Open House Meltdown

Tuesday night was Open House at the boys' school. The boys, especially Vinnie, had really been looking forward to it. And by a pure stroke of luck, no one had a practice or game scheduled. What could be better?!We decided to go youngest to oldest, so started in Vinnie's kinder class. While checking out all his work and art I found out that the big class pajama party was the previous Friday evening, not this coming Friday like I thought. My heart sank. I noticed the reminder in his back pack on Monday morning, not realizing it had been in there since the previous week. I was then also told I had already missed the deadline to let the principal know any requests for the upcoming year (we are not allowed to request teachers, but you can let them know any personality quirks about your kid that will help them pick a good fit). I was nearly in tears and began feeling panicky. We then moved on to Joey's second grade class.


While looking around Joey's class I noticed their class book on display. I asked one of the mom's if she knew when we would be getting our copies of it. "We got them a couple of weeks ago," she said. A couple of weeks ago??! Did I forget to turn in the order form? Did I give it to Joey and did he forget? When I asked Joey he said he did have the book, but wasn't sure what he did with it. Two days later I still don't know what happened to his book.

We moved on to Zach's fifth grade class. Thankfully the hour was almost up and his class was a lot emptier than Joey's. There was a lot of cool stuff to see, including a power point report that he made with the state report he (we) had done earlier. Unfortunately by this point Christopher was tired and generally being a pain in the ass, making it difficult to really focus on what Zach was showing us. Also, I was feeling like I was having a full blown panic attack, wondering what else I had missed or forgotten to do. It was obvious to Zach who was clearly hurt by what he perceived as our lack of interest.

We had promised the kids ice cream so we headed over to Baskin-Robbins. On the way I burst in to tears. Loud, sobbing tears. Peter looked at me like I was crazy, and I just completely fell apart. I ALWAYS feel like I am two steps behind. Always the one turning in the permission slip in late, doing the project the night before it is due, forgetting it is crazy hair day. Last year we even missed a couple of birthday parties because I never even found the invites until the party had passed. We even had a "system" this year. The kids put their papers in each of their slots, then we look through them.

The problem? They don't always empty their papers, and we did not look enough. I am tired. By the time we get home from work/practice/the game I am wiped. It is all I can do to get through dinner and clean up. I just don't have it in me to then start looking through backpacks and signing papers.


And school projects? We have 2 big ones due in the next couple of days that we have barely made a dent in. Between sports, Joey's communion this year, and projects that were due earlier I just haven't had time to get these ones going.

People think I have it all together. They comment on all I do--work, run, make fun cupcakes, blog. "How do you do it?" they ask. Terribly, it seems. I feel like an imposter. It might look like I have it together, but I don't. Everything done last minute, half fast, or completely overlooked. And my house? Don't even get me started on that. Total disaster, all the time. Where is the time to just kick back a play a game with the kids? What can I do different next school year? All I know is that I can't keep going on like this.

And to top it all off? I suddenly have gray hair. I am sure there is a direct correlation between the number of school projects this year and the amount of gray hair I am now sporting.


Now I am off to work on the Joey's ancestor report, Zach's science project on catapults, change the sheets Joey puked in last night, wash Zachary's pants for his baseball game tonight and plan the 40 cupcakes I need to make for the baseball party this weekend.

Just 10 more days of school...