As with any busy family with more than a couple of people in the house, we find our free time increasingly under pressure. Weekday evenings are the main battlefield, with smoking craters where blocks of free time used to be. This is only getting worse of course as the kids get older.

There are riding lessons for Jordy, usually swimming lessons for all three, sometimes karate for the boys (usually not in the evening so far), and then the far more mundane tasks like groceries, housework, laundry (for Nikki, she won’t let me do it anymore because I fail to obey the rules), showers for the kids, homework etc. Where you used to count on relaxing after a day’s work (this is where Nikki laughs at me) now is a sprint from 5:30pm to 9:30pm when Nik and I slump down for the first time on the couch and look at each other in a daze. It makes me cry to think about how bad it could get when the boys hit grade 5, 6, 7. There could (will) be a lot more sports, more visits to friend’s houses, more homework for sure, basically more everything, except free time. The weekends are no better, because that’s when Nikki and I try to see our own friends and still get our long term house projects done. Even so, we feel like we aren’t really getting much productive work “done”. That’s plainly ridiculous, but there you go.

Time is one of our most precious resources at the moment.

I’m sure there will be a time when Nikki and I will look at each other and say “I’m bored” simultaneously, but I can’t imagine it at the moment. It definitely makes me wonder what the heck I did all day long before I was married with kids. What a slacker I was. 🙂