Pseudo-single parenthood

My family is in the midst of what I like to call my periods of pseudo-single parenthood. These occur during my wife's busy season at work, which as a CPA on the tax side means February through April, and then from mid August through October 15th. It's always a bit of an adjustment, because my wife is the sweetness and light in the family, she is the one who brings the joy and the happiness. I bring the grumpy sternness, I am the nagging, yelling enforcer. So without my wife around as much to balance the house, we all get a bit on edge until we can adjust. September is always the hardest, because we have the added adjustment of a new school year.
I don't want to make it sound like she isn't home at all, she just isn't around as much, and has to work more from home (thankfully today's technology makes this possible). For instance this past weekend, she logged 36 hours of work from Friday to Sunday, with only Friday and half of Saturday at the office. We do adjust, but it takes a couple of weeks, and usually involves me irrationally yelling more than usual (This is something I am really working hard to curb, to provide a better example for O, and because it doesn't do any good. Yelling doesn't change their behaviors or make things go easier, so I really am trying to find different methods to handle things.). The main problem I think is that we just get sick of each other, my boys get tired of looking at and listening to just me, they'd much rather look at the beautiful smiling face of my wife (can't say I blame them for that). Dinner becomes and adventure too, because it's a little hard to cook for two little boys and one adult, so we eat out more. Of course the boys can never agree on what to have (or anything for that matter, we've tested and no matter what, given two choices each boy will choose differently), so there are times when that means we have cereal for dinner since no one can agree. One nice thing, is that my wife always tries (and is successful) at being home for bedtime, because it is a very involved ritual that is hard to do alone. Over the years things have improved with regards to her work, when she first started she had to work many more hours as an associate, and she couldn't really work from home either. Of course we didn't have children then, so what it really meant was that I got to stay up late drinking beer and playing video games. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that this is hard on J too, she misses time with all her boys and the stress release it provides her. It's also hard on her health, she doesn't sleep well, or as much, and she forces Tylenol to up its production to keep up with her demand. That's why at the end of busy season we always take a trip, to come together again both physically and mentally and bring light back to our family. More to come about the trip.