Sports events, school functions and communions…oh my! All these things together must mean it’s MAYhem! I don’t know what has happened to the month of May. It has become a whirlwind of activities and commitments. Gone are the weekends just being outside (by choice – not because of your child’s sporting event). Winter months spent trying to figure out what to do, now consist of an endless amount of places to be. This years MAYhem, for some reason, was especially hard.
School Functions
Please let me preface this by saying that I consider myself and my children so lucky to live in a town with great schools. I also know that it is not just my school district that does this – but it seems that schools jam pack every activity possible into the month of May. If it’s not field day then it’s a spring concert (if you’d like to have your ears set on fire go to one of those!). There are fundraisers after dinner that don’t require your presence, but you have serious mom guilt if you don’t go. If it’s not an after school activity then it’s an in-school project that requires parent participation. I pretty much agree with my kids on this one – by May, I’m done. (Of course by the 4th of July I’m ready for them to go back to school).
Sporting Events
This year, my daughter is on a travel soccer team. Let me tell you – it’s been an eye opening experience. Our lives basically revolve around my daughter’s soccer schedule – which changes on what feels like an hourly basis. Practices are two days a week with games on Sundays. Soccer, if you haven’t heard, is an outdoor sport. This MAYhem felt like we were living in a tropical rainforest which does not go well with outdoor sports. I think we had one practice go on as scheduled. The rest were changed to different times and/or places with about an hours notice. Again, no one is to blame for this – it’s just the nature of MAYhem.
My Mother’s Day breakfast in bed was drastically cut short. The game originally scheduled for 10 a.m. got moved to 1:45 p.m., only to find out at 8:45 a.m. the game got moved back to 10 a.m. (Got that? Because I barely did). The good thing was that my husband’s Mother’s Day gift to me was to take care of our three year old son during the game, so I could just watch my daughter play. That game was thoroughly enjoyable.
Other games rained out in May are rescheduled for June. Maybe I’m just a Debbie-downer but I’m perfectly ok with not making up games and just moving on with our lives. Our nice unscheduled lives.
Make the MAYhem Stop!
Now that we are in June and MAYhem is officially over, I’m looking forward to the end of the school year, a less strict sports schedule, and just waking up with the kids in the morning having nowhere to go. I always say next May will be different and I won’t over-schedule us. It always happens and it will only get worse. Right now I only have one child who’s social schedule is more impressive than my own. Once my three year old becomes more involved in extra-curricular activities I should just slap an Uber sticker on my car and call it a day.
