Every day is a winding road....

Tonight I am tired. As sentimental as the end of summer made me last year, the beginning of summer is making me equally conflicted this year. As much as I love my girls, love listening to their every day conversations, love watching their faces light up with smiles when they are playing, the days are catching up with me. Because along with all these fun moments are the trying moments. The moments that add up over the course of the day leaving me wiped out by 10PM~physically and emotionally wiped out. Getting into my little routine during the school year, it is easy to forget how much work multiple children can be. The level of care, amount of dispute mediation, disruption of routine, messiness of the household, food preparation and consumption, noise level and whininess increase exponentially when there are three little, make that large, very large personalities competing for my attention and each other's attention. Add to that my inner struggle of wanting/needing to clean and take care of other household business fighting with my wanting/needing to spend time with the girls and create a wonderful summer experience for them, such a wonderful summer experience that someday many years from now they will look back on the summer of 2009 and think, "Man, that was a great summer." and you have yourself a good old fashioned recipe for disaster. (In my neurotic mind, anyway. I am not so far gone that I am unable to distinguish true disaster from my own personal anxiety ridden, self-invoked disaster.)

How do I do it? How do I balance this? Right now I just don't know. Tomorrow, when I am not so tired, I am sure it will come to me. It will come with the first hug of the morning. It will come with Lily's "Good morning, Mama." greeting. It will come with my pride in watching Grace and Ella's swimming progress. It will come while listening to them discuss whether they prefer iCarly or Suite Life with the seriousness of President Obama discussing the Korean missile crisis. The truth of the matter is, as long as the days sometimes seem, this summer is already quickly passing us by and August 17th is creeping up, slowly but surely. And of course, on that day, you will all have to listen to me piss and moan about how much I miss them. Twisted and unnecessary which is exactly why I needed to take to the airwaves (or whatever it is that runs this Internet dealeo) and remind myself by re-reading this http://thekolbfamilyadventures.blogspot.com/2008/08/what-i-did-during-summer-vacation.html and this http://thekolbfamilyadventures.blogspot.com/2008/08/get-ready-get-set-dont-go.html. Remind myself that Lily telling me she would love to fly on her bike because it would make her "tummy giggle" or Ella excitedly sharing her "great news" about swimming lessons with me or Grace and her extreme house playing is truly what makes a summer and for that matter, my children so awesome. Tomorrow I will remind myself that a day is only as good or as bad as you want to make it and I vow to make it a good day.

"You never see bad days in a photo album but it is these days that get us from one happy snapshot to the next."~Author Unknown