Shhhh.... Do You Hear That?

Shhhh!  Do you hear that?  Listen, what do you hear?  I hear the tick, tick of my kitchen clock, the hum of my fridge, and hmmm, what else?  NOTHING! HA, this is the glorious sound of NOTHING.  Winter break is over.  I've received several emails today saying "hope your break was great".  Break?  Are you kidding me?  My break is now.  I actually got to go to the bathroom all by myself a minute ago.  No banging on the door, no little 3 year old making observations about my bodily functions in the bathroom.  When I had finished my peaceful potty break, I walked out to.... nothing.  Everything was just as it had been when I went into the bathroom a moment earlier!

Ok, truth be told, I'm actually one of those Moms that loves school breaks.  I look forward to them.  I love sleeping in and having the kids crawl into bed with me in the morning.  Henry cuddles in close and tells me he's hungry but then falls asleep for another half hour.  I love that.  I also love the crazy junk food fests we have.  Eating double stuffed Oreo cookies, dipping them in milk and laughing so hard we squirt milk out of our noses.  The best part of the Oreo fest is the kids' faces. Stippled with black pirate Oreo beards, they are so happily high on sugar that they forget to tell me that I'm a big fat stupid meanie head for making them practice, do homework, etc.  We can watch TV, go to the movies, stay up late and follow absolutely no schedule at all.  Of course, after 16 days of this chaotic existence things start to fall apart.  There is fighting, crying, yelling, torturing; a general state of sugar, lack of sleep and any daily structure, induced fatigue.  This is the sign.  The sign that it is time, time to go back to school, to schedules, to eating actual food, and going to bed at a decent hour.  I love my breaks with the kids and, while they claimed to hate school and couldn't bear the thought of break ending, when they hopped into the car yesterday I knew all was well with the world.  Their cheeks rosy from walking through the never ending carpool line, they each had a smile on their face and couldn't wait to tell me about what a friend did over break, or that there was an actual real live New Kid in class.  Ahhhh... shhhhh...do you hear that?