I have thirty seconds that aren’t even really spare to write this because I am in the midst of Gabriel getting dressed for football–which is like a WWF event since eventually I will have to threaten to body slam him before he’ll believe that he can IN FACT tie his own dang shoes—and preparing for whirlwind Kate to get home from tennis to switch her school uniform out for her Brownie uniform and head to Scouts.
At this point in the day, I can only pray that I remember to high five Shea as we pass in the garage and make sure that Annie gets into someone’s car.
Although I recently showed her how to push the stool over to the fridge to reach the food, so if she does get left behind, she will be able to feed her 3 year old self. Plus, she’s a third 3 year old, which means she’s resourceful.
Annie is the one prompting this post because in between emptying backpacks and skinning a butternut squash that will get cooked at some point this evening, my brain said “Hey, what happens when Annie needs to be somewhere too?”
I said “I don’t know” with a capital F.
When Gabe handed me the Join Beginning Band form last week and said “I think the trombone would be cool”, I just barely managed not to laugh in his face.
Oh really? You think I want to be at school by 8 to drop off, 11 to pick up Annie, 3 to pick up Kate and 5:30 to get you?
We told him no, just like I told the altar server coordinator no on Sunday. “After football, for sure” I said. “So football is more important than God?” he asked, predictably. I rolled my eyes at him. My mom will tell you guilt hasn’t worked on me since way back.
“He will be at Mass and Sunday school. It’s no sin to not be an altar server” I told him.
I know there are super moms out there who can make it all happen, but I am not of their ilk. Not to mention that shuttling kids from one activity to the next on a schedule with Tick Tock precision, fueled by OCD and Starbucks, makes one neither super nor a mom.
We call those people “handlers”. I didn’t have kids to handle them. I’m trying to build a family of God-loving, kind human beings who eat as a family at the table and discuss ways to make this world a better place than we found it.
Please.
Right now we’re lucky if we can eat Taco Bell in the same car once a week without squirting hot sauce on somebody.
So if you’re the mom who swore you would never over-schedule your kids, knows how to say no and still finds herself split into a hundred car-pooling pieces?
You are not alone. I don’t know what the heck happened either.
At this point, there’s nothing left to do except salute each other with our water bottles full of (vodka) Gatorade and soldier on.
Full Of Graces 
I love this! I remember well 1) I lost the ability to shame you into anything when you became too big for me to pick up and remove; 2) shuttling 3 kids only works when they play the same sport at the same field at nearly the same time; and calendar reading becomes essential as I still feel guilty about getting Joe to his game at the end and he cried for an hour. Whoops