What’s for dinner? (Also, Send Help. And wine. Lots of wine.)

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It’s 6:03 PM. I walk through the door carrying a work bag, a toddler’s sock, and what’s left of my sanity.

Before I can even kick off my shoes, the baby starts crying — the loud, dramatic kind that says how dare you ever leave me. The 6-year-old is already mid-cartwheel while talking a million miles an hour about her first day of school. “MOM. So then I told her NO, you cannot erase my unicorn!” She’s upside down. She’s sideways. She’s yelling. She’s jazzed.

The 3-year-old is singing something — I don’t know what, but it’s loud. He is singing at me. With feeling. Possibly in a foreign language or one he made up.

The dog is doing laps across the hardwood floor, click-clacking like a one-dog tap dance troupe that nobody invited.

And then it starts.

“I’m hunnnngryyyy.”
“Can I have a snack?”
“Can I have juice?”
“Can I, can I, can I, MOMMMMMMMM!”

I haven’t peed since noon. I haven’t eaten since breakfast. I forgot to drink water. My left eye is twitching. I open the fridge and stare into the void. There’s half a yogurt, a leftover meatball from last week (maybe?), and something in tinfoil I’m too afraid to open.

I think I took out chicken this morning. Maybe I dreamed it. Maybe we’ll have cereal.

I’m answering questions, holding a crying baby, trying to find Paw Patrol, opening a granola bar with one hand, and internally spiraling about how I’m supposed to cook dinner, give everyone attention, stay patient, and also be a functioning human being who doesn’t cry into the sink.

But I do it.
Messy, late, loud, chaotic.
Dinner happens — maybe it’s grilled cheese, maybe it’s leftover noodles, maybe it’s a sad quesadilla made from two corners of two different cheese bags. Who cares.

I am everywhere at once and somehow still feel like I’m not enough anywhere. But I keep going. Because that’s what moms do.

It’s beautiful and exhausting and sometimes I just want to hide in the bathroom for seven minutes with a glass of wine and nobody knocking on the door asking if bees have bones.

So if you’re in it too — if the soundtrack of your evening is crying + cartwheels + snack demands + dog nails on hardwood — just know you’re not alone.

We’re out here doing our best in the middle of the mess. And sometimes, cereal for dinner is doing your best.

You’ve got this, even if you don’t feel like you do.

(But also… seriously. What is for dinner?)