I'm a sucker for lists, schedules, order, and all of the rigid trappings of a planning personality. It helps me feel less chaotic and more accomplished. This is true even if I don't do a single item on my list - simply writing the list helps me feel as though perhaps these items may be accomplished at some future date.
It should be no surprise that I have a notebook full of activities scheduled for every single day of the week.
On my worst days, I drag the kids through this to-do list, grudgingly completing each item so that I can check it off and say, "yes, we did this. On to #4: toss balls in an upended umbrella while doing a 'rain dance.'"
On our better days, we happily work through the list and are all the much better for it. They're engaged, happy, the activities are fun, and we're all smiles. La, la, la...
On our best days I ignore the list and go where the children lead me. It's dangerous work, following these two. I have to be on my toes at all times, carefully attuned to the slightest change temperament or attitude. I have to know three minutes before they do that our watercolor project is over; I have to casually suggest a puzzle or book just before the baby starts to have his moments; and I have to set out a snack just before the low-blood-sugar-angries come out. Because while I'm going where they lead me, they sometimes need a little help finding their way back home.
(Our very worst days look much like the best days - plans thrown out the window - with the important distinction that I'm huddled in the kitchen, staring at the clock, counting down minute after eternal minute until Kevin comes home.)
We've been having some of our best days lately, which certainly make the hours go by faster but are oh-so-exhausting. I have to will my energy up at times, purposefully jump up when all I want to do is sit down, and brew a preemptive pot of coffee for the 3 p.m. doldrums.
But it's worth it.
Items not on our Thursday to-do list:
- decorating our windows with new window markers to make it look like springtime. I'm impatient for Mother Nature to do her thing and have taken matters into my own hands.
- baking a carrot cake for Aunt Kimberly's birthday. Realizing halfway through baking that I'd forgotten to add baking soda. Counting out 30 candles to light and blow out. Not waiting until the cake was cooled enough and melting the candles inside the cake. Eating about a pound of dollar-store wax candles.
- wet-on-wet watercolor painting, color mixing, and extended discussions on the physics of intergalactic travel.
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