It's Monday Again! Funny how that happens.

I am going to start this post with a major brag/celebration. A bold move for a Monday morning, I know, but let's do it. 

It is currently 7:15am and I have daycare lunches packed and ready to go, the kitchen is not in a state unfit for the general population, and the kids are having an actual food breakfast. Oh, and I have coffee. All of the winning.

To those with the untrained eye and ear, that just sounds like providing the basics. Like, isn't that just the baseline level of success for parenting - alive and fed?  

Getting out the door in the morning with kids is like facing a walk across an expansive field... that's full of barbed wire (which is okay -- at least you can see it) and land mines. 

I have the hours of 6-9am blocked off in my calendar as "coffee + chaos" and I really expect nothing other than that for those hours. Productivity output is zero, caffeine input is maximized.

Anyway. I've found the only way to come out of the morning drop-off unscathed is to begin my morning the night before. Yes, I'm tired at night and the last thing I feel like doing is prepping toddler lunches. But odds are that it's also the last thing I'll feel like doing when I wake up in the morning...night is the lesser of two evils because I'm free of input from the hooligans (they're ij bed at this point) and in the morning I know I would rather have coffee.

* gets up to pour self more coffee. pauses to put clothes on the (apparently) naked toddler * 

... 

three hours later

... 

So the kids are at daycare now. Yessssss.

What I was getting around to celebrating was that I adulted so hard this morning. By making lunches and prepping coffee stuff the night before, I had less to stress over in the AM. I had coffee, got the kids out the door, did some planning for the week, walked the dogs, and I am celebrating the crap out of that level of success.

The original train of thought guiding this post has long left the station. 

May the force of adulting be with you this week. In moderation, of course, because balance. 

 Or something.