go to, no, you fall into bed with your offspring and most certainly wake up in the middle of the night to replug the pacifier or serve them a well tempered bottle of milk. There is no escape!

One might argue: "That little scallywag will eventually have his nap". That is true, but what if you have two of that kind! After extensive synchronisation efforts I discovered yet another principle: kids will not have their naps at the same time.

No, raising kids is definitely not a full time job, it is a lifetime job. Anyone disesteeming "mere housewives" is an ignorant fool whose brain would probably not be able to enter any kind of flow anyway. Don't get me wrong, I am rather conservatively oriented but facts are facts, just as the world won't flatten again.

Now you might think I was I jumping for joy when I finally got the new job and could desert to work. Well, not entirely true... I do enjoy the normal stress at work of course but I miss my two boys a lot, I really do. Weekends are too short to catch up with what, I now know, I missed.

When I come home nowadays I am not only reminded that I love my wife for those two cuties but also for her having cared for them the last 11 hours!

Some other wisdom I gathered

Before plugging my USB stick I now always check if there are any bananas remains in the plug.

Before turning on the washing machine I now check the drum to see if my boys hid a shampoo bottle in the laundry. Well, they like bubble baths.

Just in case you toy with the idea:
you would have to paint the entire wall,
more likely, the entire room.

Speaking of shampoo, when having my morning shower I constantly check if my older one is pouring shampoo into the shower tray from behind the shower curtain. I once almost broke my neck when slipping on that squidgy stuff.

I also learned to write emails with one hand, the other busy holding one of my boys. I now even mastered writing with the tip of my nose to a certain extent in case my second boy claims equal treatment.

One last piece of advise...

...for an incident that is inevitable with kids: If you catch your little one scribbling on the wall, don't yell, don't cry, don't even take away that pen you carelessly forgot to lock away. The damage is already done. Simply let him finish his work and put his name and date underneath. Every time you notice that piece of work you will smile, at least I do :)