As I reflect on our chaotic start to summer, a flood of metaphors wash over me. I'm drowning in bad metaphor, people. The only way I know to save myself is to purge here:
We scramble to make arrangements. We quilt together child care plans. We hand off the baton in the knick of time to get Roo off in this direction, Peaches in the other, before we go to work. J gave me this one, my favorite: "We're barely laying the track before we're rolling over it."
Somehow, through creativity and determination, amazing babysitters (of which we now have SEVEN in our arsenal!!!), kind friends, and generous family, we're juggling 3 summer camps, educational therapy, new ABA schedule and new -ists, business trips for us both, and careers. We are bleeding child care money at heart-stopping speed, but seeing our kids benefit makes us believe we are investing as wisely as we can.
Peaches and one babysitter hand squeezed us a large pitcher of lemonades from lemons off our tree, and she came home from camp this week having designed her own game. She has been full of smiles lately and noticeably less grumpy. Roo enjoyed a field trip to play mini golf with his social skills class, and brought home a daily evaluation form full of praise. They are sounding things out now and then, writing more and more. I am proud of my little ducks, and that makes it easier to endure the hours of careful calendaring, the intense commuting, the begging and borrowing, the expenses piling high.
Should I really click PUBLISH and tempt fate?
Oh, no way. If I end on a positive note the deities will punish me. Here is the down side of summer so far:
- The social skills camp for spectrum kids that we love? Practically promised to set up a carpool program. Not so much. Pick up is at 2:30. That is where the 7 babysitters come in, because I don't get home until 4. As if the camp didn't cost enough.
- So far we have no plan at all for Peaches for all of August.
- The rock star ed therapist? $150 an hour.
- Every day one of my kids has some special day, like Water Play or Sports Share or Field Trip, requiring me to do 10 extra things.
- I have vacation envy. It's just not in the cards for us to travel right now.
There, that's more like me.
How is summer treating YOU?
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Two kids, two full time careers - lots of people do it gracefully, but for me it's a challenge, particularly as I struggle with my boy, the rooster, and his "constellation" of health and developmental issues. Medicine so far fails to cure what ails us, so I'm trying a self-prescribed intensive dose of blogging to see if that does the trick.
2 comments:
They say it gets easier as the kids get older, but from a child care perspective, it gets more challenging. This is my last summer of preset child care -- they've been at an in-home day care since we moved, but with J starting school in the fall, that will not be an option for him next summer. Besides, he'll be too much older than the other kids for it to be fun for him (or them). I will be determining camps for next summer for our little ones. This summer, we just have to figure out what to do to cover the two weeks my provider will be closed so she can take vacation. That's challenging enough for now.
We're having the August Disaster, too. All the camps around here end July 30. WTF?
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