Toot, Toot- Here Comes the Bus!

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My son starts kindergarten in fifteen days. The total and complete chaos of summer is going to come to an end and in it's wake will come an actual schedule.

I cannot believe that I looked forward to summer vacation- for some reason I thought that it would be full of fun and relaxation. Instead I got children who's sole mission it was to drive me to the brink of insanity. Don't get me wrong, we had fun and I did enjoy spending so much time with the little monsters but when that big yellow school bus pulls up and bee-bops Tyler to school I will breath a small sigh of relief knowing that for the few hours he is away there will be no sibling death matches in this house.

Here is what I keep telling myself so that I will make it through the next fifteen days...

School is good. School means that my lazy days are over and I will have to whip my butt into a schedule. Schedules are good. Schedules mean order and order means kids fight less.

Hopefully everything pans out and the school year will go better than the summer did. If not I'll most likely end up in the looney bin.

Summer Plans...

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Summer vacation is here.

My first feeling is excitement- I don't have to drag the kids out of the house three days a week to drop off/pick up my son from school.

My second feeling is dread- no more school means my son and daughter have more time to fight with each other and drive me crazy.

This summer will be pretty laid back, as in I'm not going to be jumping through hoops to do lots of away from home activities with the kids. Maybe we'll go to the zoo and some other random things but I'm not a glutton for punishment and taking the three kids to big places by myself is not so much fun. Plus, I'm just not the type of mom who feels the need to constantly be taking my kids places. We have a nice yard with a swing set, a huge sandbox, lots of outdoor toys, a bounce house (one of those small little tykes ones) and even a ghetto above ground pool and various sizes of kiddie pools. We also live on a dead end street that the kids can ride their bikes and scooters on and have neighbor kids across the street who are my kids' ages. Sounds like perfection to me and like I should get a big fat honking pass to not have to leave the vicinity of my house much this summer.

As I am not a completely lazy mom, I do want to make it a priority to spend more quality time with the kids. I spend literally all of my time with them but I don't spend enough quality mommy time with them- and here I am talking about the older kids because the baby leaves me no option but to spend tons of time with her. I see us playing board games (their favorite is Candy Land), doing arts and crafts, going for walks, playing games in the backyard and reading together.

I also really want to spend time each day with Ty-Guy working on his letters, numbers and other miscellaneous stuff that five year old kids are expected to know when they enter Kindergarten. Nothing too intensive, maybe just fifteen minutes a day during weekdays. I am going to try on find some resources on the internet on fun things to do that  will prepare him for September.

And maybe, just maybe, we'll be brave and the whole family will go on a little vacation to Story Land. The idea of two adults and three children, including a baby, sharing a hotel room for a few days kind of scares me though.

My Goal: Don't Go Crazy

Today I am eighteen weeks pregnant and I am disparately trying to stop feeling so overwhelmed with my everyday life.

My kids are great but when they are not great it can be pure hell in my house, especially when my four year acts up. He knows that I can't pick him up and drag him to his room anymore so like a good little monster he uses that to his advantage. The two year old is pretty easy to deal with at home when she is having a tantrum because I have learned to just ignore her- I am getting pretty amazing at tuning out her screaming. I totally lack the ability to be one of those calm moms who never yell at their kids and I have come to accept it.

This summer is going to completely test what little patience I have left and hopefully I don't end up having a nervous breakdown by September. My neighbor was telling me yesterday that her goal is to do fun activities with her kids everyday (she has three, all five and under).  I told her that my goal for the summer was to make it through each day without going crazy. I am pregnant with a four year old, a "terrible" two year old and just enough energy to get the bare minimum done around the house. We will have the occasional outing but I am most definitely not a glutton for punishment and will not put un-needed pressure on myself to make my kids' summer magical.

And now off I go to check on my son who is currently locked in his room because he was disobeying me all morning. Yeah summertime.

Lazy Days...

My son's last day of nursery school is a couple of weeks away as well as his last day of soccer and then we will be free from any sort of schedule for the summer (except for one week that I signed him up for camp at his school for a few hours a day).

It will be nice to be able to do what we want but at the same time I am a little scared because those two half days a week that he was going to school were a break for me- not a break from my son per say but a break from my two kids fighting constantly about everything. Maybe they will chill out and cut the crap... I doubt it but a mom can wish can't she?

Once fall comes everything is going to be so different from how it is now- my son will be going to school three mornings a week which will take a lot of adjustment for me to get used to getting out of the house by 8:15 am and then in November the baby will be here which will be whole lot more adjustments for my family.

But for now, what is on my mind are the lazy days of summer where this lazy mom can just enjoy bumming around with her two kids.