Well, B-Mama tells us that by the end of the week her fridge is empty, but my groceries come on Thursdays, so while my fridge is full I find that by Fridays my reserves of energy and patience are what is running low!  Our weeks are busy by the calendar, but then there are always those unscheduled extras that put me over the top, play dates, birthdays, nightmares, potty training, a mother is like a clown who is already juggling while the ringmaster just keeps throwing in extra balls!

This Friday, as usual, I am super thankful for our family tradition of movie night.  In my ambitious (or self defeating) times, I wished that movie night was game night more often, but the reality is that with a husband who always gets home late, I really look forward to a simple dinner and a movie at the end of the week.  If you have any suggestions for family friendly movies that go beyond the Disney classics I would love some, we recently watched Star Wars, so fun to have a movie that the grown ups can enjoy too!

Tonight our big boy got a ride from neighbors to a casual baseball practice in the park, so I am thankful for that, too, for the community that we have found here, for the friends that he has, and that we all have.

Someone asked me recently why parenting seems harder these days than it was for our mothers.  I am not sure if it is, but I do know that now that I am settled in to my life I find that routine and community help a lot, and many of us who had children during graduate school lacked that sort of support, the stress of many moves and constant changes adds up over time.  We are into our third year here, I can’t believe it, but I do feel that I am finally starting to relax, I have a store of friends and sitters to call on in a pinch, I have found the activities that really work for us, we  seem to know people almost every where we go.  What a relief that is, it has been a long time coming, but I really, really love my life, and my emptiness on Fridays is not lonely but instead a very joyful, used up, sort of feeling.