Outside aversion and a mommy confession.

 "Mommy, mommy!  It's so warm out, look I'm wearing shorts!  Can we play outside?  Please?  I want to ride my bike and my scooter and crunch the leaves as I drive over them!  Pretty please?"  

We are four days into October.  The Halloween decorations are up, pumpkins are on the front porch, mums are planted, and it's 80 degrees.  One of these things is not like the other, right?  I will be the first to admit, I HATE back and forth weather.  I hate not knowing what to wear from day to day, and I especially hate it if it gets hot again.  But the kids?  The kids LOVE it.  Jake mourns that day that I put his shorts into storage (which was 2 weeks ago....once the temps dipped down into the low 60's, I thought we'd be in the clear)  Not so much.  Had to dig those things back out the past few days. 

So while I have not been loving the sudden fall heat wave, these kids have been soaking up every minute of it.  The snippet of conversation above is what I was bombarded with by Jake after school.  Liam was quick to chime in with a "pweeeeeease?"Meanwhile, a dialogue was already running through my own head:

I was in my work clothes; all I wanted to do was change into pajamas and retreat for the night.

Nothing was ready for dinner.  Nada.  Zip. Zilch.  Not even an idea in my head of what to do.  We had already had the standard fall backs of pasta and tacos earlier in the week.

I had a headache.  The whiny voice inside my head was on a roll, "ugh-can't they just play inside?  Don't they just want to sit down and color a picture or something while I supervise from the couch as the tylenol kicks in?  It's only Thursday, why is this week not over yet? ugh, then I need to figure out dinner on top of everything else.  I'd say we should just go out to dinner, but I'm feeling too lazy to even put the effort in to get everyone back in the car.  Maybe we can just..."

"MOMMY!" 

My thoughts were interrupted by the boys standing there, looking up at me with their shoes in their hands. 

"Can we go?  Please?  Pretty soon it will be dark after school and we'll be sad".

I wanted to point out to him that the collective "we" he used did not include me.  I know, I know...in a few months from now I will be complaining that we are cooped up in the house during the long winter, how we rarely see daylight anymore, and will be counting down the days until spring.   

But here's a mommy confession for you: I am sick of playing outside. There, I said it.

I'm sick of dragging out a gazillion toys when we're out there.  I'm sick of coming home, rushing to get inside only to change clothes, then put everyone's shoes back on and go BACK outside once again. Oh, and don't forget the fun part where we then have to put all of the aforementioned toys away, drag everyone back in the house (usually not willingly, and without the use of threats and/or "I'm going to count to three, and if these toys are not being put away..."), and make sure hands are washed while simultaneously trying to finish cooking dinner.  So there it is.  I'm over it.  Over the outside playing.  I'm looking forward to long weekend days where we have no plans, and sometimes don't even bother to change out of our pajamas all day. 

But alas, last night was not the night to start our winter hibernation.  Even I, the fall-loving freak, thought last night was too great to pass up.  And sometimes, despite my best efforts, these two are just too great to pass up...even if they want to do things that I would normally never, ever do.  Like be outside, fully dressed, running around my driveway at 6:30pm after working all day.  For the record, dinner was pretty much nonexistent.   We scrounged together some leftovers and random side dishes, while I ate a bowl of cereal.  No one ever said balancing it all was easy. 

But it was one night, and we all survived.  And there will be other nights (and there have been already), where the voice inside my head DOES win the battle and I do say no, we're playing inside tonight.  And I think that's ok.  We're still trying to figure out this whole balance thing as we go along.