Time with your toddler is intense.  It’s full contact karate. It’s never-ending, no breaks. No timeouts. No commercials.  It’s like a soccer game without half time.  You just go and go and go and go.  Which can be exhilarating, but it’s taxing.  Physically, psychologically, emotionally.  It’s so exhausting that going to the office is like a break.  Thank God for work and daycare, so you can have time to recharge your batteries and get something done.

And, when I say exhausted, I mean exhausted.  Tired.  Old people tired.  Like you’ve been alive so long, you just can’t keep going.  Like you just have nothing left to give.

Athletes talk about how they “left it all out on the field.” Let me tell you something. When you are a parent, you leave it all on the field everyday all day.

There isn’t a day that goes by when I’m done parenting when I don’t think, “Jesus, I just want to go lie on a beach somewhere.”  And I hate the beach!!

But, I need that.  I need a hammock strung between 2 palm trees, with the sound of the waves and a very light breeze, and maybe a Corona beer.  I don’t even need a hot chick in a bikini, and I’m a sexless married dude.

Because all I need is the rest.  Just  a week-long, 18-hour nap beneath the shade of 2 palm trees.  But, I couldn’t get the rest if I was in my hammock at the beach, because my son would be calling my name over and over and over again, “daddy, daddy, daddy” to come help him build a sand castle.  Or, he’d wander into the water, and I’d have to get up to watch because I’d be too afraid that he’d drown or be swept out to sea or be eaten by sharks.  Or, he’d eat a jellyfish that washed up on shore and go into anaphylactic shock. Or, he’d wander off and go home with a family of vacationing tourists from Ohio who are staunch Republicans who still think President Obama is from Kenya.  Or, he’d get hit in the head by a coconut falling from the trees I’m sleeping under and be rendered unconscious. Or, any and all of the above.

So, even in the most idyllic, most relaxing place on earth, I still wouldn’t be allowed to relax. I’d still have to be on my Ps and Qs.  I still wouldn’t get any rest.  I still wouldn’t be allowed to enjoy my pina colada in peace.  In fact, my pina colada would curdle, and my Coronas would go stale, and the hot chick in the bikini would go off to talk to the guy with no chest hair and no bags under his eyes, and I would be left to look at my son, my beautiful baby boy who I love more than anything in this world and say, “C’mon dude.  Gimme a F’ing break!”

And, this is why parenting is the most exhausting thing in the world.