Kodi & Clara

I enjoy the modern luxury of east coast living and west coast working. Being as how I’m usually up in time to wake the Robins this means I have plenty of time before work to call my own. I use it for chores, errands, projects, general puttering about, and sometimes doing nothing at all. These days I spend a lot of it visiting with Mom and Dad over coffee, watching the news on mute with the captioning on because my hubby starts in his corner office half a shift earlier than me.

At some point, the time will indicate I need to gradually shift toward my back-room office off the kitchen. I’ll move my water glass to my desk, take my phone in and turn on the computer. She usually shows about this time. If not then, when I move into the bathroom to put on my make-up she’ll most assuredly have noticed. She’ll sit looking up expectantly waiting for me to figure out she wants the exact same thing. Every. Single. Morning.

I tell her good morning and pretend not to understand her pleading message as I continue getting ready.

I move into the kitchen to fix whatever snack or lunch I’ll start my day with and take it to the office. She moves with me, she won’t leave my side. There’s no way I’m starting work without her. I still have a few more things to do before I get to it but her shift has already started. She’s herding me toward the office and the start of my workday.

When I’m finally ready to get to work at my standing desk she is there at my feet, looking up, still waiting for me to realize she’s there, and more importantly to realize where she’s begging to be instead. “Oh! Hi Punkin’. You wanna go to work with Mommy?” Tiny tail wag, tiny tail wag, tiny tail wag. Yes! “Awww, okay you can come work with Mommy.” She freezes in anticipation, looking up, willing me to say the words. “You want Mommy to hold you?” Her tiny tail wag becomes speedy tail wag and her entire tiny body dances for me to hurry and put her sling on.

When I’ve placed the soft carrier strap over my head and onto my shoulder quickly adjusting it I barely swing my hands down for her as she jumps and meets them in the air. I settle all 11 pounds of her into the sling and we begin our day. I start reading through messages and she snuggles her body around my waist, resting her head in the soft fold between the strap and my belly.

My little snuggle bug learned to associate my working, with her favorite pampered position, literally nestled into my side. This quickly caused me to dub my little snuggle bug 'chief productivity officer.' If my coffee break takes any longer than she’s determined she can wait, she is at my feet, looking up, ensuring I know her eyes mean “We need to go to work, Mom.”

When I stand from my chair after lunch she runs back and forth repeatedly from my feet to our desk, where I hang her sling when we step away. She has no patience for “Soon.” “I have a few more minutes.” Her bouncing says “You’ve eaten. Put it on, pick me up, put it on, pick me up, put it on, pick me up, and get to work!”

Shortly after my lunch break Hubby finishes for the day. He does what needs doing then settles into his recliner to relax a bit. Just as soon as his backside meets the seat her little mental alarm clock goes off and her day at work with Mom is OVER! Someone has to be there to soak up all that Daddy-love so our little hard-worker shifts to her second “job”, keeping Daddy’s lap warm while he relaxes.

They relax together a few hours, I work a few more hours sitting cross-legged on the guest bed with my laptop and various papers around me. Then about an hour before I call it a day they head to the kitchen to start supper. That’s when her brother joins me in my office to fulfill his self-proclaimed responsibilities. In this fine-tuned, balanced life of work and family we all maintain, her big, little brother is the enforcer of family time. He has waited, and watched, and snuffled about bemoaning the world because his 90lb self can’t snuggle into Mommy’s side in a sling like his sister can. He’s slept patiently on his bed beneath Dad’s oversized desk all day, waiting for the moment Dad would rise from his relaxing chair and walk into the kitchen to do food stuff.

Dad turns the television off and our big boy bounds past him, through the kitchen, and into my office. He skids and bumbles his way to a stop as he enters, playing it cool he climbs casually onto the bed. He sniffs around, nosing the papers, “accidentally” stepping on most of them and making a mess of everything I’m working on. I take time to snarfle him with a bit of nose to snout closeness while I ruffle his ears and head, greeting him and telling him how happy I am to see him. “Is it almost time?”, I ask him excitedly. In answer, he lowers his massive head and nudges my laptop closed. I lift the laptop and pull it away, saving it as I tell him, “Not yet, buddy. I hafta finish jus a lil bit. I almost done. Almost.” I pat the bed beside me inviting him to lay with me for big boy snuggles while I finish up.

He lays blissfully along my side, leaning his weight into me. Seemingly comforted by the sounds of my fingers tapping the quiet keys and in the distance Dad making foodstuff noises in the kitchen on the other side of the wall. I’ll wrap up my day, and in the final moments of my shift Hubby will come in and sit with me and the kids, snuggling and playing with them at the other end of the bed.

Supper is resting in the kitchen and as I’m typing out my goodbyes to my team Big Boy is fulfilling the height of his duties. He’s waited long enough, it’s family time, that awful thing must be closed so mommy can play with us, Now! He bounces and bounds around on the bed and oops, throws the weight of his whole big body against the back of Mom's work thing. For good measure, he rolls around and thrashes about ensuring complete disruption. I cave and roll into him and we all spend what was once commute time snuggling and playing on the spare bed in my office. Job well done Big Boy, job well done!

Hubby and I are grateful to be able to earn a living from the comfort and safety of our home. We fit our work shifts into our day, rather than fitting our day in around our work shifts. With this comes the expected perks, like not needing time to commute and easily shifting from work to home during the day as needed. We’ve also discovered many surprise perks. There’s really no better way to end the workday than in a snuggle fest with your whole family just before you sit down to the dinner that’s been tantalizing you for the past half-hour with its yummy smells.

The absolute best thing about both of us working from home now is that we no longer have to exclude our kids from such a large portion of our lives. Before the pandemic, I worked at a medical facility, my hubby in a professional office environment. There’s no way our furbabies could have joined either one of us on the job. At my new job though, both of the kids can join me at work any day of the week, and twice on Sunday. Big boy has a bed under Daddy’s desk and Baby Girl a favorite spot in his lap. The two emPAWyees in our home office keep us working efficiently and keep life balanced, earning them both the designation EmPAWyee of the Month!