Progress Report

A week in and we're hanging in there.  By a thread, maybe, but hanging nonetheless.

As a whole, I think things have honestly gone better than I expected.  Of course, homework hasn't really kicked in yet, and we're just settling into the new commute situation, so I guess that's not saying much.  But if I'm not fielding complaints left and right and I'm not falling asleep at my desk, I'm going to count that as a win.

Carter is pretty much a non-event right now, all things considered.  Craig mostly handles him in the morning since he's not getting up until right before Jacob and I walk out the door.  I pack his lunch and lay out his clothes, and other than that, it's Craig's job to get him to the bus stop by 8:09am.  Craig has done well getting up on time, which may be partly because I've already had the lights on for an hour at that point, but so far so good.  Carter has a happy crew of kids to meet down at the bus stop, and his first order of business when he gets home most days is to run across the street to play with two of them.  He's been spending a lot of time there lately, playing with Nerf guns 😬 and Power Wheels, to the point that sometimes we'll stop for a second and be like, "Where's Carter?", before remembering where he went.  Neighborhood friends are a new thing for us, so we're still adjusting a bit.  Today I got some positive teacher feedback through the app, but he doesn't really seem to have opinions either way on school so far, which is honestly fine because normally he's got a bunch of negative ones!  Having only a handful of kids he knows doesn't seem to be an issue, either.  I know nightly reading will be coming soon, which might be challenging, but he's already writing his name better on his papers, so again, I'll count it as a win.

As for Jacob, things are going fine.  He's not a fan of the school's locker rooms or the logistics of changing for gym class, but other than that, so far he seems happy.  The uniform situation has been smoother than expected, for the most part.  We're in the process of getting more ties, and we took it down to the wire buying the jeans and a shirt he was insisting he needed for his first dress-down day tomorrow.  He hasn't worn jeans since he was six, so this is a big deal!  What he'll do to dress down, I guess!  He seems to like his house and hasn't complained about a lack of friends, so that's good.  Our biggest challenge has probably been getting to school on time.  It worked fine for a couple days, and then traffic became more of an issue.  Then he had a morning where he forgot to pack his gym stuff and couldn't find his house key.  So, both of our alarms got set a few minutes earlier today to give us those much needed emergency minutes back.  We ended up more than 10 minutes early.  Now if we can keep that up, we should be fine.  And if not, I guess we'll readjust again.  I will say that it's impressive to me that we're out of the house a full hour earlier and it doesn't really feel like it.  I need to be vigilant about bedtimes for all of us for that to continue, though.  I'm just hoping that the slight lag I feel now will eventually go away as my body adjusts to being active earlier, since I'm not getting any less sleep (and might even be getting more some nights).  The one thing I'm not sure of is if the slightly shorter evening time (post-kid-bedtime and prior to mine) will become an issue.  At the holidays, it definitely will, but we haven't done it long enough yet to see if too many regular things start backing up (beyond our DVR, anyway), or if I was just wasting time then anyway.

As for the commute, I suppose in some ways it's been better than expected.  The leg from home to school has been a non-event, which surprised me, since it used to seem so far.  But traffic has been manageable and I suppose it's good to have that time with Jacob.  As he gets older, that may become sacred conversation time to keep the dialog open with him.  But for now, it's sort of like a continuation of our summer commutes--although I do appreciate that I have a leg to myself, as I missed rocking out to my music solo!  That solo second half has been challenging since it's a traffic jam for the first part.  I apparently got lucky my first couple times, because it's been pretty awful all week.  Usually it's just volume, but accidents seem frequent and they definitely make it worse.  I'm still getting to work between 8:20-8:45 depending on the rest of our timing, and the earlier I get there, the earlier I can leave to get home to Jacob at the end of the day.  He's still nervous about being home alone, and I have the phone calls and text messages to prove it! 

I will say that getting out earlier has been nice.  I can get started on dinner sooner and we're not rushing as much on nights with activities, which has been every night this week.  It's a relief to finish dinner clean-up and have it only be 7pm, give or take 15 minutes.  Most recently it was pushing 8pm, and I know I'd never get to bed by 10:30-11 if that was the case.  I'm not sure what happens on days when I need to grocery shop or run errands.  I guess Jacob will just have to wait.  Craig also needs to get to the gym sometimes, so I'll be on Carter pick-up duty and that will set me back a bit.  But I'll take whatever head start I can get!

It's actually been sort of nice to get out of our old routine and get into a new one.  Just trying to manage schedules and time things out has been entertaining and distracting enough that it hasn't bothered me yet.  I'm sure that will change, but I'm pleasantly happy with how we've managed so far.  Of course, next week brings some new challenges.  Craig is out of town for a couple days, and Jacob is currently insisting he'll get the bus--probably only because it ensures I can still leave work a bit early.  He'll need to be up at 5:30, and I'll probably be up by 6am to pack his lunch and ensure I can drive him to the stop at 6:30.  Then I'll go back home and start my morning routine with Carter.  Yikes.  We'll try one morning, and if we survive we'll try again the next day.  Early bedtimes for all, I guess.

Ultimately, we're just taking it one day at a time.  But ::knock on wood:: no disaster days yet...