Overdone?

During the holiday season we have plans to see four plays and go on several Christmas-y type outings. Today Mark and myself took five kids between the ages of 8 and 9 months to see the Nutcracker ballet. It was an ambitious plan and luckily everyone was well behaved and Lee napped during the majority of the show. But it could have gone badly, very badly.

I often get carried away with the kids. If I hear of a play, a place, an experience, a class that I think they might enjoy I HAVE to take them. How could I not? They'd love it! They'd get so much from it. It would make childhood magical or expand their world. There are a few problems with this of course. 1) It gets damn costly to be buying tickets and memberships and enrolling them in classes. Especially since there are THREE of them. 2) You simply can't do everything. You can't. And sometimes I feel bad that they are missing something. Well, WE. I like to see plays and go places too. I like to be busy and explore too. I just can't sit in the house and stare at the walls all day. But we can't do everything. 3) Sometimes I might plan an activity and one of us might not be up for it. The baby is tired. Ray is a grump. Noah is whiny. Or I am exhausted. And sometimes we push through and sometimes we just give up.

But in those occasional moments when we're a bit weary and I'm muttering "What in the world was I thinking?" I have to take a deep breath and hope that the kids remember their childhood as a flurry of learning, magic and fun and not just being dragged around by their nutty mother who overextended them all and then lost of her mind.