My Kidlets are Home With Me & Other Stuff

I enjoy my kid breaks.  I'd be crazy not to -- a single mom whose life is wrapped up in 3 not-so-small persons the majority of the time.  I need my breaks.  I relish them. 

But when we have a long break in the summer, I start to feel anxious toward the end of it.  I know that my summer freedom is not reality and I feel a little groundless after a while of that.  The kids and the routines that we have established help me feel rooted in real life.  There's not so much fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants when they're here and I need that.

Anyway, the kids are home with me again.  They started school last Monday.  The transition has gone shockingly smoothly.  The post-dad-spoiling detoxification has gone really well.  I'm afraid to think about that too much.  We're planning Miriam's birthday party, setting up play dates and soaking up all the last bits of summer that we can.

I'm finally officially registered for college again.  I'm waiting on the financial aid documentation to come through and shopping for books.  My schedule couldn't be better, really.  I'm cutting back my work days to just 3 per week -- Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  All my classes are online so I'll stay at home on Tuesday and Thursday to do school work.  I will be taking clinical calculations (a math class), microbiology and nutrition.

The way ADN programs work in Colorado is a little different from the way they work in Texas.  All of my credits from Texas transferred (Yay!) and I have a few that I didn't even need.  That means when this semester is finished I'm technically done with pre-requisites and can apply to next fall's ADN program in February.  I'll use next semester to take pre-reqs for the BSN program that I want to transfer to when I'm done with ADN.

I have two chances to get into the ADN program, which is merit-based.  I can apply to the straight ADN program, which takes 2 years and I can apply to the LPN to ADN program, which is one year.  I have excellent chances of getting into either of them, though obviously the bridge is more desirable because of its brevity. I'm really excited.  I want to the get the next couple of brutal years over with so I can have more options open to me.

I've slowly realized that this is the optimal time to get school over with.  I wanted to wait until my kids were a little older so I wouldn't have to depend on day care to get us through it. However, I can't wait until they're too much older because then they could potentially spend a lot of time at home alone while I'm in school and I definitely don't want that, either.  So this is perfect.  I'll be completely done with school before Solomon gets to high school and then I can spend more time with the kids, transporting them to extra curricular activities and spectating at band concerts and athletic games.  They're really going to need me a lot then and I can be there for them.

I have lots more to write about but it will have to wait.  We have a birthday party and shoe shopping on the agenda for today and it's time to get started.