The Shuttle

I have a flexible job that allows me to drive my children to and from school. So on a normal weekday my schedule looks like this...

7am wake up, get everyone else up and get ready for school/babysitter/work
8am leave house (sometimes this is 8:20am)
8:10 drop Molly off at babysitters house
8:30 drop Alivia and Marlin off at preschool
8:45 get home start working
11:15 leave house to pick up children from school
11:30 pick up children
Noon back at house, start working again
5-5:15 Matt and children get home and work ends

This is actually only about 7 hours of work so I also have to work evenings for an average of 5 hours a week after the kids are in bed.

It sounds like a lot of interruptions and hassles but it is worth it. I consider myself very lucky to be working full time and still have the opportunity to touch base with my kids in the middle of the day. We skip from school back to the car, sometimes we sing songs on the way to the babysitters, sometimes I get stories about what happened at school. I love it. I love them and I feel a little less mom guilt because I can do these things.

It is all worth it...
Except for days like today. Today I picked the kids up and as soon as we got in the van Alivia started demanding that I dump all the Gatorades out of the box they come in so she can have a nest for her stuffed puppy for the ride. I didn't want 20 Gatorade bottles rolling allover the van so I said no. She continued to fling attitude from the back seat the entire ride and her fit ended in her taking the cordless headphones and throwing them to the floor of the van as hard as she could. I told her that her behavior was unacceptable and I was taking her stuffed puppy away from her and she could have it back tomorrow morning IF she could straighten up and be nice for the rest of the day.

****TOTAL MELTDOWN***

...crying

...begging

and I turn into the babysitters driveway. Open the door, help the kids out (Alivia still crying), take them into the house, apologize to the babysitter about the crying child and explain what the situation is and leave.

Lovely, what the hell am I doing this for? Why did I bother? Did I really interrupt my day to go make Alivia scream and cry? ugh

So on 9 out of 10 days the shuttling is totally worth the effort. Today was not one of those days.