Chaotic Routine

It's okay, sometimes I can't handle the cuteness either.

Since our girls are in the middle of their late-in-the-day nap, I'd like to take a moment to walk you through a week over at Casa SuperMommy.  So that all of you, my lovely readers, know what it's like to live over here, and how much I miss you.


Monday/Wednesday: 

• At 4am, M gets up, gets ready, and heads off to work.

• Around 8:30am, my children begin to wake up.  Ideally, at this point I've already taken a shower, but for reasons that will become apparent as you read on, this isn't always the case.  I start a load of laundry, heave a heavy sigh, and start calling Our Mary Poppins to make sure she's on her way over.  Which she always is.  I cram half an imaginary breakfast into my gullet, I double check all my classwork to make sure it's prepared, and I fill up my water bottle.  Just as the girls begin to wonder why I haven't gone in to prepare them for the day, Our Mary Poppins arrives, and I slip out to class.  It's much easier this way- if the girls see me before I take off for class, it's a nightmare for everybody.

What kid doesn't love a sprinkler?

• La clase español!  While I learn to conjugate verbs in various tenses, my daughters eat breakfast and play with Our Mary Poppins.  Sometimes, I linger out of the house before heading home, grabbing a few things from the grocery store or stopping by the post office.

• I return home, shortly before nap time begins.  My manic children are delighted to see me, reinvigorated by my presence.  I switch the laundry from the washing machine to the dryer, start another load, and spend a happy hour or so rolling around on the floor with the girls.

• Then it is nap time.  While the girls sleep, I get started on the next day's Economics homework.  Assuming that the children aren't busy torturing each other their weary mother.

• The girls wake up, I switch the laundry over again, start another load, and SI "helps" me put the laundry away.  This ends in tears once it becomes clear that my children are starving to death.  I feed the girls lunch, and begin preparing dinner.  Thank heavens for the electric crock pot.

• After lunch, to the back yard!  I weed my garden (which is thriving!), and the girls play in the kiddie pool, or in the sprinkler, or just run around.  We're planning on getting them a sandbox as soon as we can find the time.

Bathing Beauties

• If M is coming home that day, he arrives and we have a lovely family dinner.  If not (and "not" is exponentially more likely), I bathe the filthy children, read them a story, and affect bedtime- now set fairly firmly at 8:30pm.  During the next hour, I contemplate my homework and sit down.  With my eyes closed.  And maybe a nice glass of cold water.  Once M gets home, he scarfs down some of whatever I made for dinner, flips the laundry, and then heads to bed- ideally before 10:30pm.  I stay up, and work on my homework.  This involves playing a lot of online Scrabble.  I go to bed at about 2:00am, exhausted but at least sort of in command of the principles for class discussion in the next day's Economics session.

 Tuesday/Thursday:

• M gets up at 4am, gets ready, and heads off to work.

They're very helpful in the garden.

• At approximately 8:30am, the girls wake up.  I get them up and dressed, feed them a nutritious breakfast, and then sit them in front of the television for about an hour while I clean up, read my email, and shake myself fully into consciousness.  After this hour, I bring the girls out to the back yard to play.  I work in the garden, or on my super secret project, and the girls "help."  This inevitably leads to filthy children.

• Nap time.  DD realizes that I've been around all morning, and begins to cry.  This is because she knows I will be gone when she wakes up.  I soothe her, I suppress my raging guilt, and I use nap time to finish my Economics homework and start dinner.  The girls begin to wake up around 5pm, and Our Mary Poppins arrives to affect the same, "Now you see me, now you don't," routine that marks our M/W/F mornings.

• While I study Isoquants and Indifference Curves, Our Mary Poppins feeds the children their dinner.  She bathes them and puts them to bed,.  M gets out of class the same time that I do, and we arrive at home at nearly the exact same moment.  After a quick catch up conversation, a harried bite to eat, and a heavy sigh, M goes to bed (ideally around 10:00pm) and I get started on my Spanish homework.  At approximately 2:00am, I go to bed.

Friday:

This book is our "Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooey"

• M gets up at 4am, gets ready, and heads off to work.  Around 8:30am my day begins- just as Mondays and Wednesdays do.  And just as on Mondays and Wednesdays, I go to class and Our Mary Poppins takes care of the girls.  But unlike Mondays and Wednesdays, Fridays are FRIDAYS.

• After work, M comes home.  Even if he's worked an eleven hour day (not unusual for a Friday), he's still home mid-afternoon.  And the the girls get to see him and play with him.

• We sit down and have a real, honest-to-goodness family dinner.  We light the Sabbath candles (SI's favorite part), we eat, and we bathe the girls, and we put them to bed. 

• M and I stay up, either because we're going out (and Our Mary Poppins has graced us with two visits in one day), we have friends come over (which they do often and happily, for which we are extremely grateful), or we cuddle up on the couch and watch a grown-up movie.  Like "The Red Violin" or "Anchorman."  We actually go to bed together.

Saturday: 

Family time in the back yard

• We go out with the girls to visit friends, or to catch up on grocery shopping, or just play in the yard.  Nap times get shuffled around, bed time frequently gets postponed.  For some miraculous reason, the girls frequently let us sleep in until ten or eleven in the morning.  But best of all, we get to spend most of our time as a family.  We actually get to enjoy each others' company.  It's the best part of the week, without a doubt.

Sunday:

• Unfortunately, no weekend lasts forever.  Sunday is marked by furious studying on both my part and M's.  We tend to take turns hiding out in the bedroom or taking the children away so that the other can get their work done.  Inevitably, there is work left over.  M goes to bed early, he tries desperately to go to bed BEFORE 10pm, and I stay up until 2am doing my Spanish homework.

And that, lovely readers, is what I've been up to.  And I miss writing terribly (which is why I'm doing it now instead of working on my copious amounts of homework).  But the semester is half way through.  I have dozens of little green tomatoes growing bigger and more aromatic, I have a bell pepper the size of a plum, and my children have constantly scraped knees and dirt under their toenails.

Watching Popeye cartoons on the 4th of July

It is summer, and it is glorious outside.  And I am amazed at how fast it has gone.

For the long 4th of July weekend, we did essentially *nothing.*  For three days.  It was more wonderful than you can possibly imagine.

Yet despite the constant stress and chaos, things are great.  We're all very happy, we're all crazy about each other, and somehow M and I keep finding little ways to show each other how much we appreciate everything the other is doing.  Be it a surprise dinner or a pint of ice cream (we both tend to show our affection with food).  And, thanks to the constant motion in which we find ourselves, we both seem to be losing a little weight.  Which is kind of nice.

Our house is a wreck, we're always behind on laundry, and we actually run out of food stuffs on a regular basis.  We're just too busy to grab a gallon of milk or another carton of eggs before we actually run out.  Our Mary Poppins has started stocking up our fridge when we're not looking.

Four more weeks of this, my lovely readers.  Four more weeks, and then I can return to our regularly scheduled format.  I can write all about the profound happiness and horror of our lives, and return to a
much more stable part-time educational status.  I'll be able to get back to being the kind of mom I want to be- the kind of mom who's top priority is my kids, but who is simply doing other things as well.  I was not meant to juggle this many roles.  And to you working or education pursuing or otherwise insanely busy nd stupendous mothers: Kudos.  And Oy Vey.

But until then, I have some more wonderful guest posts lined up!  I will not abandon you entirely!  And know that you are all in my thoughts.