Over-scheduled!

We have survived our first full week of our crazy autumn schedule!

I am not quite sure how this happened to us, as I have never been one to put kids in activities for the sake of keeping them busy. I am of the opinion that the playground and fresh air will keep them quite busy enough! So I am not quite sure how we found ourselves in this position, but we (actually mostly just Adam) have an insanely busy schedule this autumn. And when I look at what can be cut out for the sake of everyone's sanity, I decide again and again that nothing can be cut out. It's all worth doing. And that makes me worry about what life will be like when Kate and Nicholas are old enough to be in things too!

So this is what our schedule looks like:

Mondays - pick the kids up from school to get them to stroke clinic (swim lessons) on time. After swimming, we come home and do homework and piano lessons. Homework deserves a separate post all by itself, I will have to rant about that later.

Tuesdays - pick the kids up from school to get Adam to cub scouts on time. Come home, do homework for half an hour, load up all the kids again to get Adam to football practice on time. Get home at 6:45 and wonder what's for dinner and what can possibly be cooked and served and eaten before bedtime at 7:30.

Wednesday - it's early day at school so the kids can get the bus home! Attempt to get homework done in the fifteen minutes between arriving home and leaving for stroke clinic (Adam can do this, Ellie can NOT!).

Thursdays - kids get the bus home, as soon as they arrive we load them all up and drive to choir practice, then on the way home from choir practice Adam changes in the car and we go straight to football practice. Where Ellie sits in the car doing her homework (which takes her on average over an hour every night) and Kate and Nicholas sit in the car crying about why they can't go play at the playground. Because if Ellie puts one foot out of the car she will never, ever get her homework done before bedtime, that's why not kids, and I would appreciate not having to explain it a million times while we sit here. Get home at 6:45 and a) pat myself on the back for having put dinner in the crockpot earlier or b) hope that Jeff has started dinner while we were out. (So far, we are about even on options a) and b) but I have a feeling that b) is going to win out as time goes on!)

Fridays - pick the kids up, get them to stroke clinic, and breathe a huge sigh of relief that it is Friday and I don't have to fight with Ellie for an hour about her homework.

My main worry in all of this is that all of this running around town happens right in the middle of Nicholas' nap time, and I thought he would never get a proper nap again! But he is doing well on sleeping in the car. And an unexpected benefit has been that Kate, who hasn't napped in ages, conks out every day when you put her in the car at 2:30 and go somewhere.


Stroke clinic runs until mid-November so we have nine weeks of a crazy busy schedule before life starts to settle down again. If they can swim confidently at the end of it it will have been worth it!