I have some pity for families who have kids that are sports players, and I suspect that as our kids get older we’ll start sharing some more of their issues. We’ve started Riley at a karate (technically Kenpo) school that is nearby to his after school daycare. Yesterday was an interesting day, running back and forth between places, trying to get the information needed to sign him up properly. I spoke briefly with the woman at the desk there about how insane our schedules have become, running the kids to their various activities.

Abby has Orchestra and Chorus on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so Berta runs her to school early on those days. Riley’s half-day kindergarten is a royal pain – I’m not sure how other parents deal with it and why the school district doesn’t just switch to full-day. But on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we send Riley to his after-school daycare, and on Tuesday and Thursday I pick him up and bring him home where Nana watches him. On those days he has after-school daycare, the karate school busses him from daycare to their location for the hour lesson and then returns him to the school, where Berta eventually picks him up on her way home. Sometime during all of that, Abby comes home from school on the bus, where I have to be home to wait for her. All of this is subject to the Girl Scout schedule, which often changes how things work on Fridays, and to Nana’s schedule, which includes occasional doctor visits and art lessons that make it impossible for me to be out at meetings past 5pm (which might not be when the meeting is scheduled, but would include travel time home from the city or elsewhere).

Yes, it’s headache-inducing.

One of the perplexing things I was talking about recently is how the extracurricular classes in our area tend to offer classes for kids at 4pm, which is great because it keeps them occupied from when they get home from school until when their parents would be home from work. But there’s no way for people to get the kids to the class unless they’re already not working. This is one of the great things about the karate class in that it picks up Riley from his daycare. When summer comes, I’ll end up having to cart him over there myself two days a week, and then in September (since the karate school is a minimum 6-month contract – why do they do this?) it’ll be an additional after-school activity that we’ll end up running the kids to.

It’s a good thing we keep all of our family appointments in the Google calendar, otherwise we’d be completely lost. Each of us has our own calendar, plus a shared family calendar to keep things straight. I’ve even allocated scpecific time on my work calendar to make sure I’m not scheduling things during times I need to pick up Riley. Although, it would be handy if the scheduling system was somehow smart enough to know that I shouldn’t schedule a meeting that’s 45 minutes away to end right before I need to pick up a kid. Perhaps they’ll add this feature for beleaguered parents.