Summertime and the Livin' is Crazy

Not much blogging going on around here this week. Too busy planning daily outings and activities here at Camp Diary of a New Mom. Whoever thinks summer is a time to kick back and relax clearly does not have a 3-year-old used to a regular schedule of preschool and gym classes and playdates. To him, summer is bo-ring. Every morning he asks, “Where are we going, Mom?” The grocery store is not a satisfactory answer.

Now that we’ve got little Riley as well, even the simplest outing is a grueling feat requiring several heavy bags packed with all manner of diapers, wipes, snacks, outfits, hats, sunscreen, and absorbent cloths. Which one of the 4 strollers we take depends on such myriad issues as the weather (full sun or overcast?), nap schedules (fully reclined or sitting up?) and the terrain (paved, gravel, or grass?) It’s exhausting, I tell you. And that’s before we’ve even left the house.

And to make things even more hectic, I took on a couple of writing assignments involving -- gasp! -- PHONE INTERVIEWS. Phone interviews are the bane of my work-at-home-mom existence. They are harder to pull off than a triple axel. Ideally, I schedule them only when I can be certain that both children will be out of the house and/or unconscious. Since that happens rarely-to-never, that means I’ve had to do some interviews at odd hours, like 7 p.m.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but after a full day of running after kids, enforcing rules, wiping butts, preparing meals, giving baths, etc., etc. I am FRIED. All I want to do at 7 p.m. is flop onto the couch with a big glass of wine and the remote.

To make matters worse, when I dropped the kids off at the sitter this week, she casually said, “So you’re on vacation next week, right? I’m going out of town.” No, I’m not on vacation next week, it’s the week after. Next week I’m on DEADLINE. Crap, crap, crappity-crap. What now? Like always, I’ll figure it out. Because that’s what I do. Says so right on my business card: In Charge of Figuring Out EVERYTHING.

Honestly, some days I feel like I barely have time to come up for air. I go from breakfast to getting everyone dressed to putting the baby down for a nap to returning phone calls to running errands to making lunch to doing laundry to reading stories to putting the toddler down for a nap which he may or may not take to checking e-mail to researching an article to going to the park to planning for vacation to giving everyone their medicine to making dinner to the next thing and the next and the next.

The balancing act was tough for me with one kid. Add in a baby plus freelance work, subtract school and the sitter and the equation just doesn’t work. Except that it has to. So, now that I’m back from today’s outing to the nature center and before we go on vacation, I’ll get back to figuring it out. Plenty of time to breathe later.

RECIPE O’ THE WEEK: This is a super-tasty, fairly easy, and pretty healthy summer meal, especially if you make it with soy crumbles instead of ground beef like I did: Second-Chance Taco Salad. Whether or not you prepare it while you have a wiggly baby strapped to your chest and a whining toddler at your feet is up to you.