Our kids have both started with their chosen spring sport, T-ball, and soccer. This means that once, sometimes twice a week we’re picking up kids from school, eating on the go, and dashing off to a practice/game. Every Saturday has a game for each kid.
After a long lazy winter of hunkering down inside where it’s nice and warm, it’s nice to get out in some nice weather, but at the same time it feels very hectic and madcap, always on the go! Last weekend I didn’t even plan out an official menu for this current week’s dinners, as with 2 evenings taken up with sports and another night where my husband had a class and therefore wouldn’t be home, there was really only 2 weeknights to plan for.
Our kids get up about 7am and we’re usually out the door at around 8ish to drop them at school (we take turns dropping off and picking up). Pick up from school/daycare is usually around 5-5:30. It’s about 15min from their school to our home, and soccer practice starts at 6:30, and weekday t-ball games start at 6. Not a lot of time in there to get from school to home to eat to get on shinguards/cleats/etc back out and to the field. And then after the practice/game, there’s not a lot of time to play, as bedtime is 8pm. We usually start their bedtime at about 7:15 and we aim for kids to be bathed, jammied up, read to and tucked in/lights off by 8pm. You can see how this doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for … well, anything!
As a result, we’ve been eating way too much fast food and the kids have been getting to bed a bit later on some days. The crunched down schedule has been taking it’s toll, not the least of which is in the form of a parent trying to hurry up a kid and being crabby about it. It’s not all bad though, last night was a class night for Mr. 99k, so I was on kid duty by myself for the evening. I left work late and thus picked the kids up late, which means there’s even less time for a real sit down dinner (even if it’s usually just chicken nuggets and tater tots, which I usually let them have on a class night). So instead of trying to hurry home and fix dinner and having no play time for the kids, I stopped at McDonalds and tried to get them to hold still long enough to get some nuggets into their tummies, then cried out, “RELEASE THE HOUNDS!” (ala the simpsons) and let them run rampant on the play equipment for a half hour. They are even learning the concepts of time budgeting, as I had to explain to them, “If we spend our time playing in the play area, that means there’s not much time to play when we get home.”
It’s definitely hard to spend quality time with your kids when there’s not enough time in the evenings to get everything in. We’ve been toying with the idea of a slightly later bedtime for the kids which *would* give us some more time. I think our older one (soon to be 6) would be fine with that, but the 4 year old could probably still use the full 11 hours of sleep. Neither one naps anymore (alas!) and when we come into their room at 7am, they’re both still usually asleep (Ms. 4 year old) or just waking up (Mr. 6yo) - a good sign that it’s not TOO much sleep.
We are going to try to do better about the fast food for the rest of the month, and have solemnly sworn that any more eating out would come out of our personal blow money categories rather than keep overspending the family eating out category.
It’s interesting to look at how time constraints and time budgeting can actually affect the fiscal budget.