Is it possible to have a life that's too rich? Too full soccer games and haircut appointments and research papers and student evaluations and home remodels and birthday parties and loving extended families?
Maybe. Because at 8:00, Jonah and I were so beat that we tabled homework until breakfast tomorrow and vegged on the sofa to Extreme Home Makeover. Steve and Ian passed out together in his bed while reading bedtime stories. We're going to have slice things off the calendar because things are rather crazy around here.
Jonah has a double soccer schedule for the next couple months. We got railroaded into a traveling soccer team by a dad who gushed about Jonah's prowess on the field. This has added another layer of complication to our lives. Ian started his special ed soccer. They needed haircuts. I had to work on my papers. A family birthday party. Church. Homework that now leaks into the weekend.
Truly, it's all good stuff. I'm really lucky to have a good job, a funky house, lots of family, and the greatest kids. But we're just a little tired. We need hours of sofa time.
As you guys said this week, all this over scheduling is partly a product of a collective action among parents. If you want your kids to play with other kids, you have to take them to activities. If every parent said no to soccer and ballet, there would be plenty of kids out in the street to hang with. Actually, there are always plenty of kids on our street, so we can't blame other parents for our woes.
Our lives are crazy, because Ian needs more supervision than the average kid. At six, he still can't be trusted to be outside by himself. He has certain OCD moments that require a lot of patience. Because our jobs take up quite a bit of time. I need to grade paper and finish off three nearly finished papers on the weekend. Because most of these activities are really necessary. Jonah needs some sort of release for his extra energy. We have to trim the kids' hair. We have to shop for food and drop off the dry cleaning.
A couple of things can be cut off the calendar. We're stopping Ian's dreaded special ed soccer. But mostly, we seem to be stuck with this family rat race. We're trying to deal with all this with a sense of humor. We're going to show up late to lots of things. We are going to feed our kids Nutella for lunch, if we can't make it to the supermarket. We're going to block out weekends, when we don't talk to anyone. We're going to savor the really good moments.
When the kids woke up this morning, they remembered that we had bought them Legos as a haircut reward. Ian got an A+ at the haircut joint the night before. We heard shout with joy as they located they new prizes. They ran downstairs and spent two hours constructing things, while watching Tom and Jerry. I came downstairs after a while and drank coffee and read the Times. I could have done that all day.
Apt. 11d 
I’m still trying to figure out how to balance my own need to see my friends and family with the impact it has on the kids. They are pretty busy in their own right, and if I try to throw in dinner with the neighbors or a barbecue or something it sometimes maxes them out. But if I leave it out then I end up going crazy from a total lack of non-work adult interaction.
Frankly I can really see how some of my single friends look at me, and look at my schedule and my overall fatigue level, and make a very rational decision to not have kids. Sad but true.
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I think it’s possible to opt out to some extent. It takes a bit of mental fortitude because it’s the contemporary version of not keeping up with the Joneses–it’s easy to get lost in a gnawing sensation that your kid is going to be disadvantaged because all the other kids are taking Chinese, learning to play the oboe, playing field hockey, and so on. But we were really determined that our lives weren’t going to get caught up in that, and neither would our kids–that we’ll do a bit of what makes sense but have a lot of hanging out, doing nothing, playing video games or reading time. So we do. I dunno if that means that we’re surrounded by whispers about how indolent or indulgent we are, but I don’t really care much–and that’s the trick, to not care much.
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The method that I’ve heard a lot of families (especially good-sized ones) mention is doing only one activity per child.
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Our parish schedules CCD nights brilliantly. There’s a check-in nursery on Wednesday nights as well as an adult education class that starts fifteen minutes later than CCD, so we can arrive, take C to CCD, check D into the nursery, and then go to the adult education class a few steps away.
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