With my work schedule it works great, most of the time. Because I work while the kids are in school, however that also means I don't get to volunteer in the classroom, and the teachers literally NEVER see me. We communicate via the home work folder and the 'parents comments' section. I don't have time for email, plus I'm not a big email fan I never have been. So I avoid my email as much as possible till I have like a huge massive amount and then I just delete it all because "ain't nobody got time for THAT".
So when I can chaperone a field trip, or attend a Spring Fling, or school carnival, or open house, or parent teacher conference I'm like SUPER excited about it.
Above and Below: here my husband and I are in the fall chaperoning our boys at their very first field trip to the pumpkin patch! We had so much fun going with them!
Here lately my husband has been going to the school more often than me. He works evenings so he has been able to hit the awards assemblies and go to the Author's luncheons, and to the events where parents go and eat with their child for lunch or breakfast, and I think he even made it to the Dr. Seuss day at the school. It makes him happy, because before it was MOM MOM MOM doing everything. EVERYTHING, ALL OF THE THINGS. A: Because I'm a control freak and well it HAD to be me. and B: He was originally working days and nights so he wasn't generally available to go to these things. But when he lost his job right before Christmas that changed, because I started work right after Christmas. So he was able to do all the things, which he immensely loved, even if he did miss working.
Above and below: My husband enjoying spending time with the boys on their kindergarten field trip, we had so much fun attending it with them!
Now we're both back at work and we're just doing what we do. Juggling kids and activities and work. Which is something we've always done. Back when our daughter was born and we were both working (and he was working two jobs, and I might as well have been even though I didn't get paid for one of them, ha! Being a mom is like that though). We didn't use Day Care or a babysitter. Mind you I KNOW that not everyone can do that, and I highly respect those people too!
I worked one shift, he worked another. One of us was always home with our daughter and we chose ONE day during the week to have off together to do family stuff, errands and all that. It worked for a year anyway until my work place closed down then I did that 'stay at home mom thing' for like 5 years. Wasn't planning on doing that!!
Now we're back to doing our best to not need a sitter or anything. This time it's a little more hectic than it was when it was just our daughter. Now we have THREE kids that are all in school to juggle, plus their extra curricular activities, of which they don't have TOO many, but they do have some.
Every morning I wake the kids up and get our day started at around 6am-6:30am. My husband wakes up too and gets their breakfast started (oat meal or cereal during the week!!). We both work at getting the kids dressed, and hair brushed, make sure they've brushed their teeth, shoes on, double check back packs all of that fun stuff.
We both walk the kids to the bus stop.
The second the bus pulls up, I head to work. (I live like a block from where I work, so it totally works for me to just walk to work). I get exercise and just enjoy the nice walk. My husband walks home and, lucky him...he goes back to bed most of the time. He'll sleep for a couple more hours. Gets up and showers, and does some house work, or any errands I've asked him to do while I'm at work. By 2:30 or 3 I'm home from work, and now get to swap rolls. He's heading to work, and I'm getting supper started (if he hasn't already thrown something in the crock pot, he's a crock pot master, I love having a husband who knows his way around the kitchen). I get the kids off the bus, we come home, do home work, eat supper, do whatever activity we *might* have planned for that night (Girl Scouts, Boys Scouts, soccer practice, soccer game). Come home, bath time if it's bath night, if it's not bath night we play a board game or something or finish any unfinished home work, then off to bed they go. I get to relax for a little bit. My husband gets home awhile after they've gone to bed. I lay out all of their clothes for the next day, or at least their clothing choices so they can feel like they are choosing what to wear to school (that works best for my daughter). I make sure all home work folders are signed, check the calendar to make sure I'm not missing any dead line for book orders, any school activity, field trip, class room contest or fundraiser, and then I relax a little while (far longer than I should because I always go to bed by 11 or 12 which is far later than I should, ha!), and then GO TO BED. Wake up and start my day all over.
Saturday's are my only day off. I milk that sucker for all I can get out of it. Lately that's meant living at the soccer fields most of my Saturday. The rest of my Saturday is spent trying to juggle catching up on house work and laundry, and spending time with the kids playing outside.
