How do you do it?

Over the years, Hubster and I have heard it a lot.

How do you do it?

Meaning, how do we juggle two different jobs/careers/school/whatever with having two boys.

So many people do the same thing. There are many, many parents out there, both of whom are working, who have children. And somehow, we are all making it work. I'm sure that all those other working, ball juggling parents have heard the question, too. How do we do it?

For the longest time, I didn't have an answer to the question. We had been doing "this" for so long, that I wasn't exactly sure what my life would look like any other way. My go to response was we wake up each morning, and we just do it. There wasn't a lot of other options other than to keep waking up each morning and to keep doing it.

Along the way, I've been able to identify things that I feel have made it more difficult. We don't live next to any family. We don't have high paying jobs. We work more than nine to five (a lot more). All these things could result in why we just couldn't do it.

But we were. Everyday for nearly 10 years, we've been doing it. And hopefully, not just scraping by, but actually enjoying the journey. I've kept looking for an answer to the question on exactly how we have made this whole crazy, juggling circus act work. I think I've found it.

Hubster and I share the burden. I think that this is the only way we have been able to pull this off successfully. We don't fall into the stereotypical gender rolls. We don't have "his" jobs and "her" jobs. We have "our" jobs.

Whoever is home earliest makes dinner. Whoever has time bathes the boys. If one of us has a test or a project coming up, the other one will do laundry and take out the garbage. We both do dishes. We both clean (or we both don't clean, which is a little more accurate.)

There are things that I do or Hubster does because they fall more into our skill set. Hubster has never used a sewing machine, so I do the mending (even though he has asked me to show him how next time.) I don't know the first thing about cars, so Hubster does vehicle maintenance, such as air filters and oil changes.

We are a team. There is no "her" side and "his" side. It's just us. And we are doing this.

For all those of who out there who are also juggling two working parents with young children, please share how "you do it." Even though we may look like we have it all figured out, we don't! We still need all the help we can get.