The Beginning of School vs. The End of School

At the beginning of the school year I spent 20 minutes each night preparing and packing a delicious, delightful, healthy lunch full of goodness and love for my sweet daughter. I washed out her water bottle daily and her lunch box once a week.

Each morning I would carefully pick out her nicest school outfits with matching hair pretties that I would carefully adorn her hair with in whichever fancy hairstyle of the day I decided upon.

When she came home with homework (usually on Mondays) we would sit her down right after school and have her finish her work. Then I would double check it, have her correct any errors and send it back to school the following day (it's due the following Monday).

I checked her folder everyday and responded promptly to any items that needed addressed.

I was SUPER MOM!

It never lasts though, despite my best intentions. I'm the queen of starting off strong, faltering half way through and struggling to keep it together by the end. In just about every area of my life actually. It's kind of pathetic, but I'm just trying to keep it real here!

Take laundry for example. I could sort clothes all day long. I could create a half dozen piles of laundry any day of the week with the best of intentions to keep laundry going all day long so I can get all caught up. Then I forget to switch loads throughout the day and end up only doing half of the laundry I originally planned. And, inevitably I end up with several loads of clean laundry at the end of my bed waiting to be folded. And they usually have to wait a while... sometimes a long while!

"Need socks?" I ask regularly. "Go check at the end of my bed." The kids think it's normal.

I have rock star ideas and karaoke style follow through. Bad karaoke at that!

Leeann has a day and a half of school after today. I can't remember the last time I washed her water bottle, or cleaned out her lunch box.

I stopped making her lunches a long time ago, she does a splendid job of packing her own lunch.

This morning I sent her to school with a hole in her jeans and her hair flat down. I detest her hair being flat down. It gets scraggly and hangs in her face. I think she looks unkempt when her hair is flat down so I rarely allow it. This morning I caved in and told her she could go to school with her hair down, but ended up talking her into taking my pony tail holder while we were on our way to school. So she put a pony tail in all by herself. It was a really wonky, fuzzy frizzy pony tail. I still cringe that I let her out of the car that way!

About 10 minutes before we left this morning Leeann brought me a stack of paperwork from school. Suddenly I remembered that at some point last week I took her folder out of her backpack and forgot to put it back in. I plucked it out of the huge stack of paper work piled on my counter and opened it up. There I found a couple of homework sheets due yesterday.

I told her to work as quickly as she could to get the homework done (hence, doing nothing with her hair). She wasn't finished by the time we left so I let her finish it in the car. I didn't check her math, and she never did get to her reading homework. I figured her teachers would rather have it half done and unchecked then not at all?

And today, I even let her (gasp) eat hot lunch. This might be the fifth time this year that she's gotten such a luxury, much to her dismay. She'd love to eat hot lunch every day. I personally think it's a giant waste of money (nearly 10% of our weekly grocery budget if she were to buy lunch every day) and seriously, have you ever been to an elementary school cafeteria at lunch time? Sure, there are plenty of choices, but almost every kid chooses chocolate milk, greasy food chocked full of preservatives and little or no fruit and vegetables. Not that the fruit and vegetables that a school serves are even healthy... but I digress...

I confess, I'm so excited for the school year to end. I am excited not to be tied to the clock (gotta make sure my kids get enough sleep, gotta get them up on time, gotta get to school on time, gotta pick them up on time).

Time, time, time. I say it's time for sleeping in. It's time for dirty feet and sun-kissed skin. Time to have both of my kids home all day. Time to relax. Time to do some of the fun things school days prevent us from doing. Time to catch up on lost snuggles. Time to get lost in some good books. Time to breathe--sometimes life seems so fast paced.

Here's to summer! If I know myself well (and I do) I'll hit the ground running, excited about all of the possibilities that summer might bring. Half way through I'll start losing steam and by the end of summer I will be struggling to keep it together and will be looking forward to the start of school again.

The start of school. Where we can finally regain a schedule, some structure and normalcy to life.

The grass is always greener on the other side, isn't it?