My toddlers are 14 months and 2.5. The 2.5-year-old doesn’t nap and the baby naps maybe an hour a day. It takes 15 minutes to get her down, I’ll take 15 minutes to use the bathroom and eat something/care for my own basic needs, the older will need 15 minutes of tending, I’ll frantically race to start breakfast dishes and within 15 minutes she’s up. Other than that not-guaranteed midday poo it’s 16 hours a day of chaos.

It’s nonstop no breaks all day every day for fucking ever. The baby is into everything and doesn’t watch TV, like is completely uninterested in it. The older has attachment issues and follows me all day crying “I just want you, Mommy, I just want you.” But I can’t sit and be with her because the younger girl would freak out and also I have shit to do and I’m overwhelmed with guilt at how miserable and traumatized she seems because I don’t hold her all day. Many times a day I’m just alternating which one I hold while the other one screams clinging to my leg as if I’ve abandoned her in a war zone and idk what to do but tune out the constant crying. I’m home with them all day, but I feel like an absentee deadbeat parent by the way they act so desperate with me.

I’ve been in some pretty advanced academic environments and excelled at things that look hard on linkedin or whatever but nothing in my life has ever been this hard.

8am-5pm is a super exhausting nonstop stretch with them but 5pm is when the real work begins bc I have to find a way to cook a remotely healthy dinner while 2 toddlers interrupt me every 2 seconds, wrestle them to eat something anything, wrestle them to bath, wrestle them to FUCKING GO TO SLEEP (you know at least one is going to fight it for hours), emerge at 10pm so exhausted I could cry, to finally face the dinner dishes, food everywhere, toys everywhere, laundry unfolded (can’t possibly fold laundry with a 1yo around). That is my “break” of the day. If I get anything done during the daytime it’s because my 1yo is somewhere else making an even bigger mess so nothing ever gets better. There’s really no way to do things but when they sleep but o ya, THEY DONT SLEEP.

I do not understand how other parents are doing it or making it look easy. Other parents have hobbies and watch tv shows with their spouses somehow? wtf when??? I’ve had a book on my nightstand for 6 months and I find a time to read a chapter maybe once every 2 weeks. There’s 1-2 hours after bedtime to do EVERYTHING - shower, complete all household chores, connect with husband, pay bills, exercise, have self time, job search. HOW TF.

I need to get off tiktok. I started following SAHM content for motivation but I don’t understand it. These moms calmly show themselves cleaning their whole houses top to bottom and cooking elaborate meals while their children are mysteriously not in frame or apparently quietly sitting in a bouncy chair for hours, then oh it’s only 11am and now they’re going to take their kids to the park. I feel like I don’t do anything fun or educational with mine because the process of feeding, changing, and cleaning up after them takes every second of the day without even getting into real chores.

I could handle the exhaustion if I felt like I was doing important work as a homemaker. But my house is a disaster and my kids cry all day and I can’t find time to play with them because of the feed change clean cycle. My career is shot with these years off. I wish I could give up. Why does this seem so hard for me and so easy for everyone else.