My Ever-Changing Household-

I’ve felt so scattered over the last month.

This morning I was thinking about all the change that’s occurred in the last several weeks. First of all, Clay returned from a year-long deployment. That alone changed the dynamics in the house. I handed over bedtime duties and bill-paying duties. But then a week ago, one of my sisters moved down from Northern California and lives less than a mile away from us and just a day later, Kateri arrived for the summer. It’s great to have so many people who can help with the kids’ schedules and the driving duties and even the errands. BUT, I’m not used to having so many people to help with everything and the part of me that is normally in control of all scheduling, errand-running and kid-juggling feels out of control. Even though it was REALLY hard to get everything done before all these helpful hands arrived, I did it. And I did it because I micro-managed every detail of EVERYTHING. All these wonderfully, helpful adults do not need M.O.M. managing their schedules, so I often wonder what’s happening, with whom and when. This is hard for my very-in-control being.

It’s not just getting used to having everyone help with the kids’ schedules, it’s getting used to having so many adult family members around. I’ve lived away from my own family for a very, very long time. Being a military family, we spent years moving around with orders. We’ve been fortunate enough to be in So. Cal. for a long time now, but I haven’t had a family member live nearby in several years. Now, I have Clay home, my brother living here, one of my sisters living down the street and my adult daughter in town for the summer. Such big changes!

Don’t get me wrong-I’m not complaining, I’m just explaining what a huge change it is for me to go from controlling every detail of everything, to having so many people who are here to be helpful and loving with the kids and even household tasks.

Within the next month JJ will also be home for a couple of months and the whole dynamic will change again. Then the Fall will come and Kateri and JJ will head back to school and again, things will change. Hmmm…I guess I better just get used to the “norm” of the house being “change”.

For now, I’ll enjoy the fact that I can ask someone else to pick kids up from school, or get them to an appointment and I’ll just keep adding one more portion to the meals I cook.

Good stuff!

Doing the Dance of the Children and of Change~

This entry was posted on May 19, 2010 at 8:40 am and is filed under change, children, family life, kids, miltary spouse, mom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.