For the past 10 days I have been a soccer mom to two of my cousins while their parents were away in Hawaii. I thought it might be fun to share what it was like being a soccer mom from someone who actually isn’t in that stage of life yet. I realize it’s coming and it scares me!
- It really made me think about the future and how children’s activities can really impact a family. My two cousins aren’t really involved in that many activities compared to a lot of other children. One plays baseball and the other is involved in Girl Scouts and plays soccer. They do not have any activities on Sundays which is wonderful. At three years old Eli is only involved in a handful of activities: Sunday School, Wednesday Night Church, Flower Buds (a monthly class for 3-5 year olds at our extension office), and the occasional play date. In the past he has also taken swim lessons and attended StoryTime weekly. One drastic difference I noticed was that except for Wednesday Night activities, all of Eli’s activities happen during the day so our nights stay fairly open. When we do have activities they usually start at 6:30 which allows us plenty of time to eat dinner as a family. Our family attends church together on Wednesday evenings and the hubby works on Tuesday nights. On some days a cousin would have practice from 5-7 which is right during dinner time. I felt bad eating without the cousin who was at ball practice but by the time we would get home from picking him up at practice it would be 7:20 which is way to late to eat dinner.
- Honestly it’s been a year or two since I got up regularly at 6am (I much prefer 7am). Most days I had to wake up both cousins and get Eli ready to go since I had to drive the kids to school. I’m also pregnant and want to sleep all the time but I successfully got the kids to school ON TIME every single day. Their school started at 7:25 which just seemed insanely early to me. I believe my biggest accomplishment from the past week was getting the kids to school on time every day. I had to call my mom up and apologize to her for all of the times that I got mad at her when I was late for school which was not very often.
- Some nights you don’t get near as much sleep as you plan on! One school night the dog set off the house alarm when he went downstairs. I was jolted out of bed to the sound of the super loud alarm going off (not the regular alarm that goes off when you set off the alarm.) The lights came on and the alarm company called to see if we were okay. I was so embarrassed to tell them that everything was fine and that it was just the dog. Then Eli woke up and started screaming from all of the noise and not knowing where his parents were. It took about two hours for me to get back to sleep and then my cousin came in because she was scared (it was storming). Nevertheless the kids were at school by 7:20! 🙂
- Overall despite the early hours and crazy amount of driving around I had a nice time. I’m sure if I were asked again I would probably say yes.
I have a new understanding when a fellow mom looks at me and shares that she is overwhelmed and exhausted. Honestly I can’t imagine keeping up such a crazy schedule all of the time. I felt like all I did was drive! I have a good 2-3 years before we plan on contemplating Eli playing organized sports or taking lessons of any sort and for that I am incredibly thankful. I will be treasuring the uncomplicated/simple days of my 3-year-old. In fact I think I will go outside and see if we can find any bugs right now. It sure beats driving! 🙂
Emerson Family 
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