Making Space

And suddenly life got very full, very fast.

Everyone I talk to seems to agree, whether or not they have school-age children. Labour Day was some kind of crazy "on your mark, get set, GO!" moment after which we all found ourselves running the 100-yard dash.

(And we didn't even know we signed up for it.)

School is definitely the source of some of the busyness. We're back in the homework groove, although much more quickly than last year. The Girl has really matured (or just been beaten down into submission), and keeps track of her assignments and records her reading minutes with pretty minor supervision. The Boy's lone math sheet of the year prompted a lot of tears, but I imagine increased frequency will help there.

Extracurricular activites are another time suck. Football and soccer for The Boy, on Saturday and Sunday respectively, which has effectively destroyed any weekend plans until November. Piano for The Girl on Wednesdays, but I really shouldn't complain since we are super spoiley and the teacher comes to our house.

Plus, we haven't even started our church small group and we've only had one band practice. Add our new roster of orthodontic appointments, and my calendar's looking mighty crowded.

What makes this most ironic is that this schedule is the result of a concerted effort on my part to be less busy than last year. I've said NO to everything that permitted a graceful exit - teaching ESL, teaching Sunday School, directing the Christmas program. We postponed kids' swimming lessons until after the football season.

Heck, I'm even blogging less than my usual "three posts per month" of late.

And despite what looks like a crazy schedule, it's kinda working. I manage to be home four weeknights out of five, and I'm turning into a model of domesticity (partly a reflection of the season - y'all know how autumn makes me want to hibernate). There's homemade pasta, muffins, cookies, and soup - always soup this time of year. I'm making time to just sit down at the piano for an hour. I'm reading Encyclopedia Brown to my son at bedtime and helping my daughter figure out whether a square is a rhombus.

(Aside: Is it just me, or are the various polygram designations a la trapezoid/rhombus/hexagon and their ilk worth anything? The last time I had to know them was grade four.)

So if it's quiet around here, it's actually a good thing. No news is good news (albeit somewhat boring news, I suppose).