YESTERDAY ALMOST KILLED ME

I got my first taste of the year to come yesterday…and, I think managing three kids’ separate schedules is going to be a lot harder than I thought. I am hoping it was the hiccups associated with the first day of school that made it traumatic and not just the daily hustle and bustle of things. We’ll find out Monday, I guess.

Yesterday was the first day of Kindergarten for Buddy.

And the first day of Little Guy’s 3’s program.

We walked to the bus stop to get Buddy on the bus.

And waited.

And waited.

The bus finally came, 30 minutes later. And Buddy, so excited that it was finally there, literally ran onto the bus.

So instead of the classic “first time on the bus” pose on the stairs…I got this:

Since the bus was so late, we were late getting Little Guy to preschool. So, I had to jog with both boys up the block to our house, throw them in the car, and hightail it to preschool.

That part as smooth, at least. We love our teacher and Little Guy walked in like he had been in that classroom all year.

At this point I was late for a professional development on iPads in Education that I was a part of, so I headed off to work, stopping to drop Iggy off with Daddy for 40 minutes while I chatted with preservice teachers about iPads.

Except the projection technology wasn’t working in the conference room, so I did a lot of talking about what it MIGHT look like if they were to do XYZ with iPads in their classroom.

Holy embarrassment.

Back to pick up Iggy, where I realize I had forgotten to pack milk for my husband.

Mom fail.

Then off to grab Little Guy from preschool.

Then home to greet our wonderful, lifesaving, I-don’t-know-what-I-would-do-without-her house cleaner.

Somewhere in here I was “THAT PARENT” when talking to the preschool director about the insane left turn the bus was trying to make from a side road onto a busy road (instead of going 2 blocks up to the LIGHT – which is actually the quicker route!). I don’t mean to be that crazy parent, but there are multiple accidents a year at this intersection because the people making the left can’t see the people accelerating while coming off the highway ramp 100 yards away. Even if you get a space in traffic to turn, you need to go fast – and a full-size bus just can’t make that turn safely every time without risk of turning over or getting t’ed by another car/truck.

Needless to say, my kid is not getting back on that bus until we fix the route…we won’t make that turn in our car – with carseats, so the thought of having my child do it daily on a bus without carseats is out of the question. I can’t protect him from a lot of things he’ll face this year, and he’ll need to gain his independence – but he does not know enough about traffic safety to advocate for himself here. That’s MY job.

And, after all this crazy, it was time to go back to the bus stop to get Buddy off the bus from his first day of Kindergarten. He loved every single thing about it from the reward tickets to his pencil case supplied by the school…and that made the chaos of the day all worth it.

HOW ARE YOU DEALING WITH THE CHANGES IN SCHEDULE NOW THAT THE KIDS ARE BACK TO SCHOOL?