Twice and a Blue Moon

Dear world,

I am here. I am frazzled. I am confused. I keep forgetting today is Wednesday . But I’m here. Call me absent minded. Call me a hot mess. Just don’t call me on the phone, ok?  Text me. And then text me again if you haven’t heard from me in 24 hours because the odds are that I saw your text, composed a response in my head and then clicked my mental “done” box before actually sending (or typing out) said text.

Lately I’ve been a special level of disorganized. Something has happened. I knew it would be happening eventually. I’ve seen it happen to other parents.  Yet it still kind of snuck up on me. It’s the next stage in parental confusion.  I made it through the sleep deprivation stage. I had my little honeymoon of thinking I had the hang of this parenthood thing, only to fly head over heels into the next stage that is leaving me grasping to find some way to keep some level of order. My oldest, who is only 4.5 years old mind you, now has an activity schedule (the nerve!). Gone are the days of blindly following me from activity to activity. Now HE has his OWN interests.  On top of his 4 day a week preschool schedule over the last couple of months we have added guitar lessons and tee-ball to our weekly to do list.  That doesn’t sound like much, right?  Yet the added lesson time, practice time, game time and whine time (Do I have to wear baseball pants? Can’t I just wear Gym Shorts?) has taken a toll on my regularly scheduled free time.

And while I am busy shuttling my pint sized off spring from school to practice to games I also somehow found myself with the title of Team Mom for his tee-ball team. Cue my “oh shit” face when I dumbly kindly volunteered via group text to attend a mandatory meeting on the candy bar fundraiser the Baseball league does as a representative of the team only to get a phone call from the Team Manager/Coach a few short minutes later asking me if I could pretty pretty please just be the team parent as well. Remember back in high school when you’d be assigned to a group project and everyone could somehow smell out the person that would pull the group through and do the work no one wanted just so they wouldn’t all fail? Yeeeeaaaaah – so I guess that follows you into adulthood after all. PS. In case you don’t “know me” know me let me be real clear when I say that everyone that does “know me” know me has been cackling in laughter when they hear that I someone managed to score the gig of Team Mom for my son’t tee-ball team.  I’m not knocking the job or the folks who might enjoy fulfilling the role at all (although clearly they aren’t parents of anyone else on my child’s team, unfortunately). I’m just being real here when I say that this team (any team really) deserves better and you’re definitely more likely to find me throwing back a Bud Light while watching Lifetime TV in my free time than running the PTA.

I mention pre child me quite frequently but bear with me as I bring her up again. Pre child me could never imagine why a parent would sign up to be shuttle service from activity to activity. Pre child me thought the title of “team mom”  was created for overbearing mothers. Pre child me, as I’ve established before, was an idiot.  Even though I’m frazzled – even though I am confused – Even though I suddenly found myself buying my first day planner since 2005 just so I could remember which days I was supposed to be where and with which child, parent me knows now that there isn’t anything more adorable than a team of 4 year old’s trying to get through 2 innings of tee ball. And if I have to cart around 3 dozen cases of chocolates because I got nominated to be the team pushover parent than so be it.  So if you have been wondering why my posts have been few and far between over the last couple of months consider the veil lifted – and maybe considering buying a couple candy bars… They are for a good cause!

One thing I’ve found to be true in most any circumstances is that it takes some time to adjust to a new normal. And So while I’m over here adjusting to my new normal as mother to a bonafide KID complete with activity accessory pack vs mother of a preschooler, well I’m going to just go ahead and pull my FM card (that’s frazzled mom to you!) and forgive myself my lack of consistency in blogging, returning phone calls, and arriving anywhere on time (hard money that if I’m actually on time these days I left something important at home).

[And for added emphasis, I started this post on Monday. I am so far gone into FM territory that I am just patting myself on the back for remembered to change the “Monday” in the first paragraph to “Wednesday.”Dream big people. Dream Big.]