New Routines

Last week was a week of new routines here. It's exciting really, the start of the semester. It's taxing my brain (or maybe my heart) a little bit, but that's ok. We've got a lot of little changes to adjust to.

Zack is starting a new pre-school. It's closer, but on a different route. It's more days but fewer hours per day. The hours encroach on my one standing weekly appointment. The food-sending requirements are different. The atmosphere in his classroom is different.

Sammy has hit Eighteen Months. I'm not sure what Eighteen Months means to other families but for Sammy it seems to mean the same thing it did with Zack: successfully using gentle redirection is over. That boy is into everything and determined about it!

I'm trying to get my own stuff back in the groove. I have been sick the last two weeks. I really needed get past the mental blank about meal-planning. I've got a long list of parenting, household, church, and social commitments coming up and I cannot function (or apparently get well) continuing on our to-bed-at-1am roll.

So this past week it was the new plan: On Sunday, get ready for the week. Each night, get all the lunches made, the coffee set up to make on a timer, the kitchen cleaned, the details for tomorrow's chores set, and the clothes picked out before we do some relaxing. Head upstairs to bed at 11pm. It went pretty well.

I will be taking Zack to and from school, except for one day a week when James is going to pick him up for a bowling date (see his first bowling date, above? Zack loves bowling, for some unknown reason), which will give me time to get back across town that day.

I set up a meal plan for the week and suddenly, the cooking looked easy again (temporarily, I'm sure). I have a sweet friend, a newly home stay-at-home-mom who is shopping the grocery ads like crazy - I think I stared at her with my mouth open thinking, "Well, duh, I guess I could do that too." So, I headed out to a new grocery with my sales flyer in hand and scored some super produce and meat. I even had to call her and make sure she was proud of me, ha.

We're really working with Sammy to expect him to mind. He's so ready for it. The first day was really difficult; I may write about that later in the week. It helps that now I can see the improvement - even just over a few days - and it's making my life a little more sane. It's especially helping during the dinner making hour, which is our hardest time of day.

I like the new routine. I feel like I might be able to enjoy the busy time ahead instead of just survive it.

Now don't I sound like I'm going to get it together? There are two kinks in the plan: First, we threw it all out the window to go go go! the whole Labor Day weekend. And second, I started a fiction book. Uh-oh. Who can possibly get it together when the fate of fictional characters hangs in the unknown?