feral

so i'm at this glorious stage of parenting that entails school age children...and all their shenanigans. my doctorate in dirty diapers and late night feedings is hanging on the wall in my home office and i am currently working on my masters degree...in being a chauffeur and making lunches. soccer just started last week, so now monday and wednesday nights are filled with that (also saturday games). oh, and irish dance on tuesdays. keeping up with their schedules is a full time job. my kids are 4 and 6...and busier than me. which is really awesome since they don't have their drivers licenses. now look, i know there are other families that have like 234 extracurricular things to do...a lot more than 4 days a week. some of my mom friends are busy 7 (seven!) nights a week with school age children shenanigans. i'm not even mentioning homework, projects, papers that need to be filled out, packing lunches, feeding, bathing, putting them to bed...insert many other child chores here. let me say i have so much more respect for my own parents now in this regard. (kids are a pain in the private parts.) lest us not forget stuff like show and share for carrie on wednesdays and gym sneakers for ella on monday and friday...and also the "special" dress up days and class parties. the list goes on and on. if that sounds like fun then parenting might be for you. here is what our calendar looks like for april:

see the 21st for a quick summary.

most of the time i think i'm on top of my shit as a mom...and most of the time i don't know my ass from a hole in the ground. however, i try to go day by day so i don't lose my shit. so when my kid brought home the most epic fail picture in the history of first grade, i could only laugh. i laughed hard. i laughed so hard that she heard me from the other room and came to ask me what i was laughing about (oh, balls.) i made something else up and i think she bought it, but i did ask what the hell happened to her hair?! for the record, i knew it was picture day that day, but i was only aware of group CLASS pictures. i wrote the $12 check, pulled her hair half up and sent her on her merry way. i even had "picture day" on the calendar. so when a picture that i've named "feral child gone wild in washington DC" showed up...i was a bit taken aback. i did NOT pick that background, it was the "preview" they sent, but when i pulled up the website there were many other backgrounds to choose from that were equally questionable. one of which looked like she just dropped acid and another one where there was a country wagon wheel? my favorite was just a white background that accentuated her wild child hair. but for real...why the hell does it look like she just rolled around in the tall grasses with julio down by the schoolyard!? i have no idea. if you didn't see the pic on social media...here you go:

so anyway, although i don't have babies at home, parenting starts taking all these other turns that no one tells you about. stuff like your kids schedules will trump your own on so many levels, and although it kinda sucks...it's kinda awesome. when ella was out on the soccer field for the first time the other night and i saw her running around, i immediately remembered all the fun times i had on the field as a kid. hell, i was no irish dancer, but seeing her and her sister learn a new jig each week is awesome, too. you start to live vicariously through your kids, and their happiness becomes your own. actually, when you have kids, you own their happiness, their sadness, their joy, and their disappointment. i think that's what's so hard about having kids in the first place. just keeping them alive is enough work...but wondering if you are doing it right is just plain exhausting. you do the best you can with what you have and hope for the best. that's all you can do. oh, and when you get a school picture like the one above, you laugh long and hard about your successes and failures as a parent. i think the most important thing i've learned in the past 7 (WHOA, i'm a PRO) years of parenting is this...don't take yourself too seriously. if you do, you will be caught up in the shenanigans and miss all the fun. sit back like an uber passenger on a friday night and enjoy the ride...cause rastafarian hair in a first grade photo is just the icing on a cake called parenthood. yeah mon!