A Season of Juggling

One of my favorite things about living in New England is the seasons. The beautiful thing about having 4 very distinct seasons is that you truly appreciate the beginning and end of each season.

 I love the fall - the crisp smell and pumpkin beer and apple picking. I love bundling kids up in jeans and corduroy jackets and the smell of the first fire.

I love the winter. I love the still of the white. Our family skis so every time we get more snow we are excited for the mountain. I love sending kids out to play in the snow and the sound of plows and the starting of snowblowers. 

Then comes the spring. I am SO excited to STOP sending kids out in the snow and more importantly I am excited to stop washing ski pants and to stop drying gloves and for the immense volume of laundry to slow down just a hair. I love to see the snow turn to slush and the slush turn to mud and the mud turn to green. I love the rain on my skylights and soaking wet kids coming in from soccer. (There is always the moment in the spring when I realize that the laundry really will never slow down - not even a hair.) 

I love the summer. Kids in the grass, fires in the fire pit and trips to the beach. The summers are the shortest season so I work really hard to enjoy every moment. 

I have also loved the seasons of my life - the smells and memories of my childhood, the drama and laughter of my adolescence, the long hours and intense feelings of my twenties and first love, the process of making and keeping babies and toddlers. The long days and nights and the strange combination of always being busy and often being bored.

I have now entered a new season. This is a season that I will look back and remember as a season of juggling. 

The bowheads blog will reflect said season not by my words but more by the brevity and infrequency of them.

There are simply not enough hours in the day. This is a happy season and a season that I will always look back on with fond memories. I write tonight because I want to remember this season. I want to remember days such as today....

Up early, walk dogs, pack lunches, sign releases, search for Kindergarten homework....

Morning at school with third graders who make me smile. 

Time to leave school to take 11 year old to get braces put on her teeth. (When the lady at the office gave me my bill I actually said out loud - LORD H AVE MERCY ON MY SOUL.) She thought that was funny for some reason.

Anyway I digress - while at ortho with 11 year old get a phone  call that 6 year old is feeling sick at school. This works out well because 11 year old left her clarinet at school so had to head back that way anyway. Back at school, let 8 year old know that she will riding the bus home alone, gather clarinet and 6 year old, run home to grab 3 year old black lab who is LITERALLY molting. I am not kidding - she was shedding small cats. We go drop off at groomers. Drop  very nervous lab off, head back to ortho with sick 6 year old to pick up brace face 11 year old who gets in the car and has a small emotional breakdown because I had to cancel her sleepover on account of sick six year old. Go pick up very nervous and much less hairy three year old black lab and drop her off with very cranky to be left behind 5 year old pug. Drop off 11 year old with promises of whatever she wants for dinner and a dose of tylenol and strict instructions to OPEN THE DOOR FOR HER SISTER WHEN SHE GETS OFF THE BUS. Head to dr with 6 year old. Wait 40 minutes to see the doctor to find out he has strep..... awesome. 

Back home, unload, continue passing out drugs as fast as a dealer on New Years and begin very belated attempt to sort of somewhat start cleaning the house for Grandma who is coming tomorrow. Husband shows up with dinner, run back out to grab much more medicine. I set a pile of boxes of tylenol and advil on the  counter of the pharmacy and told the lady behind the counter that I had one at home with strep and one at home that just had braces put on today and a third who was sure to come down with an ailment any minute. She says, "hold on - here - take a coupon..." ;) 

Home to help put kids in bed. Have what can only be described as the most ridiculous 20 minutes spent all day trying to get a guinea pig out from under a bed and then finally switch out the laundry, head upstairs, log into my class (oh did I mention I am 4 weeks away from finishing my Masters? Yeah - that has been fun.) Anyway and then I decide that I need to go ahead and take the time to sit down and right about the juggling because

although it has been a crazy day

and I have juggled a lot....

I wouldn't have it any other way.