Preschool Is Going To Cramp My Lifestyle

Preschool starts August 10. We've selected an at-home preschool program, taught in a little building behind the teacher's home. There will be six three year olds in the class, where the kids will have a typical preschool curriculum of numbers and letters and stories and art projects. I've read the handbook, put the school supplies on my shopping list, and explained to Ander every morning, on the drive to work, about what his day will be like when he has preschool.

But my day is going to suck.

Right now, unless I have court (maybe twice to three times a month), I don't have to be at work until 9:30 a.m. Understand, I am generally there by 8:30 a.m., even with dropping the kids with my mom. But if there is a blowout on the way out the door, or a mildly sick kid who wants to sleep in for thirty extra minutes, or I need gas in the car, I can arrive late. Usually, I get up as Alan leaves the house at 7ish. I get the boys dressed and ready and get myself ready and go. I give them a small snack (usually, it's a glass of milk for Ander and nurse and/or baby cookie for Loki), but don't have to feed them breakfast. My mom feeds them.

But preschool serves breakfast from 7:30 to 8 a.m. Frankly, I am not going to leave the house with two kids, one of whom still keeps me up half the night, at 7 a.m. to get there in time. That means that I have to feed Ander breakfast and get to preschool around 8 a.m. It's a half hour away, so we need a plan.

I think Alan will start waking Ander at 6:30 a.m., bringing him potty, and giving him breakfast in front of cartoons. I'll need to start getting up at 6:30 a.m. instead of 7 a.m., which sounds like not-a-big-deal, until you consider that I am up all night long with Loki. Sigh. I'll get up, feed and change Loki, shower and dress, and then change Ander and get the kids in the car by 7:30 a.m. Yuck.

Plus, we already planned a vacation - for the first week of school. We'll go the first and second day, and then leave for vacation. Great.

Oh, and I often work from home on Fridays. I still might, sometimes, but it means Ander missing school. :( I know he only really needs about two to three days a week right now (all we could find is a five day program), but I don't want to teach him that school isn't important.

I suspect we'll have to be more strict about bedtime, too, and that will suck. Right now, we sort of eat, clean up, check our fb, bathe the boys, get them ready, read some books, and go to bed. The time varies, depending how long everything takes, from 8:30 p.m. until 10 p.m. If the boys seem tired, we put them down earlier. If they napped good, they go down later. I don't think that's going to continue to work.

Ugh. Preschool hasn't even started and it's a pain.

Etcetera.