May-cember

As I review this month that will end this week, I'm weary.

May 1st arrived, and then it all went downhill. I chuckle to myself when I see the May memes with pictures of beautifully packed school lunches representing September and then a sandwich with a carrot between two pieces of bread for the month of May.

Every child in school has brought home papers and more papers. Some were to describe a project that needed to be done within a couple days, others needed to be signed for field trips that always happen in May, and then there were all the art projects coming home that had been made throughout the year. So. many. papers.

Not only was the month busy with school things, but we also had multiple church functions to either organize and execute or attend. Most were not huge, but big enough to take hours of time of planning and shopping and preparing and then cleaning up.

Then we insert the lack of sleep that is starting to feel normal after a month of interrupted sleep. We've had kids affected by allergies, so I have slept sitting up and holding a little one. We've had stomach bugs, so there are times of doing more and more laundry and more and more disinfecting. And now the sunrise is very much before when we need or plan to awake, but the 2 year old is climbing into our bed wanting a drink of milk very badly. My optimal 7.5-8 hours of sleep has now become a regular interrupted 6.

I had one master's class end and a difficult one start. I thought it would be good because I would have about half of it done before the kids were home for summer break. So far, I've been barely making deadlines and I am not happy with my quality of work that I have turned in. Last night I glanced at the clock and it as 11:53 p.m. and my assignment is due by 11:55 p.m. I tried sending it and didn't go, tried again and it went at 11:56 p.m. Thankfully my clock is off by a couple minutes because the school still accepted it.

Honestly, I usually try to encourage my kids to press towards the end with a good attitude. I'll tell them as they go out the door to keep a good attitude and want to learn what the teacher is going to show them because I know it's hard when the nice weather shows up, but this year I didn't. They kept getting up and wanting to go. I didn't need to tell them to persevere because they knew they needed to, but I desperately needed to tell myself to. God's grace is sufficient even in May, and we will push forward in glorifying Him even in May.