The Back to School Report

My kids have been back to school for a week now. Last week was really crazy and frankly, kind of hard. It's an adjustment to get back to the school routine. Nicky started high school, so I worried about him all day Monday. Eva started first grade, so she's in full-day school for the first time, and I worried about her too. I forgot that getting kids off to school in the morning is exhausting, and picking them up in the afternoon and getting them to where they need to be for extracurricular activities is exhausting. 

The kids' emotions are always haywire the first week of school. They are tired, hangry, and overstimulated. My two kids with the highest anxiety feel sick all the time. Zoe felt too sick to go to school on Thursday, so she stayed home, but then after she watched two hours of TV and never threw up like she claimed she was going to, I escorted her to campus.

Eva has been throwing hour-long tantrums each night at bedtime. This isn't actually related to going back to school - she was already doing this long before - but now that we need to be more diligent about going to bed in a timely fashion, it's a bit more difficult to deal with. Scotty and I just lay on our bed and stare at the ceiling while she thrashes and wails. We have nothing left. She also refuses to brush her teeth. She's not our first kid to do this, but it's harder this go round because we feel like we're too old to be dealing with teeth-brushing battles. No wonder the youngest kids in families have a bad rap. Parents are just d-o-n-e by the time they get to the last kid.

Daisy comes in our room several times a night with various ailments. She can’t sleep. Her teeth hurt. She heard a weird noise. She’s dehydrated. She had a bad dream. It takes everything I have to be patient with her during these moments. I want her to feel safe coming to us with her problems, but I'm sick of these particular problems. 

I can't figure Nicky out after the first week of school. I can't tell if he's happy and thriving or if he's depressed and struggling. I see signs of all of the above. And of course, teenagerhood is a rollercoaster with ups and downs, so I don't want to miss something big. I'm not sure what I need to worry about with him.

Now that we’re in the second week of school, I anticipate things will get a little better. 

People have been asking me what I'm doing with all my free time. I'm so behind on everything after a survival mode summer that most of my time has been spent just trying to get basic household tasks under control. 

I wondered if I should go get a job now that all my kids are in school. Money is getting tighter as costs increase and as my kids get involved in more extracurricular activities. Going back to work would definitely help in that regard, but I've prayed about it, and it doesn't feel right. So for now I'm going to continue staying home. I feel very spoiled in even having the option, but I've also worked really hard and made sacrifices to make it possible. Either way, though, working or not working, there are sacrifices. 

In the weeks leading up to school, I kept thinking of things I wanted to do when the kids went back. So far I haven't been able to tackle much of the list, but I did cross one thing off! I made jam!

It's raspberry season, so I've been trying to keep up on picking raspberries at my in-laws'. Stormy weather got in the way a bit, but one day last week I was able to go pick two quarts of raspberries. On Saturday I asked Scotty if he would keep the kids busy so I could make jam. I used to do a lot of canning, but after I went back to school I gave it up for a while. The last time I canned anything was in 2014! 

I have to relearn some of the processes, but it's coming back! I don't think I'll ever can at the level I used to (partially because I no longer have a produce farm to hook me up). But I'll do a little here and there if the circumstances allow. 

Yesterday I was able to can some peaches - which wasn't on my back to school list, but maybe I'll retroactively add it so I can feel accomplished. 

That was the first time I've canned anything without children underfoot. I have to say... it was delightful! I put my earbuds in with an audiobook and dove right in! I only got 5 quarts, but I'm happy about them! Our peach tree died, and we had to take it out last year, so I'm grateful to a friend who offered me a box of peaches from her yard. 

I realized last week that I spend a lot of time doing food related tasks during the day. I usually prep dinner so it's easy to handle after school. I prep some sort of snack to take school pick-up to prevent hangry meltdowns and fights (you'd think my kids could last ten minutes without a snack, but no. They can't). I've been freezing vegetables, baking things like muffins and zucchini bread to put in the freezer, and of course, canning raspberries and peaches. 

No matter what I do during the day, though, I feel like it's never as much as I need to do. I look around my house and see my dusty blinds and the crumbs on the floor, and I just sigh. Then I sit down and write a blog post because that's easier than cleaning blinds and sweeping. 

Anyway, school has been a bit of a difficult adjustment for everyone, but I'm not exactly sad about it.