T is away and that means the morning routine, which is dreaded second only to the evening routine, is all mine. It goes surprisingly well today even as I continue to chastise C to get himself ready ever faster, even when I’m at least 50% of the reason for our perpetual delay.

Then I take Z to his pre-school “playdate,” kind of an absurd tradition in the application process (really?) of the pre-school that C attended and that we absolutely adored. Z joins a group of 6 or so other kids, and the pre-school administrator observes them so? what? she can see they are “normal” and not future psycho-killers. In fact I’m beyond even analyzing the point of this; I just focus on my newfound realization that Z is so tiny, and shy, and quiet, and he couldn’t be more of a contrast to the other kids in the room. I have read in a thousand million parenting sites and books that every kid is different and I repeat to myself that EVERY KID IS DIFFERENT but I can’t help wondering if Z is going to hold his own with the other kids in preschool, in elementary school, at college and for the rest of his life; whether he is a late bloomer; what it may say about his lot in life that another kid his age knows the words EXCAVATOR and BACKHOE and to Z everything is either just a truck or a bulldozer.

Back at home we deal with Z’s runny nose, my emergent cold, a fun conversation for the story that I may or may not be able to pitch, and round it out with a playdate for C that is mostly trains and cars but ends in a karate kick, a punch, tears, pasta and homemade turkey meatballs and four pillow fights.

And then I inaugurate the weekend by finding out that our book has been rejected by another three publishers. I am almost crying when I tell T on the phone, but he’s so far away and the connection is so crackly I realize I’m just going to have to tough this one out myself.

I pick up Z after lunch to take him to the city to the doctor. Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve been concerned about Z and his tiny, sparrow-like body since he was about 6 months old. While C is big and tall and lanky, Z is just a little wisp of a boy, and I have been convinced, utterly certain since he started tumbling down the growth charts at six months that he has A Problem, a medical mystery I’ve spent hours consulting the doctors of Google about. He is reaching all his milestones and most of the time I am pretty sure he is alright, but then something always lingers in the back of my head; the line between healthy and scary – it could be anything. And so three months ago I booked an appointment with a highly-recommended pediatric gastroenterologist.

So I’m at the subway with plenty of time to get into the big city and I run into two friends, fellow moms of course, and as I chat away I note there’s not a damn subway in sight. No, not a damn train for 15 minutes. Maybe 20. Might as well be an hour. Eventually we get a train and there’s an announcement about a signal outage up the line. The train runs express and then grounds to a halt in a tunnel for long, hollow moments. It goes so slowly and I am so impatient I realize that I am involuntarily moving my butt in the seat, as if I’m trying to lurch the train forward myself. The minutes until our 2pm appointment are slowly evaporating. I switch to the uptown number 6 train, which speeds along nicely. And then right before our stop that train halts, too. I lose another 10 minutes. We get to the doctor at 2:40. I think to myself – if I start crying, will they make time for us?

Luckily the office staff couldn’t be nicer, and busier, and they’ve shuffled around some other patients and it’s just a short time before Z is getting his vitals taken. The doctor – he’s a paradigmatic doc of a different era, 60ish at least, gentle and authoritative. He examines Z, asks a lot of questions, and then tells me what I know but I only now believe because I’m hearing it from someone I trust: Z is tiny. He has cute little mini-pillows of fat where he needs them. He doesn’t have a milligram to spare and he’s cursed by his genes – mine. Z sticks to his own growth curve, not the one that applies to the millions of other babies in America. And while other human young have formed bones like tree trunks, Z’s are just twigs. He is as healthy as can be.

On the ride back someone holds the subway door open for us while we’re rushing to our train, proving that there is occasional goodness on the MTA, and I rest Z’s face against me as we take the long journey home.

I spend most of the day researching and trying to report a pitch of an article that I know is already doomed to fail. I see it as a lifestyle piece, bordering on a personal finance piece, and it’s tied to holiday giving so if I want to pitch it I got to do it soon, but before I try to sell it to any media outlet I have to gin up a little bit of reporting, which of course is way harder than I thought it was when I came up with the idea 24 hours ago. By 4 pm, I’ve spent most of the day trying to track down people who could speak to me for the pitch, but who don’t call or write me back, and done some online research on where I might be able to pitch it to, if the reporting materializes, concluding that actually most publications do very little original reporting these days, even if it’s lightweight and fluffy. In other words, should I bother?

