School Goin’

We live approximately ½ mile from Honeybun’s school.  We walk every day, rain or shine, both ways.  The car pick up line often backs up as far as our street and with Doodle being a baby who screams when the car isn’t moving I can’t justify waiting in the car line for such a short distance.

Usually hubby drops her in the morning and Sugarplum, Doodle and I collect her in the afternoon.  However, this week hubby is out of town and I get to do it all!  To school and back, 10 times.  Which means Sgarplum and Doodle also get to do it 10 times.

The hardest part of having to do everything, though, is the times.  Honeybun has to be to school by 7:50.  The first day I took her to school by myself we walked out the door at 7:30 and we were walking up the sidewalk when the bell rang (as they began to shut the gate I instructed Honeybun to “run!” and she made it in.)  So now I aim for walking out the door at 7:15, just to be safe!  Well a 7:15 departure means waking up at 6:30.  For those who aren’t in South Florida, that’s before the sun comes up!

In the afternoon we have to collect Honeybun at 1:50 which is nice because she can still take a nap (which, yes, she still needs…see “The Needed Nap”) but some days it makes it a real struggle with Sugarplum.  Over the summer the girls were laying down at 2:00 which is still NEARLY doable but Honeybun makes such a fit about laying down as soon as we get home that I’ve been pushing it to closer to 3:00 but then Sugarplum sleeps until 5:00, 5:30, even 6:00 sometimes (I’m not convinced she goes to sleep right away, I’m pretty sure she reads and plays for a while).

The girls still go to bed at 8:00 without trouble and after a bit of talking are usually asleep by 8:30 but even with all the napping and early night time, 6:30 am is still way too early and everyone is a mess from this schedule!  I’m sure we’ll EVENTUALLY get used to the new schedule but for now we’re all very tired and at times extremely grumpy.