More Work-Life Balance

Sunday, Cort left for a two-week trial. Come to think of it, he was pretty busy preparing for it the week before. That's a total of three weeks, at least, without Dad as we are used to him.

Wednesday, I have to file a brief in the Texas Supreme Court. I'm also a procrastinator. This used to work well for me, when I could hole up for a weekend and work into the wee hours, with no one else to worry about but myself. It does not work so well when I am responsible for four small, busy, and exhausting people.

I have put Will and Helen in gymnastics classes on Tuesdays. I leave work a little earlier than usual on Tuesdays, pick Will and Helen up at around 3:50 from school, take them to gymnastics class which starts at 4:10, then go pick up Charlie and Joseph from school at 4:30, and return to pick Will and Helen up when gymnastics class ends at 5:00. At that point, I've got all four kids and the gymnastics place is crazy busy (and huge). The first day I did this, I could not keep track of even two kids at once. They were running all over the place and I couldn't even find them, much less get clothes changed and get them all to the car to return home. We have since set some ground rules.

Which Helen did not follow last week.

That brings us to today. It's Tuesday. The brief has to be finished today in order to be filed in Austin tomorrow. And I have to leave today by 3:45 to make gymnastics.

We could easily skip gymnastics. Except: Today, the plan is to take only Will to gymnastics. The plan is for Helen not to go - as a consequence for not following the ground rules last week. I think it will make an impression. If we skip gymnastics altogether today, the consequence goes out the window. I can't expect a 3-year-old to really link a consequence to her actions two weeks earlier. It just won't have the same effect. More importantly, I've already told her that Will is going and she isn't. If I don't follow through, I will have lost all credibility. Losing credibility with Helen is something I do not wish to happen.

So, I can do this. I've gotten four hours of sleep the past two nights. I got up early this morning, had everything ready before the kids got up, and managed to get all the kids in the car and dropped off at their respective schools before 8 o'clock.

The brief will be mailed to the supreme court today.
Will will go to gymnastics.
And Helen won't.

The things we do for our kids. My guess is that she's never going to appreciate this.