Life

21 Tweets That Perfectly Capture What Saturdays Are Like With Kids

by Danielle Campoamor

There's an endless list of changes you experience when you become a parent. Your social life can change, your sleep schedule most certainly changes, and your priorities are sure to change significantly. Another change? Your Saturday mornings (...and afternoons...and evenings). Those are profoundly different after kids.

When you're a parent, there are really no more lazy Saturdays where you can sleep until noon and finally get out of bed around 2:30 p.m. and prepare for a night out on the town around 10:00 p.m. and come home at 3 a.m. I mean, I'm not going to say that happens never but it happens rarely. (So, so rarely.) You're probably not nursing a hangover and if you are, you're definitely hating your life and whoever decided to invent alcohol. You can't quietly read with a cup of coffee. More likely, you're probably downing a cold cup made the day before as you attempt to finish the laundry or prepare a meal or stop your kid from writing on the wall with that permanent marker you've continually told them not to touch.

Your Saturdays are warm and filled with chaos and love and maybe even a fun adventure, but they most certainly don't belong to you anymore. Your schedule can't be as flexible or as empty as it was when you were sans kids, and even though it can be frustrating, it is also surprisingly comforting. Do you miss sleeping in? Of course. But will you miss the early morning wake-up calls from your kid because they want to watch cartoons and have breakfast and yell at the noisy bird outside their window? Definitely. Well, maybe. Possibly. You know what, ask me when that day actually comes.

Either way, it's hard to explain how different your Saturdays are, now that you have kids. Thankfully, Twitter is a thing and parents are using it to make us laugh about the hell that can be a Saturday with children. Here are 21 tweets that perfectly capture Saturdays after kids, because hey, if you don't laugh, you'll most certainly cry.

Plans Or No Plans, You Know How Your Day Will Go

Whether you're busy or there's nothing on your family schedule, you're not sitting down and you're not getting an ounce of peace and quiet and you're certainly not above being annoyed.

When you're a parent, there's never enough time to go to Bed Bath & Beyond. Seriously, you don't want to have the time. Just don't do it.

Terrified. You should always be terrified if your house is quiet.

You're Not Going To The Movies

My kid is a few months away from turning 2, and it's been almost two years since I've seen a movie in an actual movie theater, with the popcorn and the candy and the massive surround sound. Oh, those were the days.

You're Cleaning. So. Much. Cleaning.

Saturdays are less about relaxing and more about getting everything back to neutral so you can start the week mildly in control. (JK, it'll all be wrecked again by Sunday afternoon... OK, dinnertime on Saturday.)

The laundry always wins.

You Need All The Coffee

Needing all the coffee might not be too big a change from your Saturday mornings before kids, but the reason why certainly is.

You're Not Sleeping In

Kids letting their parents sleep in? Yeah, the chances of that happening are on par with winning the lottery. Never going to happen.

J.J. Abrams missed an opportunity to incorporate an extremely realistic plot line. Next time, Abrams. Next time.

Saturday Nights Are...Different

Going out might not look like it did before you had kids, but at least you're going out. Right?

What Are Kid-Free Saturdays, Again?

If only I had known that, when I was a kid, I had the life. Saturday morning cartoon and a hardy breakfast prepared by someone else and the ability to recklessly play were all things I enjoyed. Now, there's no sleep, all the cleaning and never enough coffee.

Kids are so lucky they're worth it.