Intentional Leisure
I feel restless. I spend my days trying to keep a gladiator-of-a-2-yr-old alive, nursing a baby, and attempting to instill in the 4 yr old that this is not her anarchy. Also, I clean up in the kitchen. There is no end to the kitchen, it's worse than laundry. Suddenly I love laundry; it stays clean for at least 1 whole day. We joke that we're raising our second family. These days it doesn't feel like much of a joke. Sometime over the summer, between numbers 5 and 6, I congratulated myself on surviving those only-pre-K kid years. Having bigs around during the summer, and prior to the gladiator fully blossoming into his gladiatorial self - not to mention the birth of number 6 - life seemed manageable. I even took them all swimming, by myself! But then the bigs went back to school and left me alone to again mother a brood of pre-K and under: A brood that requires my constant supervision, buckling and unbuckling, who can't play outside on their own, thinks all object