Friday, September 4, 2009

Suck it up!

The end is near! This is the last weekend of summer for us! Come Tuesday, the kids head back to school and I land squarely in the daily grind of getting three children three different places several times a day. Yeah, it's a treat. Figuring out the logistics of life during the school year is crazy for us...it's the reason Seth never learned to nap on a schedule until this summer. He should probably wave good bye to that right now.



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Our first event to start up was soccer. Ava is playing this year. Jace had no interest...he says he only wants to play what he's good at, and that's basketball. Um...okay. He's never played either sport, but maybe he's supposed to be a star basketball player. Fine with me! Ava is actually pretty good at soccer, when she's not standing out in the field daydreaming and looking up at the sky, or even worse, laying flat on her back identifying cloud formations when she's supposed to be playing. a. game. Or when she is influencing the other players to do the same. She has some weird kind of magnetism.

I am one of those parents, I'll say it right now...I am not laid back about her participation. As she came off the field the other night, I might have told her that her coach is just like any other teacher and that she has to listen to him and at least try everything once. Or, um...I was a really supportive mom to a kindergarten soccer player and just said "Good Job, Honey!"

It was one of those. But hey, at least I removed myself from her earshot, so that when I was involuntarily yelling "Ava! Pay Attention!" she couldn't hear me. I can at least do that for my children, even if I can't control my own neurosis.

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So Monday morning is officially our last day to sleep in and stay in our pajamas until, roughly, next June. Or so. Jace needs to get to his school at 8:30 each morning, which means the kids and I all need to be out the door by 8 am. Then Ava gets dropped off at 9. Then Seth has various therapies, or, depending on the day, I have an OB appointment. Then we pick up Jace at 11:30 and actually have a small break until Ava gets done at 3.

Unless of course, it's a Monday or a Wednesday. I mean, why keep things simple? On Mondays and Wednesdays, Jace still has Pre-K from 8:30-11:30, but Ava has to do her homeschooling at her school from 9-12. It's one of the requirements of the scholarship she received. Those days are basically impossible to make work. as Seth had a therapy on Mondays as well. I need a time turner, like in Harry Potter. Yeah, that would fix my problems.

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The plus to all this (yes, there is a plus, I'm not just whining and complaining here because I can...or, at least, not completely) is that I'm just not going to have time to worry about the state of my marriage as much. Yesterday marked two months since my husband left, and I have spent those two months literally feeling shell shocked and torn completely open. The kids and I didn't leave the house for weeks. Slowly, I managed to start grocery shopping again, then I managed a birthday party (well, sort of...I left in the middle), then another (made it all the way through). I actually started taking the kids places. Now I can sort of handle being in public, where everyone knows and feels sorry for me. Which, I mean, I feel sorry for me too, but it's hard to have everyone else feel that way.

But now with school starting, I just don't have the luxury of thinking about him every second and wondering what in the heck has happened to my life. It's still there, of course...the mild panicky part of me that still can't quite believe this has happened...but the more reasonable parent side of me has taken over. Just like when Eli died, things have to get done, kids have to eat and go to school and get to playdates, and forgetting to put a special note in their lunch just because you're sad is just not something they understand. Being a grown up and a parent pretty much means it's just not all about you anymore, you know?

Just like I told Ava the other night at soccer, sometimes you've just got to suck it up. Yes, I said that to her. No, I'm not particularly proud. So now I have to take my own advice and suck it up. Being a parent is all day, all night, all the time, not just when I feel like it, and the kids just aren't benefiting from me feeling helpless and hopeless. So even though wallowing and laying around feels better some days, I kind of gave that right away sometime around the time I had several children and decided to raise them. I always said that the one thing I would never ever do is raise my children in a broken home, and I still feel that way, but for right now, I can't do anything about it.


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All I can do is get them to school, get Seth to therapy, get to my OB appointments for the baby girl, and remember that Ava likes her notes on one stationary while Jace prefers his on another. And maybe relax a little about soccer. Or a lot. One of those. But I think Ava would rather have an overbearing parent driving her crazy on the field than one who can't manage to get her to practice, so she will, just like me, have to suck it up.

We'll do what we can and hope the rest falls into place. What other choice is there, really?
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