It never fails: by the time we get to Spring Break, my kids are done with school.
They’re done with homework, done with getting dressed, done with packing up in a timely manner. And, honestly, I’m so done with making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches they’ve become just jelly sandwiches.
The other morning, one of my school-aged sons came downstairs in his pajamas. I thought maybe he’d forgotten today was a school day.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Going to school,” he said.
“You forgot to change,” I said.
“No?” he said, like he wasn’t quite sure. He looked down at his pajamas. “This is what I’m wearing.”
“You can’t wear pajamas to school,” I said. “Sorry.”
He groaned all the way up the stairs.
The school morning routine has become complicated.
I tell the 11-year-old to get up (multiple times), and he will still act like I’m the worst mom ever (for not getting him up) when I suddenly call out that it’s time to go (he didn’t hear me the twelve times I said it was time to get up). He hasn’t eaten breakfast, and he was supposed to take a shower this morning. I think it’s all an act. He’s allergic to showers; I think it’s been…well, you don’t want to know how long since the last shower I know about.
There’s so much chaos in the kitchen they have to yell to be heard. The other morning one of them was trying to tell me something, and it was so loud that I leaned close and said, “Say it in my ear. Maybe that will help.”
Not only did he say it, but he also sprayed it, and I got to both smell the delightful breath and wear the fragrant spit of a boy who hadn’t yet brushed his teeth this morning.
They can never find their shoes. The shoes are right in front of their eyes. They could trip over them and still not see them.
Maybe they’re just afternoon people, instead of morning people.
Several of them have forgotten what school mornings even look like (it’s usually the ones who have been doing this routine for several years); they immediately head into the LEGO room, rather than sitting down at the table or packing up their folders or attempting to tie their shoes.
Most mornings, one of them is running to catch up on the walk to school, and it’s not a silent catching up, it’s a whining—usually a scream-whining—one. My favorite.
On a typical morning, when I get back home, I see that someone forgot to close the back door and all our air conditioning has filtered out into the great wide world because that surely helps bring the Texas temperature down.
I didn’t know until I became a parent that March madness was actually a thing.
I’ve stopped signing folders, I get notes about overdue library books, I don’t even enforce homework anymore. Guess I’m ready for summer, too.
Wait. No. I take that back. I’m not ready for summer at all.
But it’s coming at me like a comet. Ready or not.
(Photo by This is Now Photography.)
