A typical Sunday… with a one-year-old.

Where does the time GO when you have a baby? Seriously, where? Mr Chick and I often discuss this, baffled by the fact that even though we’re up at a sparrow’s fart, we get less done on weekends than we ever did. I wrote a day in the life post about Charlie and me when he was three weeks old, but a year on we’re clearly still floundering in the baby black hole of time suckage. We may be here for some time.

5.30am. Baby wakes. Mummy dashes off to get him a bottle which he guzzles, before having a tiny catnap.

6am. Mummy takes baby into living room as it’s daddy’s turn to sleep in. Puts taped episode of baby’s favourite show on (Brum) which he sits in front of, catatonic, allowing mummy to nick off for a sneaky wee.

6.10pm. Baby watches 5 episodes of back-to-back Hey Duggee.

6.30am. Baby finds his ball and instigates a game with mummy that involves of passing it back and forth under the coffee table about 567 times.

7am. Baby hears loud snore from the bedroom, remembers daddy is in there asleep and crawls off at the speed of lightning. Mummy spends next hour trying to a) distract him from bedroom or b) extract him from bedroom.

8.30am. Mummy and baby both knackered and head back to bed. Baby immediately decides he’s not tired and starts squealing and pulling all the books off the headboard.

8.32am. Mummy takes him back to the living room to watch more kids TV while trying and failing not to have micro-sleeps on couch.

8.34am. Baby makes a break for it and makes it into the bedroom, squealing, to again attempt to wake up daddy.

8.40am. Mummy straps a screaming baby in the pram and goes for walk, joining baby in making heavy breathing noises at all the ‘woof-woofs’ (dogs). People in earshot think she is mental. Mummy couldn’t give a rat’s arse.

9am. Mummy and baby arrive home, go back to bed and instantly fall asleep like badly sleep-deprived people do. Daddy gets up and makes coffee.

11am. Whole family up, baby eating, parents optimistically make lunch plans.

11.15am. Mummy tries and fails to empty dishwasher after extracting baby from it 76 times. Decides doing some washing would be similarly problematic. Reads books to baby instead.

12 noon. Daddy decides to fix the dodgy washing line that is about 100 years old. Goes into attic to get drill.

12.10pm. Baby refuses to lie down so mummy does nappy change while kid is standing up. Baby promptly wees all over the floorboards and the rug. Mummy chases him around the coffee table with the nappy while he continues weeing everywhere.

12.20pm. Floor now clean from wee, baby wearing nappy. Mummy’s tea cold, as usual.

12.30pm. Baby discovers unusual pull-down attic ladder in the hallway that wasn’t there yesterday. Enthusiastically climbs ladder 897 times while mummy shadows him and freaks out he’s going to fall on his head. Tries to ignore swearing from backyard about spiders. Lots of spider spraying going on.

12.45pm. Daddy gives up on fixing the dodgy 100-year-old washing line, mutters that he will buy new one.

1pm. Mummy says baby has to nap at 2pm and decide there’s no time for anything but a quick trip to the playground at Annandale. Lovely lunch plans jettisoned.

1.20pm. Family arrive at playground in Annandale, baby goes on rampage, chortling with glee.

1.50pm. Baby smears half a vegemite sandwich on the slide and has an tanty when he realises he’s eaten all the yoghurt. Chucks strawberries at mummy’s head.

2pm. Mummy and daddy have a stupid argument about nothing and daddy announces that he’s walking home. Mummy takes great satisfaction in tearing past daddy in car at full-speed.

2.15pm. Baby naps. Mummy reads Motherhood & Creativity, feels bereft about lack of creativity since motherhood took over.

4.15pm. Baby wakes. Daddy now home.

4.30pm. Mummy and daddy reach truce of sorts and decide to have cuppa in between discussing how adorable baby is and taking turns making him giggle.

5.30pm. Mummy and daddy realise they haven’t done anything adulty all weekend and godammit they are going to have a drink somewhere even if it means baby has epic witching hour tanty.

5.45pm. Entire family arrive at Beach Burrito, order cocktails and snacks. Baby promptly loses it when realises food will not be there immediately and daddy takes him for distracting walk to nearby post office.

6pm. Mummy’s cocktail arrives. She sips it for all of 30 seconds in blissful silence until the boys arrive back and she has to use every trick in her arsenal to keep baby amused (That’s Not My Plane book, tummy tickles, swapping daddy’s sunglasses from mummy’s face to baby’s face to daddy’s face over and over and over).

6.20pm. Food arrives. Baby stuffs face with coconut prawns. Parents apologies to one another for stupid argument and wax lyrical about how much they are enjoying this brief moment of peace, cocktails and fried food.

6.30pm. Mummy and daddy want to kiss patrons on next table who coo and giggle at baby and try to get him to wave, thus enabling them to enjoy 2 more minutes of peace. And, in mummy’s case, without a fat little hand trying to make ‘splashes’ in her margarita.

6.40pm. Mummy and daddy decide to get another drink.

6.50pm. Mummy and daddy really regret getting another drink as baby decides to let them know in no uncertain terms that he has missed his bath and The Night Garden and wants to go home STAT or there will be trouble.

6.55pm. Mummy and daddy point out all the pigeons in the tree to buy themselves more time. Back arching ensues.

7pm. Baby refuses to go in pram, daddy is forced to carry him. Baby chirrups happily all the way home.

7.15pm. Baby guzzles bottle in front of yesterday’s taped episode of The Night Garden. Doesn’t seem to notice. Has memory like goldfish.

7.30pm. Mummy puts baby to bed.

8.30am. Mummy brings baby into lounge-room so she can watch A Place To Call Home.

9pm. Daddy pauses A Place To Call Home while mummy attempts to put baby back to bed.

9.20pm. Baby asleep.

10pm. Show ends. Mummy and daddy lie exhausted on couch trying to summon up energy to go to bed.

10.10pm. Bed.

How was your weekend?

Linking up with #IBOT to Essentially Jess.