Slowing down.

I'm always hearing how moms (and dads) struggle with finding the life/work/extracurricular activity balance. These days it seems like kids are overscheduled to the max, starting at the ripe old age of 2 yrs old.

Preschool. Soccer. Dance. Music. Church. Playdates.

Parents are racking up the miles on their minivans and SUVs shuttling kids back and forth. and back. and forth.

For some odd reason, I find people actually ask me how I manage to handle everything - three kids, a husband with insanely long and irregular hours, a large house to clean, buckets of laundry to wash. And you know how I manage to do it?

It's because I don't do anything else.

Now, I have nothing against having my kids involved in extracurricular activities. In fact, if our financial and childcare situations were a bit more flexible, ideally I'd love to have Oliver playing soccer, or Evelyn in swim lessons. Or Wesley in theater classes because dude is dramatic these days! Because I don't. But not only because we really can't, but because I really don't want to.

I think it's great that my friends have their children involved in things outside of school. I believe it allows children to let loose, find what interests them and also gives them hobbies.

However.

My children are young. Ages 5, 3 and 1. The oldest attends pre-k three times a week from 8:30-3. While she's in school, I'm able to spend more quiet, quality time with the boys. When the youngest is sleeping, I get some much needed and rare one on one time with the middle child. When she's not in school, we usually spend all day at home together. I let them play, color, do whatever they want. I want them to enjoy this time of youth and innocence. I want, for a fleeting moment, for life to slow down, capture my babies in the moment. Because I know soon these moments will be few. They'll grow older, become more busy, have less time for family, more time for friends.

I'm in no hurry to get them out there in the world before I'm they're ready.

Sand, Heat and Wedgies. Good times.

So far I think I like blogger. I've been able to add some recent pictures to the sidebar as well as a few other fun things. The pics are from our trip to Oregon a couple weeks ago. The five of us drove down to Cannon Beach and then spent the night in Portland. The next morning we met the Russell's for a trip to the zoo and then stuffed our faces at Honey Pig in Tacoma. It was only a short two day road trip but I don't think either John or I can remember the last time we had so much fun. For those two days, it was like we didn't have one worry in the world, which if you know John, is very rare.

I was surprised how much the kids loved the beach. Even I was relaxed and chill, even though sand was flying everywhere and we had dressed the kids in jeans instead of shorts. Hey, I thought it was going to be cold! Anyways, Evelyn dumped a few shovels of sand on Oliver's head and, while normally I would freak out at the thought of dirt nestling itself in every crevice of my children's bodies, I just let the kids have fun no matter how messy they got. By the time we got back to the car, the sand had dried off and it was pretty easy to dust them off. Although, later in the hotel Evelyn did wonder why she had sand in her underwear. :)













Other than that, things have been pretty uneventful around here. We're enjoying the heatwave as much as we can. Thankfully our house is about 10 degrees cooler than it is outdoors so we've just been holing up inside. John bought the kids a large pool, despite my explicit instructions to not bring home a gigantic one. So of course he bought the largest one sold. In his (meager) defense, it was the only size pool left. But I would have rather than no pool than a gigantic turquoise blowup monstrosity. Nonetheless, the kids enjoyed splashing around in the water. That is, until Evelyn discovered that yucky bugs can fly in the water and ruin all the fun! Seriously, that girl is afraid of bugs like I am afraid of heights. Unfortunately she has inherited my ability to be afraid of basically everything in this world.

Fabulous.

Also taking after her mother - WEDGIE!