A Conversation in the Car

It's an ongoing joke in our family that when Noah goes to kindergarten in the fall, Mommy is going to get a job as a lunch lady at the elementary school.  The kids hate this idea (and I do too.  The lunch room is so loud).  The idea surfaced again on a ride to school this week when all of the kids were in the car together with me.  

Their near-panic responses were heard loud and clear- 

"You would have to look at the computer to check off everyone's lunch, and we know how much you hate screen time.  Your eyes would turn square!"

"You would have to feed lunch to all of the kids in the whole school!  And wash their dishes!  And clean up their messes.  And wipe down the tables." 

"You're a stay at home mom!  You're supposed to stay home and make us cookies!"

"You already have a job!  Your job is to take care of us!  And you teach piano lessons and you do podcasts!  You already have three jobs!  You don't need four!" 

"They don't need another lunch lady!!!"

It was adorable and made me chuckle, but also set off the niggling thought that surfaced around January 1st- this is the year that I become an alone-all-day-stay-at-home-mom.  

And I don't know what I'm going to do with myself.  Exercise for hours on end?  Shower in the middle of the day?  Go back to sleep once everyone is in school?  Volunteer all over town?  Get a job that requires hours of my attention each day?  Clearly that idea is a horrible one in my kids opinion.  And heaven knows I have plenty to do each day to keep our family and home life running smoothly.  It's just... what will in look like when I have so many more hours each week to hear silence?

 Emma loves to hear that my heart used to be a grape but it shrivels up to the size of a raisin while she's gone at school each day.  What will be left of it when my alone time is tripled?

I don't know what this milestone will bring.  But it's coming, and it's no surprise to me that I'm not ready for it one bit.

I got come into Noah's classroom as the mystery reader!  Coming into the classroom is an event so rare that I had to document it.