Dude, homeschooling with a toddler is hard...

Sooo, David and I went to a wedding this weekend. We handed the kiddies off to grandparents at a McDonalds on the side of I-95 and then proceeded to enjoy 2 days of sleeping in, afternoon naps, meals not bolted down in 5 minutes flat, and some sitting and talking in nature. Oh, yeah, and a wedding. :)

And in the process of having some quiet to think and the contentment that comes with having clean hair and a daily shower, this earth shattering thought came to me:

"I have never done anything harder than trying to teach 1st grade with a toddler on the loose."

And I've done some hard things.

I got a 4.0 in my master's degree in History, and this involved lots of long papers involving primary research as well as comps to finish me off.

I was the student body vice-president at Campbell, this involving lots of coup busting and meeting running and budget haggling and running Homecoming with teams of committees and a golf cart and a megaphone...

I have moved from state to state to state on an average of every couple of years for the first 6 years of our marriage....

The point of all these examples is just to say...trying to teach your son about hieroglyphics while his little brother sneaks out the back door and sticks his hands into a bucket of paint and water left by the painters working on the house? And having these kinds of moments repeated over and over for the last month?

Harder. I don't know why, but... harder. (Ok, maybe I know why. Maybe it's because I care more deeply about succeeding at this than I have about anything else I've done. So, yeah... that.)

So I'm trying to grab onto contentment with a desperate iron grip this week as I clean up streaked windows the power washer left behind, a month's worth of thick dust on furniture, and walls covered in crayon from the 4-year-old's "rest time."

Anything worth doing is worth doing with everything I've got... and it may take all I've got. And whenever I sit and read to them while they eat their PB&J's, I decide its still worth it. Even if the hand not holding the book has to shoot out and clothesline the toddler running by...