Holy smokes what a week. The first 5 days of homeschool are officially in the books. When I first withdrew the girls from school in the spring (to be perfectly accurate, it was 3 days after I gave birth in March), I am pretty sure I was cracked out on the last of my pregnancy hormones. And by the time that first week of homeschool was done, I felt like I was one breakdown away from the looney bin.

All mental health jokes aside, that practice run was EXACTLY what I needed to prep me for this year. We had great plans, Miss Co completely blew me away with her dedication and her excitement for learning, and we genuinely had a blast together digging into some pretty deep stuff. My girl drew an impressionist masterpiece, learned how Faure bridged the gap between Romanticism and Modernism, and proved to me that her handwriting is as severely lacking as her father’s. And while it was an INCREDIBLE experience being home with my sweet little brainiacs all day every day, it was admittedly EXHAUSTING. I am so ready for the weekend.

Enter how this mama gets time to herself. Friends, I am not too proud to admit I am a complete mental wreck when I am all mom, all the time. While I love my troop, and they are a huge part of my identity, they are not my WHOLE identity. And sometimes I need to be a mom on the loose, in today’s case listening to Songs About Jane and going to my favorite dive for a whiskey sour made with a bourbon I’ve never heard of. So, while the girls are off to grandma’s house and the boys are with a trusty babysitter, the hubs and I get a chance to get away, if only for a bit.

How do we find trusty sitters, knowing that we have a child with special needs and two infants? Well, we’re lucky in that we live close to both sets of grandparents, which means we can split the kids up for free babysitting. But when we don’t have that option, we use in my opinion, the best option of all- the student babysitters. We live blissfully close to a few high schools, and were fortunate enough to connect with an awesome college student and her sister, who can tag-team to watch all 4 kids without much trouble. Does it set us back $100 just for babysitting? Yes. Does that mean we do a legit date night sans kids only once a month? It does. But we can handle that. Our other date nights consist of Netflix and drinks after the kids are in bed. And my personal fave- time solo mio when the hubs is willing to party with the crew so I can go sit and have coffee by myself and get caught up on a good book. It doesn’t have to be often, but we all need to recharge our batteries right? It helps having a plan to make all that stuff happen- and not being afraid to try something spontaneous (like taking the baby with us to a bar) when the plan doesn’t work out.

Life is stressful, even for a Type A crazy mom like me. Or maybe especially for a Type A crazy mom like me? Either way, I’m good with taking a break every now and again and doing what I want. So do your thing mama. Get out there. Get your solitude on. Get your date night on. Or just get it on. Do what you gotta do. I’ll be doing that too.

xoxo~ LWH