Passing By

I feel like life is passing by and I'm took busy or tired to document it.  But if I don't record it somewhere, I'll regret it later.  I'll look back and think, "What happened in the first half of 2012?  Surely there was something noteworthy... ?"

Weekdays are busybusybusy, gogogo all the time.  We wake the kids up around 6am, and try to have them out the door with Jamie around 6:30 (or 6:40, or 6:45...)  That routine will be changing a bit when Gisèle starts kindergarten at the end of this month.  (!)  Weeknights, Jamie and the kids arrive home around 6:10, and they get to watch a half hour show (their favorite has changed fairly recently from Dora or Diego to Team Umizoomi.  Listening to Miles say "Umizoomi!" is one of the joys of my life.) while Jamie and I get their dinner together.  Usually Jamie gets their dinner while I prepare the table, unload groceries, unload/load the dishwasher, or do any number of other random things.  We rarely get to eat dinner together, unless we've planned it out, I've been able to get off on time and head straight home to cook, and everything can come together quickly.  And when that does happen, we can usually eat leftovers together another night.  After dinner, it's time for a bedtime story all together on the couch, and then we get the kids ready for bed and they're down.  That's it for time together.  A hectic half hour or so in the morning, and a hectic 1 1/2 hours or so in the evening.

Weekends are a lot better, but they still seem to be packed.  We plan out our time in blocks - "before naps," "during naps," and "after naps."  Saturday's "after naps" time is almost always taken up by church, and Sunday's "before naps" is grocery shopping.  That leaves Saturday's "before naps" for yardwork (it has to be in the morning, or Jamie would die of heat stroke!), which leaves just one block of time - Sunday after naps - to do things together with the kids.  And we always seem to use that time for errands. 

Something needs to change.  And since we can't rearrange the weekday times, we're going to need to better plan our weekends.  I don't want to feel like our quality time is all spent in the car or hurrying the kids along.  And we haven't even started getting them involved in any sports or classes; I can only imagine what life will be like then.