I can't keep up.

My children keep me busy and they are barely into grade school. My son is in kindergarten while my daughter is in day care, preparing to go to pre-school in the fall. Every couple of weeks I get letters and calendars from both of their teachers letting me know what type of events they have coming up. Yes, it's March and I should have the hang of all this by now, but for some reason I can't keep up with all the pajama days and school spirit days. I feel so bad when I go to drop my child off and everyone else is dressed up but them.

My first instinct was to blame my husband because he fixes their lunch and gets them dressed in the morning, but as my mama and Dr. Phil would tell me, it's not fair blaming him cause it takes two. But, when a teacher asked me "Ohh, you didn't know it was green day?" I could feel the guilt and the blame well up inside me. I work a full time job and run a side business that keeps my week-ends locked up so yes, I forget to look at the calendar and see that green is the color of the day. Are my kids clean? Yes. Are they fed? Yes. Are they healthy and happy? Yes and Yes. That's my priority, but I know that they don't see it that way.

So what do you do when you are so busy? You plan ahead. On Sunday night I look at the upcoming week and plan accordingly. (At least that's the plan.) I had tried waiting the night before, but that just puts me in rush mode. Case in point. I went to a business expo and my husband was at home allllll day. My son's school had been doing a reading month celebration and that week was kind of dedicated to Dr. Seuss and the next day was dress up as your favorite Dr. Seuss character. When I got home I asked my husband if he knew what our son was going to dress up as. He had no clue. Mind you, it's 7:30 pm. (Dr. Phil, are you absolutely sure this isn't his fault?) So, I go into supermom mode and put my thinking cap on. Maybe you can run to Toy's R' Us and get a Cat in the Hat hat. But, how much is that gonna cost, we're on a budget. Then he asked our son what his favorite character was? Thing One from Cat in the Hat, he said and the light bulb went off in my head.

I sent my husband out to the store and I told him to bring me some blue hairspray and the biggest can of holding spray he could find. I wrote on a piece of paper and pinned it to a red shirt and I totally destroyed a wig of mine (now that's love). The blue hairspray looked more like purple so I had to mix some acrylic paints that I had to create the perfect blue. I put the wig in front of a fan overnight and below was his costume for the day.

As you can see, he loved it and I was happy to make him happy. I never want to make him or his sister feel out of place and lets face it, some kids are mean. Can I keep up with all of the different dress up days and school functions? Probably not, but I'll give it the old college try.

What do you do to keep up with your kid's schedule?