Guilt

Lately, I've been feeling a gnawing anxiety. I'm anxious and worried about the time I'm away from Tyler. I miss him and stare at his pictures all day at work, and wonder what he's doing or what he's learning at day care...and our schedules are so jam-packed right now, I feel like we're just bouncing around from one thing to another every day. I have almost an hour commute to work, which includes dropping Tyler off at day care, near my office. Then, 9 hours at work, and another hour commute back home. So, our days usually go like this:

6:00 - Wake up, go for a jog

6:30 - 7:15 - Shower, pack lunches, get Tyler up and dressed

7:15 - 8:15 - Drive to daycare, drop off Tyler, drive to work

8:30 - 5:00 - Work

5:10 - 6:00 - Pick up Tyler from daycare, drive home

6:00 - 6:45 - make dinner

6:45 - 7:30 - dinner (this mostly takes a while because of Tyler)

7:30 - 8:00 - give Tyler a bath, read bedtime stories

8:00 - Tyler's bedtime

8:00 - 8:30 - clean up, shower, etc.

8:30 - 11:00 - study

11:30 - bedtime

Some evenings, Mike has class, or we both have volleyball...so either he or both of us are getting home late. Sometimes we'll take Tyler with us, and other times we drop him off with our sister-in-law for the evening. As you can see, there's also not much together time for me and Mike. Most of our time home in the evening is spent feeding Tyler and getting him ready for bed. An 8:00pm bedtime may seem a little late to some people, but that's really the earliest we can get Tyler in bed. He has a little playtime with Daddy while I'm fixing dinner, but after dinner he takes a bath, then it's off to bed.

Anyway, my anxiety with this whole situation is that Tyler won't know that I'M his Mommy. Yesterday I spent all of 3 hours with him (which included 2 hours worth of a commute to and from daycare/work), since I had a volleyball game and dropped him off with my sister-in-law for most of the evening. While that time in the car is becoming more of quality time now that Tyler can talk more, it's still not the same as playing with him and teaching him things. Ty spends over 9 hours a day at day care, what if he thinks that's really his home and all I do is bring him there and take him away periodically? Will this little man ever know how much I love him and miss him right now?