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Then there was the evening routine. Prepare dinner. Serve dinner. Talk about school. Look through book bags for important papers. Sign important papers. Receive artwork and display someplace obvious. Monitor homework. Clean up kitchen. Bathtime X’s three. I think I left out a diaper change or two in there somewhere. Quiet time for kids. Lights out. Begin laundry.
Start all over again the next day.
Again, those are just the highlights of the evening routine. There’s so much more but it would take me days and days to write about every little detail. Fortunately, with my own children the evening routine looks like the following. They arrive home from school, I am usually cooking dinner. They say, “Hi, Mommy!” I say, “How was your day?” They each take their turns launching into the day’s adventures while they are getting out their homework and I continue to cook. They settle down. I finish dinner. At some point my husband will come in the door and eventually we eat. Sometimes we will go ahead and start dinner without him if he’s going to be late. The kids help clean up the kitchen (sometimes) and then they are pretty much on their own until I say, “Time to get ready for bed.” By 9:00 everyone is in bed and my husband starts the laundry. He’s the official laundry doer.
Start all over again the next day.
Here’s the point if you’re an older parent considering adopting. Don’t underestimate the very real benefits of adopting an older independent child. Sure there are tradeoffs, but at least be aware of what they are. I remember when we adopted the girls I was thrilled to death that they were at the age where we did not have to go back to diapers and formula and diaperbags and all of that stuff. I was also glad that I could just tell all three of my kids, “Go get in the car” and they could do it without me having to launch a military scale deployment just to get them from point A to point B.
Case in point. Once during my visit I became frustrated with myself because I forgot to purchase an item at the grocery store earlier in the day. I didn’t think about it until after I picked up the four year old and the one year old from daycare. The sun was going down and the weather was unseasonably cool that particular evening, at least by Atlanta standards. I sat at the red light in front of the grocery store debating whether I wanted to bother with the hassle of taking both children into the store with me to obtain the one item I wanted. I decided not. Fortunately when I arrived home with my crew in tow, a raid on the pantry turned up a lone jar of spaghetti sauce. You would have thought I hit the lottery the way I carried on.
Although the madness is qualitatively different when parenting young children versus parenting older children some things are exactly the same. The hugs. The kisses. The laughter. The love. I get tons of that with my older kids and I had tons of it with my younger crew this past week. As for where I am in my life right now…I’ll take the hugs, the kisses, the laughter, and the love, all with a big dose of independence and self-sufficiency please.
