Today is THE DAY! My kids start back at school today. However they do not have to be in school for long. They are off on Thursday and Friday for the Jewish holiday. It would have made better sense to send the kids back to school next Monday so that they had a full week. It seems silly to send them to school for two days and then give them a four day weekend.
This is the first time ever that my husband will be home in the morning. For the past 10+ years my husband got up for work at 4:50 and left by 5:30. That gave him plenty of time to make his lunch, have breakfast, get ready and walk the dog before he had to leave for work.
I used to get up at 6:00 AM on school mornings. I enjoyed having my morning coffee while checking e-mail BEFORE having to deal with the kids and the chaos of getting ready for school in the morning. I used to get the kids up at 6:45. Thankfully they both went to the same school so they got on and off the bus at the same time.
This year is going to be INSANE! My husband now works 9-5 hours. That means he doesn’t have to leave for work until around 8:15.
Our daughter goes to Junior High. Her bus comes at 7:35. She takes FOREVER to get ready. Today we got her up at 6:15 which gives her an hour and 15 minutes to get ready.
Our son, who takes about 5 minutes to get ready once he has breakfast, doesn’t have to be at the bus stop until 8:10. Sadly my kids share a bedroom so when one gets up the other wakes up too.
Now instead of enjoying my morning coffee and checking e-mails I have FOUR people trying to get ready at the same time. I have three lunches to make and three people to make sure they eat a good breakfast. My husband’s idea of breakfast is a handful of chocolate chip cookies. How he’s not overweight I’ll never know. I just look at cookies and I gain 5 pounds. Sigh…
We’ve all been up for an hour now. The kids are the only ones to eat breakfast, I had to make one lunch (my son wants to buy), and our daughter has yet to get out of the ONLY bathroom that we have. My son and husband haven’t been able to get ready yet.
As for me? My coffee is cold, I haven’t had breakfast yet and I doubt I’ll see the bathroom until around 7:30 when our daughter has to get to the bus. The good thing about having my husband home is that I have an extra person to get the kids to the bus, especially now that they go to different schools at different times.
The afternoon/evenings are not going to be any easier to get used to. My husband used to come home at 3 PM so he was able to get the kids off the bus. Then his hours switched so he didn’t get home until 3:45-4:00 PM. He wasn’t able to get the kids off the bus (unless someone took the late bus home) but he was home in time for us to have dinner at 5:00 PM. Now my husband works until 5:00 PM which means he’s not home until 5:45-6:00 PM, making us to have a later dinner.
Now dinner has to be changed around, the time the kids spend doing homework needs to change, the kids will get off the bus at different times so I’ll have to hang out at the bus stop for around 30 minutes to get both kids.
CRAZY! CRAZY! CRAZY! I am so NOT used to any of this.
My husband is off today. He has always taken off on the first day of school to see the kids off in the morning, then we spend the day together (much needed “couples time”). Needless to say I won’t get much posting done today. I’ll most likely post this evening.
Have a wonderful day!
Kimberly
