Too Busy To Slow Down

Ezra spent 25 minutes this morning crying and whining about going to swim camp.  “I hate swim camp. It’s terrible.  WHY do you have to pack my schedule so FULL?”

First, Ezra has only been to swim camp one other time.  And he loved it.  And I hardly think his schedule was too full today.  He had a four hours of swim camp.  Then home for the entire afternoon, and off to play soccer tonight.  It was busier than most days, but it’s the same schedule all week, and he loves both swimming and soccer.

Still, he has a point.

Or not so much a point, I suppose, as a reality.  Kids don’t typically want to bounce from event to event.  Not even when the events are great.  My boys, especially.  To manage his anxiety about the new schedule, Zach asked me ten times to review the hour-by-hour play-by-play.  Who would pick them up from swimming?  How would they get dinner before soccer camp?  Did I know who would be on his team?

Even with homeschooling, where we don’t have to rush out the door in the morning or spend our afternoons doing homework, it’s hard not to overschedule the boys.

Why?

Because I work.

The soccer clinic they were going to tonight is called Soccer Nights, and I, along with a bunch of other people from three churches, run it.  So I needed the boys to be in camp in the morning and otherwise occupied in the afternoon.  It’s one of many projects I organize, and one of the many reasons I don’t spend as much time at home as the boys would like.

Many days, I think I’m doing the wrong thing by working.  They want to slow down, and I want to help them.  Other days, though, days like today, I love my job and I pray that homeschooling the boys will give them a slower pace than they would have if they were going to school AND I were working.  And I pray that it will be enough.

Here’s a link to a five minute video we made of last year’s Soccer Nights. It’s really cool, right?

Below are a few pics from early on tonight.  Also beautiful, yes?  I don’t have a picture of Ezra joining the Soccer Nights dance team – but if I did, I would show you a picture of pure joy, the happiest I think I have ever seen him.  And I don’t have a picture of Zach hugging his new teammates after they score a goal – but if I did, I would show you the picture of a boy who was completely in the moment, without a care in the world.

So for this week, the boys are going to have to go faster than they would like to, and hopefully enjoy large parts of it.  And next week, I’m gonna have to go slower than I want to in order to help them recalibrate.  Who knows what we’ll do the week after that.