The Beach and Back to the Grind.

The beach is the best!  Although if you don’t plan things correctly, you may wind up just doing all of your typical mom duties in close proximity to the ocean.  A beach view for dishes is nice, but you are still doing dishes.  I had to laugh at this.

We just returned from a great week at the Jersey Shore.  I pre-cooked meals, we ate off of paper plates, and we brought a babysitter along with us, so it was actually a real vacation.  We returned this weekend and started school yesterday — which was a reality check after a nice week at the beach.  Today is already going much more smoothly, so I am going to chalk up yesterday’s chaos to a bad first day.  Josie (my 19 month old) may have climbed up on top of a bookcase and eaten a black marker.  And when I got the brilliant idea to start her in the toddler circuit, she ate the play dough, and when I told her “no” she just threw it at me.  And all the rest of the kids laughed, except for my oldest.  My oldest scolded the baby in her best outside loud voice.  Then the baby cried and threw play dough at her too.

And my kindergardener asked for my praise/help/assistance after every question in every workbook.  Four kids asked me questions at once, and a baby cried (screamed at the top of her lungs) for most of the morning.  “Loud” doesn’t really capture the volume in my schoolroom.  But we managed to finish by 3:30 (we started at 7:30), and I managed not to yell.  So I’m considering day one a huge success.  And today, we have nowhere to go but up!

And if you are wondering why we have started school in mid August — it is not because I am overachiever.  Rather, we slack off at various points in the school year, and we will not finish by next summer if I do not begin now.  Happy Back to School and back to school planning for all of our readers!