It’s a funny thing, pictures. I took hundreds of them this weekend, mostly because we did so many fun things and the boys were smiling, laughing, and literally airborne for half of them, so I found inspiration in their glee to document and laugh along with them and document some more. But the truth is, the pictures never show the full story. They don’t show the exhaustion, or the meltdowns (because of the exhaustion) or the amount of rushing around we did in order to make it to all the fun places, keep all the promises.
It’s not the way I like to live the weekends, rushing around like we did. Our days go more smoothly and we all are happiest when we take it easy and limit excursions and activities. But sometimes things sneak up on you. For instance, the realization that I had promised the boys a trip to Eckert’s/Millstadt Fun Farm before Halloween, then realization dawning: next weekend and the weekend after that were not going to work, so it had to be this weekend… the same weekend Andrew was out of town, the same weekend Circus Harmony had invited us to the Ringling Brothers show (for free!), the same weekend that all three boys had circus class, etc. Plus we needed groceries, of course.

It’s not the way any of us likes to do things, because rushing around means a time limit to everything, a schedule that must be strictly adhered to, and if anything goes wrong, we’re either late or on our way to being late, or breaking promises and layering disappointment on top of disappointment. It’s a ticking time bomb… pack in the fun before it goes off! Have fun here, now go have fun there, now we’re off to have some more fun! Hurry hurry HURRY! Ka-BOOM!The boys are not yet self-aware of the disaster that accompanies over-scheduled weekends. If one were to ask them, “Do you want to go to the circus?!! And a fun-farm that’s in a different state? And stay up way too late? With SUGAR? And pizza, and haunted houses, and circus classes times two? How about more sugar? Oh, and we get to go to the grocery store too!!!” the answer would, of course, be YES!!!

But the reality is, it’s just too much. Every single kid will end up overwhelmed, crying, exhausted, irritable, argumentative, (did I mention crying?) and completely irrational at some point during an over-scheduled weekend. Also, lump me into that category.

I vaguely remember blowing up a black balloon in near total darkness one morning this weekend (don’t ask me which day, I can’t even attempt to differentiate between two days of one run-on sentence of a weekend) at the prompting of a little voice up insanely early, “Mama, you blow this up for me now.” And yes, instead of attempting to get out of bed or put this child back into his own bed, I just blew up the damn balloon and tied it, the cursed thing getting stuck on my finger as I tried to finish it off (have you ever tried blowing up a balloon in the dark, lying down, half asleep? check that box for me), rolled over, and went back to sleep. And the whole thing slipped my mind until yesterday afternoon, when picking up blankets off the floor from a wayward fort (of course they had time to build a fort… while I was trying to sleep in past 6am) when I came across a large black balloon in the living room and thought, where did you come from? Oh yes. I remember you.

And an even funnier thing than pictures? Memories. Those boys, today, will tell you they had the most amazing weekend. They’ll tell you about rides, circus acts, elephants, camels, glow-in-the-dark bungee trapeze acts, cotton candy, clowns, pumpkin patches and tractor rides, hot chocolate, a haunted house, a giant pillow for jumping, an underground slide, goats, parakeets, strong men, corn mazes, and a young lady getting shot out of a cannon. They’ll tell you it was awesome. And it was. And I’m going to need a few days to recover. Here’s to October.