Maybe, because maybe I’d feel good about myself, and get paid, if I got something published.

On the flip side, if I do some work and it continues to go nowhere, I will have only myself to blame. And how fun will that be?

When I go to pick up Z at his daycare, I get a long lecture on how he seems distant and disengaged and he doesn’t listen to the caregivers. I am pretty sure it is “just a phase,” I say. Also, I say he seems happy and talkative at home, but he has been cranky lately. The minute we get home he pulls my hair and leaves a giant wad of it on the living room carpet. I didn’t need it anyway.

T leaves for a surprise! international business trip tomorrow morning – so I have 5 days and 4 nights of single parenthood to look forward to.

It is “family Friday” at C’s school. The kids are gathered on the reading rug and a parent is reading the Polar Express. All the kids are thrilled to listen to the book, except C, who says very loudly, “I don’t like that book.” The kindergarten teacher remarks that “somebody must have taken his opinion beans this morning.” I’m totally embarrassed. After the read-aloud the kids go back to their tables and make home-made play-dough. C is trying to be the first one to do everything – stir the flour, pour in the water; next, he’s stealing little table toys from his table-mate. I am certain all the other parents are thinking, I never want my kid having a playdate with this kid. I am boiling over.

I take C out into the hallway to give him a talking-to and peruse the art and writing projects on the wall. His writing is amazing. Kindergarten pedagogy these days is all about “invented spelling,” a teaching method that involves children writing out the words as they believe they are spelled. Which is interesting; sometimes vowels are involved, sometimes not. C has written and illustrated a 5-page book about Christmas (“Crismis”). I’m Jewish and I secretly loathe Christmas but I’ve decided I don’t care because he’s written strings of words and sentences all by himself: “a book a biwt Crismis” (a book about Christmas); “Crismss plaig wif the praisis” (Christmas, playing with the presents) . He has drawn intricate pictures of Santa wrapping presents in our basement and of him and his little brother opening presents by the tree (“tree”) (yes!). As I leave the school two parents mention that we should get the kids together for playdates – the calling card of a stay-at-home-mom – so I guess C’s OK after all.

After Family Friday I take Z to a drop-in music class and speed him home for nap and lunch and then I wake him up just in time to get C from kindergarten at the ridiculously early pick-up time and we all have a snack and venture to the dollar store to buy decorations for C’s “super reader” cape. We douse the cape and also the kitchen table in plenty of glitter glue and then I boil some pasta and warm up some sauce and by the time T gets home at 6:45 the house is a mess and I’m pretty much ready to call it quits, even though I’ve committed myself to a ridiculous amount of baking for two separate social events tomorrow.

I’m starting to call myself the accidental stay-at-home-mom. Sometimes I fancy introducing myself as a writer, but I really spend a great deal of the day folding laundry, washing sippy cups, scheduling playdates, making lunches, cleaning disgusting lunch containers, scheduling doctor’s appointments, schlepping to doctor’s appointments, making dinners, picking up Legos off the floor and cuddling, loving, and disciplining (yelling at) my children. They are 2 and 5.

I have a few other things going on…. I am attempting to publish a parenting book I have been working on for some time, and occasionally I write freelance articles and very often I stare at social media sites and ogle at all my friends and social contacts who are more successful than me.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I spent 15 years as a legal reporter at 3 different news organizations. I was on a path to promotion, or at least I was doing pretty well. But then my most recent job turned into a dead end; I realized what I’d need to make it work was a big dose of ambition, and I didn’t have that. So I leaned out. I wanted to do something different. Something had to give. I needed to spread my wings, raise my voice, be me, spend time with the sprog. My spouse’s career was going up and up. I started working on a book with a friend and collaborator, and we thought we could sell it. I had grand visions of writing fascinating articles for big household-name-type media outlets filled with my piercing insight. I still have them. But then, there are the kids.

And so that’s why I’m the accidental stay at home mom.