Tuesday, August 3, 2010

The Countdown Begins

It's 10:14 and I've just instructed my kids to begin reading in bed so we can do lights out in the neighborhood of 10:30 and it's occuring to me these days of long light and late bedtimes are numbered.

August is here and back-to-school sales are in full force. It seems we just celebrated the 4th of July, but the calendar doesn't lie. Ryan began football practice on Monday much to my mother-in-law's dismay. I do have to admit I'm less excited than I thought I would be as I fully realize it's MY kid out there everyone will be trying to take down. But he's pretty scrappy and I trust God to protect him. He's awfully cute in that little uniform.

Of course, when we think of football we think of snow blowing off the lake at Soldier Field, but it was 88 degrees outside at 6:00 pm with 70% humidity and there wasn't a dry spot on that kid's body when he got home. Funny how it's 45 degrees when baseball starts and 90 when football begins. Gotta love Chicago.

The hard part with this new schedule is I'm still working till 5:00 pm three days a week and Dan commutes from Romeoville (like an hour away) so the family dinner has gone by the wayside until school starts. That's when my hours change back to a 3:00 pm leave time and practice goes down to three days a week. It's an incomprehensible five nights a week right now. I guess they told me that when I signed him up six months ago, but you know how we block those things out.

I am a little shell-shocked by it all. We've intentionally limited the kids activities and really preserved family time throughout the summer and weeknights. I can only say how glad I am we did and that I cannot imagine being on a schedule like this year round.

I spent my lunch hour finding a girdle that would fit him. Yes, you read that correctly. Apparently all those big burly football players wear girdles with pads for extra protection underneath those clinging pants.

I already informed him that even with the hot days it's unlikely he will have a clean uniform every time he plays. I had a hard enough time getting his baseball outfit clean twice a week. I can't tell you how many times I pulled that thing out of the dryer fifteen minutes before practice began.

So my goal is to get a little more organized so we don't end up eating fast food for the next month (can't afford that financially or physically) - and so we can transition back to the school year schedule later this month. But, planning isn't really my strong suit - I can do it pretty well at work but I seem to get all loosey-goosey at home. So if we stay up a little later to get some quality family time in and we end up switching into school hours at the last minute like we usually do, I won't lose too much sleep over it. Well, not after the first night anyway.