Looking at the Kids' Dizzying Schedules & Trying to be All Zen

Youth hockey season’s not yet over – The Youngest Boy’s team is still in the playoffs – and the schedules for The Girl’s and The Eldest Boy’s soccer teams are already rolling in. We haven’t yet been given the practice/game schedule for The Youngest Boy’s baseball team, but I'm sure those games and practices will be slated for dreadfully inconvenient, overscheduled times.

Plus The Eldest Boy has upcoming band events, there’s a middle school science fair and a grade school invention convention.

*deep breath*

There are already conflicts galore with all these schedules – some on an ongoing basis, like one practice at the same time as another kid’s math extracurricular activity – and The Spouse and I are trying to figure out ways to make everything work.

Last fall, I thought my head was going explode, particularly in light of The Youngest Boy’s hockey league where there were no regular practices time and games/practices could be scheduled with little to no notice (like 12 hours). I spent a lot of time being pretty ticked off because my schedule was spinning out of control, hijacked.

And then I started taking yoga again after a very long hiatus,cut back on the caffeine and started getting more sleep. I tried hard to be okay with missing the occasional things, with having shortcut dinners (pancakes, scrambled eggs or sandwiches) when there wasn’t time to make something all Martha Stewart-y, with the fact that this crazy, hectic period of time will not last forever. Instead of wasting all of this negative energy by raging about insane schedules and games that are slated for smack-dab in the middle of church or which overlap with other events, I decided to just say, as pithy as it may seem, “It is what it is,” and try not to get all worked up about it.

Easier said than done.

As the kids’ sports and academic project schedules are ramping back up and the kitchen whiteboard is laden with stuff we're supposed to do, I’m having trouble trying to maintain that Zen mode.

*more deep breaths while trying not to hyperventilate*