Yesterday was easy. I had a ton of energy and we did a million activities and I got the laundry and dishes done in the midst of the activities. I sold 10 dozen cookies over facebook and by the end of the day, I was still feeling great. Today was NOT easy. And not because of the boys- they were so good. They were in great moods, they were flexible, they entertained themselves so well, they didn’t fight. I don’t know if they could sense my juju was off and they just stepped up or if I happened to get lucky.
The day started off with my Tuesday camp director breakfast call. I think there were 15 of us on the call. Nothing new to report- everyone is waiting to see if the summer is going to happen. For about 10 minutes, while I was making breakfast, Xander sat in my seat and silently showed off toys to the group. Luckily they thought it was charming and not unprofessional. It was really good to connect with all of them.
After the call though, I was just thrown off. I felt totally off schedule (even though we didn’t have anywhere to be)- that feeling you get when you’re running late. We went outside (both in head to toe red running suits). But it was wet and gray and misty. They got on their bikes for 30 seconds. We threw rocks for 10 seconds. They weren’t excited about being outside. So we went back inside. I was feeling frazzled. So I said, “ok, you can have your ipads” which is NOT usually what we do, but I needed 20 minutes to re-group.
While I was gathering my wits, and the boys were on their ipads, Augustus said, “can we have pancakes?” and even though it was 11am and not on any sort of schedule, I said, “yes!” and made dinosaur footprint pancakes (we are still n dinosaur theme after all).
From there, we painted the wooden dinosaurs from yesterday, painted a canvas, and did a footprint dino craft.
I was still out of sorts. After all that, we went back to ipads, this time with small bags of chips on the couch- I looked over and thought, ok, I’m letting it go, every day can’t be perfectly on theme, on schedule and smooth. Some days you sit at the table staring at your list like it’s a foreign language while your children eat junk food and watch cartoons. This is balance.
Nate was home for a little while after lunch and so I put myself in a 20 minute time out to re-group (again). During that time, the boys packed their suitcases for our trip to camp. I am not sure all of the things that got tossed into the piles of stuff, but we will definitely have some random items with us.
After that, they played independently for 2 straight hours. They played with toys and entertained themselves and I was really grateful because I was still completely out of sorts. I never found the rhythm of the day and I jumped from trying to work on my computer, to trying to clean the kitchen, to trying to get us back on our schedule. I never got there. Everything just felt hard. I washed and put away winter gear. I cleaned the kitchen. I answered some emails. And the boys were happy and busy all day. But it was just a weird day.
Eventually we got outside and the sun was shining and it was warm and wonderful. I was dragging, but luckily Nate came home and he and the boys went to the secret lair while I took a nap (a very rare occurrence). I woke up feeling much better. I went outside with the boys for a while, baked some Easter macarons, and made dinner.
Dinner, bathtime, and now it’s wrestle with Daddy time, which is their favorite time of day. They jump onto the couch (and onto Nate), tickle, roll around, play fight and go crazy.
