When?

I remember life with three littles.  When the Spud was born, I had "three under three."  With a 2 1/2 year old, a 1 year old, and a newborn, the days just sort of blended into each other.  I felt tired all the time without really feeling like I had done anything all day.  Outings were exhausting and required the use of a double stroller and baby carrier.  Memories of this time are a bit hazy, but I am pretty sure that meals were very repetitive and came out of a box more than once a week.  I think it's safe to say that life was very busy. 

Yet somehow, in that first year of the Spud's life, I managed to write 184 blog posts.  Blogging was a kind of release for me, a stress reliever if you will.  I'm not sure when I did all that blogging.  It certainly wasn't naptime, as none of my children have been good nappers. 

I miss that sense of satisfaction that comes from typing out your heart and mind.  Lately blog posts have been sporadic at best, and I long to return to the days of the 184 blog posts. So I took a look at my life to see where on earth I could fit in this once-enjoyed passion of writing. (Hold on a second, I am sending the three oldest downstairs to "play nicely together" and scattering cereal on the living room floor for the baby in an attempt to keep them occupied while I write this...)

Here's my typical day. (and of course all SAHM's know that no day is "typical")  I try to get up around 6:30 am (hopefully before the baby and the breakfast-demanding kids).  If fortunate enough to arise before the flood of children storms the dining room, I make myself coffee and have my devotional time.  More often than not, the kids are already up;  so I find myself making everyone breakfast, feeding the baby, and reading my Bible in snatches in between.  It's not ideal, but at least it's happening.  The kids then "dress themselves" with a lot of help from me.  I also use this time to make bread (if we need it that day) and get some laundry going. 

By 9:00 am, we start school.  The kids are not at the age where they can do most of their school work on their own.  Bible, math, and reading are finished by 10:15 ish unless we get carried away with the books we are reading.  We take a quick break then with popcorn and drinks.  The kids read books or play with toys while I dive into coffee #2 and check facebook or something else equally important.  Handwriting, history, and science follow the break.  I then make lunch and change out laundry loads while the Drama Queen works on her grammar, creative writing, and spelling.

If all is going well, we will eat lunch by noon.  Somehow in the craziness of morning, Little Sprout has hopefully taken a nap as well.  After lunch, I finish up whatever school has not been completed and scramble around trying to "clean up school."  No matter how hard I try during the morning, we seem to make an awful mess during the school hours.  Popcorn and disappearing pencils have a lot to do with that.  By 1:30ish, we are ready to get out of the house, either making a trip to the library, the park, or somewhere with friends for a play date. 

After our outing (s), the kids do their chores while I try to get some housework done and start dinner.  This is the hardest part of the day for me (used to be the Pepsi Moment), and honestly I struggle a lot with motivation and energy during this time.  Dinner happens when the Nerd gets home from work, usually around 6:30 pm.  The evening activities usually are a little playtime for the kids, showers for the oldest three and a bath for the baby, teeth brushing (oh the joys!), story reading, and prayer time.  Once in a blue moon this actually goes smoothly, and the kids are asleep by 8:30 pm.  Ha!  Then I've got dinner dishes to do, laundry to fold, a baby to soothe, and school stuff to go over.  By 10:00 pm, I desperately need some down-time.  I'm too tired to focus on anything, especially writing and organizing my thoughts into a blog post.  The Nerd and I try to spend some "quality time" together before bed. 

This is a whole new kind of busy for me.  I'm still trying to figure out how to get everything in and still remain sane.  Maybe I can blog during lunch?

Time to Plug In

I'd say this is a pretty accurate photo of my life right now:

I know I've been a little absent from the blog lately.  Many of my evenings have ended up filled with paperwork and planning and baking bread and catching up on laundry and trying to organize EVERYTHING.  Some evenings I have sat down at the computer with full intentions to write up a blog post and an hour later I am staring at the wall, too tired to think.

This past week, I was feeling especially drained.  I came back from a normal workout at the gym with a little soreness but thought nothing of it.  As the days of the week went on,  the pain in my joints, particularly my knees and my right wrist, got worse and worse.  When my right hand started to go numb randomly throughout the day, the Nerd convinced me to see a doctor.  She determined that I had tendonitis in my right wrist (did something to strain it and then aggravated it with daily activity and probably all the puppeting I did at VBS.)  So now I'm wearing a wrist splint to keep my wrist from bending for at least a week to help it heal.  Yeah, that works out perfectly for a mom of four busy kids. :)  And typing this is rather aggravating, to say the least.

