are you productive with your kid around??

Okay, fellow parents:  how do you get anything done with your kid in the house?  Maybe Mike and I bend to Natalie's whims too easily, but we tend to do what she wants to do on days when we're all home together.  Playground?  Zoo?  Children's Museum?  Kiddie pool?  Beach?  We'll do whatever is going to keep our family unit together and happy.  That usually means that our house is right on the verge of being categorized as a complete disaster, with laundry piling over the top of the hamper, dishes drying on the counter, dust bunnies sitting in the corners, sticky bits decorating the top of our table, and beds unmade.  It's way more fun to play with Natalie than it is to clean, but sometimes the list of stuff I need to get done feels so insurmountable that I don't even know where to begin.

Enter, daycare.  We opted to keep Natalie in daycare two days per week throughout the summer (we've actually transitioned her to a daycare closer to my new job, but more on that in another post), which I know might sound kind of selfish.... but it's awesome.  I love that Natalie is getting the social interaction of daycare, complete with teachers who dote on her and fun new activities planned for her every day.  I totally realize how lucky we are that we can afford to send her this summer, despite my unemployment, and that it means Mike and I have two adult-only days together every single week.  Call me a bad mom, but I don't feel the slightest bit of guilt over these Natalie-free days, aside from the initial pang of sads when she is inevitably a little blue over saying goodbye on these mornings.

The best part of this arrangement is that it means Mike and I can chip away at those to-do lists without the demands of parenthood.  This morning that has meant dropping my car off for an oil change, cleaning the kitchen, getting caught up on work-related email, booking a little mini-vacation for later this month (Story Land!!), and doing a bit of laundry.  We plan on spending the afternoon doing a little more cleaning, catching up on some work-related reading, and hopefully seeing a movie.  It is pure luxury.

I truly don't know what the state of our household is going to be once I'm back at work full-time this fall and we have to cram family time and chores into the weekend.  How are you guys doing it??  Do any of you have tips or plans of attack for fitting it all in?  I'd love any and all insight.  In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy the gift of this summertime freedom and get back to pretending I keep an orderly household.