We're hoping that maybe next year we can add Tae Kwan Do (or however you spell it) to the list of activities for our sons. We're waiting to see how they mature over the summer though!! Right now...I don't think they'd do so well in it. I know one of them will be staying in Soccer for like, ever as he's obsessed with it.
My daughter just wants to learn how to ride horses. *gulp* Yeh. Well. The price on THAT ONE is a waaaaaaaaay bit out of my price range. However, she's not really in to sports (she did ok with T Ball last year, and she DOES want to try out basketball this next year). She also wants to paint. (Cool with me! Being artistic runs in my family and my Mother, who is an artist, is absolutely THRILLED that one of her grand children wants to learn how to paint).
I think it's important to let your children follow their interests, but sometimes the cost out weighs it all, and sometimes...you just can't pursue it as much as you REALLY want to. If I had my way about it. My daughter would be riding horses already, my one son would be in soccer for as long as he wanted, and I'd let the other one do dirt bike racing because it's something he BADLY wants to do. Two of those things are freaking SUPER expensive, you guess which two. So then I get to feel bad that I can't let my kids pursue something they are super interested in. So we try to find other things they are interested in and go with that. They seem happy enough and don't complain, so I guess I'm doing ok. I figure though it'll come back to haunt me when they are teenagers and throw it back in my face about what a bad mom I was because I wouldn't let them ride horses or race dirt bikes when they were younger. I'll just tell them to whine to their therapist when they are in their 30's.
They are already doing far more than I got to do when I was a little kid!! I didn't get to do Girl Scouts, I didn't get to dance, I didn't get to do singing lessons, I didn't get to do music lessons (well I DID start playing piano when I was in 6th grade and I took lessons clear up until I graduated high school, and even then I continued lessons on into college). I never got to play any kind of sport in elementary school. No base ball (which I BADLY wanted to play!! I LOVE baseball!!) I grew up watching all of my friends playing, I went to their games and I played with them at home but I never got to be ON a baseball team. Why? I have no idea, my Mother just didn't let me BE in anything. I don't know if it was because of the cost (she was a single mom just barely getting by when I was a kid). Or if she just didn't feel like dealing with it. Or maybe she thought I wouldn't stick with it. All I know is, my sister got to do Girl Scouts AND baseball AND basketball and guess what? She didn't stick with any of it, she quit it VERY early on.
I joined band when I was in 5th grade, was the ONLY thing I got to do until I was in 7th grade (I was a proud band member clear up until Senior year). Then I went crazy. I joined every club I could much to my Mother's horror. Art club, FCCLA, FCA, FBLA, Drama, you name it. (I even tried softball in 9th grade, but I had never gotten to really PLAY before so I was soooo far behind skill wise that there was no way I was going to be ANY good at all and I was essentially a bench warmer, so I was just like yeh....jumping into soft ball by 9th grade...not a good idea). I tried out for basketball cheer leading too, like three times. BUT I'm not really the cheer leader type, ha! But I tried out, so that counts!
My kids at least have Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, and they get to play at least one sport a year. Plus I try to keep them involved in volunteer work.
You won't find me on the PTO or PTA board (whatever order of alphabet letters you use). I won't be up till 3am baking cupcakes for a fundraiser, or selling T Shirts at the school during Spring Flings, or Open Houses. That's not me, not me, at all.
But I will chaperone the heck out of some field trips! (I think I get that from my Mother! She always went on every field trip, and was a room Mother always participating in the classroom during holiday parties). She was no PTO or whatever mom either (I don't even know if our school HAD that when I was in school? I Never remember hearing anything about it??)