As for the knee pain, the doctor really didn't have any answers.  She suggested that my body might be in the process of fighting off a virus.  I hope she's right - it is not easy to "stay off my feet" around here.  I am taking ibuprofen for the pain and trying to be careful with my physical activity.

We start up homeschooling in one week!  Ack, my brain is exploding with possibilities and schedules and curriculum and blog lists.  I am excited, nervous, a little anxious, and just hurrying to get everything ready before then. 

Our diet plan is great - I love that my family is eating so healthy and get excited every time one of my kids requests a fruit or veggie for a snack.  However, it takes quite a bit of planning and preparing to keep us on this diet.  The only "prepared" snack we have in the house are pretzels.  I have to be constantly thinking ahead and making pancakes and waffles for the freezer, granola bars for hungry kids, bread for lunches, cut up veggies and fruits for snacks, etc.  Don't get me wrong - it's completely worth it - but it can be a time-drain.

In the midst of it all, I am trying to make decisions regarding education and such for the Beast.  I'm reviewing papers and therapists' notes, attempting to see if there is a need for more therapy or classes at the local special ed center. 

Finally, God has cleared the way for me to hand the reins of children's church over to someone else.  I enjoyed being director of children's church, but lately it has become a completely overwhleming task that I have not enjoyed much at all.  Now someone else will handle all the scheduling and organizing and curriculum and such, and I will be free to help out here and there without all the commitments of being director.  It's definitely of God as I will have my plate full with homeschooling starting next week.

I am praying earnestly that God will make a way for me still to post to this blog regularly.  I have so many things I want to share, especially regarding autism and homeschooling, and I hope that it is still possible to do with this crazy schedule.

I need to plug into my Power Source. (Isaiah 32:15)  Be back soon with some posts that have been ruminating for quite some time!

And Then...

6:00 am - Get up, make some coffee, get dressed, and make sure all backpacks, coats, and shoes are in order.

6:45 am - Rouse the Drama Queen, who is NOT a morning person, dress her in her school uniform, and try to coerce her to eat some breakfast.

7:00 am - Allow the Spud and Beast to come out of their rooms, get them settled with breakfast, and then dress the little fiends.

7:30 am - March the kiddos and all their appropriate gear out the door and proceed to buckle them into their five-point harness car seats.

7:40 am - Pick up a teenager that carpools with us to school and drive to school, occasionally making a stop at McDonalds for a mocha frappe for the teenager.

8:00 am - Drop the teenager and the Drama Queen off at school and then park the van. Unload the remaining gremlins and check them into the school daycare.

8:00 am - Get set up for class and attend teachers' meeting. Teach Spanish to the 7th/8th graders.

9:15 am - Finish up class and go pick up the boys from daycare. Once again do the car seat thing.

9:30 am - Arrive at the gym, unload the boys from the van and drop them off at the gym child care. Go work out! woohoo!

10:30 am - Sweating profusely, pick up the boys and bribe them with a granola bar to get to the van quickly. again with the car seat process...

10:40 am - Arrive home, get the boys in front of a short DVD while I take a quick shower. Spend some time playing with the boys and picking up around the house.

11:40 am - Load the boys back into the van and drive back to school to pick up the Drama Queen. Head home for lunch.

12:15 pm - Make lunch for the kids and eat. (quickly!)

12:45 pm - Load all offspring into the van again and drive The Beast to his special preschool.

1:00 pm - Go back home and do laundry, dishes, lesson plans, whatever needs to be done.

2:00 pm - Grab the kiddos and head out to pick up one of the Drama Queen's friends that stays at our house after her school is out.

2:30 pm - Take the kids to a playground or library, depending on the weather.

3:30 pm - Pick up The Beast from his preschool and head home. Get the boys settled for "rest time" (naptime is a rarity anymore) and the girls doing a quiet activity. Take a deep breath, finish housework, and start making dinner.

5:00 pm - After the Drama Queen's friend gets picked up, get dinner on the table and feed the family. After which, the evening activities of dishes, kitchen clean-up, baths for the kiddos, bedtime stories, picking out of outfits for the next day, vacuuming, etc. will commence. Any remaining time is to be used for catching up on emails and doing some projects for The Framed Frog.

You didn't really read all of that, did you? Well, if you did, stop and take a deep breath. That's what I have to do when I realize how busy my schedule is! I love it - the constant motion, the going here and there - but it is definitely the reason I have been lax in my blogging the last few weeks. I haven't yet figured out a good spot to fit in blogging.

But, don't worry - I enjoy blogging too much to stop! I'll figure out a way to keep it going. Plus, there are so many bloggable moments these days, and I don't want to miss out on any of them. :)

Thanks for hanging in there with me!

9:30 am -