the unscheduled schedule

I realized recently that I have this need to constantly be On The Go. Every day me and the kids have some kind of activity. It keeps my sanity (or so I think) and it gets the kids out of the house.

But I get really stressed out on the days where I don't have anything scheduled. I look at the kids and I think, "okay, now what?" because filling the space of 11 hours of time is daunting when it is just you and two small people who need you for basically everything. I think that's why I always get us out and about. There is time to devote in the process of going somewhere: I prepare food and feed children before leaving, I shower, I clean the kids, I dress them, I dress myself, I pack a lunch, pack the diaper bag, load us all up in the car, drive to our destination. All of these activities make the day go faster and they give us all a break and a change of scenery.

But I am pretty exhausted and pretty burned out at the moment from always being on the go. And as my bout with Heat Exhaustion last week taught me: I don't really know how to take it easy.

So this week I didn't make any effort to make any plans. We have one scheduled class on Friday, we have standing playdates with a few people throughout the week but the Universe has made it unclear whether those will even happen or not (my Tuesday playdate has already rescheduled for a possible Thursday, my typical Thursday playdate has had sick kids for the past two weeks, so who knows where that stands) and Ryan and I have our eye on a big prize so we are trying to save money which means I really don't have many errands to run at all.

And I guess I'm trying to embrace this downtime as a chance to learn to be at home with the kids again. Henry has all these toys and I always have all of these craft projects that I think it's important for us to just stay home once in a while. It's already at the point where every day around 10:30 Henry starts demanding to know where we're going and what we're doing that day. I want him to be comfortable being home AND going out. And I want to be comfortable doing that too.

So here we are, home...for now.