I always feel like the invisible mom at my children's school, due to the fact no on ever sees me. I rarely pick my kids up from school, even rarer do I take them to school. They ride the bus (I'm always at the bus stop though, the bus driver sees me!! She knows I exist!!) So when I DO show up at the classroom for a holiday party or field trip the other moms look at me (in my sons classes anyway) they look at me like I'm some weirdo that doesn't belong there, haha. I promise, I belong there, I have kids there! Haha! I am NOT in the wrong classroom, and today is field trip day so I look forward to getting to know some of the other parents. I like to talk, and I talk a lot, so I'm pretty sure talking to the parents won't be a problem, haha. Unless of course...they all run away from me. *sigh*
Woes of an extrovert, ya know.Yesterday, my children had a soccer game. So 6:30 we're at the field. The game is about to start and my daughter suddenly realizes oh hey, my right shin guard is missing, oh no! Time to PANIC. MOM MOM MOM MOM MOM my shin guard, I can't play with out it!! So I was all huffy puffy are you kidding me, it's part of YOUR uniform YOU are responsible for YOUR uniform, but hey ok don't freak out we'll find it, together. Let's go re trace our steps, ok? We'll find it, you'll get to play. Thankfully my mother in law FINALLY came to a game and we had all ridden in her van. That is where we found the escapee shin guard, so my daughter was back in the game within 5min of going on the search for the stupid shin guard.
Yesterday was a very frazzly day at the soccer field. We were running a few minutes later getting there than what I usually prefer, so that makes me feel like melt down central, but I held it together (I hate being late).
Then there was the missing shin guard, that alone is enough to give you a twitch. Do you know how much those stupid things cost? yeesh.
Then my kids all had games at the SAME TIME. Well that's great. I spent the time bouncing back and forth between two different soccer fields, thankfully they were at least close to each other.
My daughter only went on the field twice, which is disappointing, but when she went out she was trying as much as she could. (Considering their coach doesn't show up to practices, and doesn't really COACH them from the sidelines....but hey things happen and it'll be ok, we're all human).
During the boys' game, one of my sons was getting continually roughed up by another boy on the other team. Hit, pushed, etc. My son was handling it very well until right at the end when he clocked the kid right back. Of course the kid went off the field crying like MY son was the biggest bully on the face of the planet. Personally I don't blame my son for clocking the kid back, the kid had it coming. BUT I did the "good mom thing" and pulled my son to the side and told him (within ear shot of this kid and his mom) that it is NOT ok to hit, push, or purposefully kick other players during a soccer game or at any time. My son responded with "Well he has been doing it to me ALL GAME and NO ONE did anything about it, and he's just MEAN so I HIT HIM BACK". I told him (loud enough for the other mom and her son to hear) that some kids are just jerks and they too need to learn to keep their hands to themselves, but it's the ref's job to call out such behavior and handle it, not my sons job. He is to play like a GOOD SPORT. I even made my son apologize. Did the mom make HER little snot say sorry? Nope. Not at all, she just shot me dirty looks. Oh well. Such is life, that will happen. My son learned a valuable lesson out of it. (This isn't the only game he has gotten roughed up in, a couple games ago another kid a lot bigger than him was constantly shoving him down on hitting him, and my son totally ignored the kid and did great playing anyway, but last night...it was evening, and my son wasn't feeling good and the kid hit him RIGHT in the back of the neck where his head had been hurting all day, and that was the final straw that made my son snap).
My OTHER son...well...he and another kid ON HIS TEAM....collided. My son for ONCE in his little life did NOT get a bloody nose!! This kid has a glass nose I swear. You look at him wrong and it will bleed. So I was VERY HAPPY to see it wasn't BLEEDING. However, he was screaming like his nose had been ripped off his face. His nose did swell though, but we put a cold water bottle on it, and it helped. This morning there is no bruising which is good and the swelling is down. I don't think it's broken, but I believe it hurt like heck, poor boy!
Soccer, can be very dangerous ya know. I warn them every time they play that injury IS possible but you just play through it sometimes (depending on the severity mind you!!) Normally they shake off the little things (that some kids their age would cry over). The big things (like getting head butted in the face by accident and possibly breaking your nose), is not something I would expect my kids to 'shake off' right away.
However, my kids pummel the crud out of each other every day, so a few sports injuries...no worse than the injuries they give or try to give each other at home!!! My children have given each other more bloody noses and black eyes than any sport has.
Now time for me to quit slacking and go get ready for that field trip!
Mom Circus
