Return to "Normal"...at Least for Today

The girls have been in school now for 2 ½ weeks.  They love it, and I love that they love it.  What I don’t love, though, is how far away from our past-five-years “normal” our days are now.

I am up bright and early to get myself ready before I wake up the girls at 6:15.  We eat breakfast, and then I send them upstairs to brush their teeth and get dressed while I clean up the breakfast dishes and get dressed myself.  We fix hair and load lunchboxes, and we’re out the door by 7:20. 

The girls and I spend about 15 minutes waiting in the drop-off car line each morning.  I take a book and we read while we wait for the doors to open at 7:45.  I give them hugs and kisses and head to work.

After school, Daddy picks the girls up, and I try my best to get home by 5:30.  I heat up supper (I’ve cooked everything ahead of time), we eat and clean up…and we’re left with about 30 minutes (if everything goes as planned) to enjoy each other’s company before we begin our bedtime routine.

This is a million miles from the majority of our days to date…when we held our own schedules and had plenty of time to do what we wanted, when.

Today we enjoyed a throw-back to “normal”.  It was a busy day, but oh, so welcome.

The girls slept (more or less, anyway) until 7:00.  We got up, got dressed, and headed out to breakfast.  After breakfast, we went to one of our favorite hangouts, Lost River Cave.  It was incredibly HOT, so we didn’t hike all the trails, but we spent a good hour meandering around the grounds.

After our outdoor adventure, we began our weekend errands.  Daddy and the girls dropped me off at Walmart, while they headed to Target.  They picked me up, a week’s worth of groceries in tow, and we made a quick stop by Sam’s before heading home.

After encountering more than our fair share of spiderwebs during our morning hike, we headed straight for the shower.  The girls played around while I got towels and outfits, and then we all got squeaky clean.  We enjoyed a low-key lunch, and the girls got straight to playing while Mommy had a [glorious!] nap.

I was awoken by the sweetest Baby B.  “Mommy, can you come upstairs and play ‘party’ with us?”  Of course, I would love to!

The girls had worked hard to set up a birthday party for their stuffed kitties.  They were very proud to show me how they’d set the table, made a cake, and iced cupcakes.  (I was pretty impressed with how they pretended to use decorator icing!)  Baby A had made an elaborate play structure from Connectagons to entertain the party guests, and Baby B made a rainbow collage of foam shapes as a present.

We had a great time playing…and then the girls and I headed to the bookstore to buy the next book in the “Little House” series.  We enjoyed a yummy snack at the bookstore, and we had a great time browsing for books.  In addition to the Little House book, I indulged the girls with a book on spiders, one on the human brain, one on skyscrapers, and a new night-night story. 

We left the bookstore and headed to the craft store to pick up a couple of items.  We ran into a couple of the ladies we know there, who were all excited to hear about the girls’ kindergarten adventures.

After the craft store, we had one more quick stop, and we headed home.  The girls rode their bikes on the driveway (while Daddy was cutting the grass), while I made a quick supper.

We had a great dinner, and then we enjoyed some time with our new books.

It was the perfect day.  Yes, it was busy…especially in contrast to Baby A having asked on Friday if we could snuggle all day on Saturday…but it was great.

I am very thankful for this dose of the “old normal” as we’re creating our “new normal”, at least during the week.  And I'm looking forward to cashing in on those snuggles on Sunday.