Re-Entry Shock: Real Life Post Vacation
August 22, 2007 by kate baggott
Filed under Mommy Extras
To get the ball rolling on the Family Vacation Group Writing Project, I thought I should tell you about my summer holiday now that we’re back in Germany. We’ve been back for three days and the back to work transition has not been smooth. While we were in Bulgaria I started to move more slowly. It was essential to deal with the heat.
Upon re-entry to real life, I can’t remember how to move quickly enough to get everything done on time for Kindergarten, work and day care without any help of any kind. It also doesn’t help that the day after we returned, we were greeted by notices from the taxation office. Relaxation on the beach has become a distant memory.
When my daughter wakes me up with teething pain at 4:30 or 5:30 in the morning, that’s it for me. The stresses of planning the day have ended any potential for further sleep. So much for the benefits of a break.
The kids have had different responses.
My son was in a hurry to get back to kindergarten and back to his routine.
“I can have lunch there!” he said. He really missed the mini schnitzels they serve there while we were gone.
Our little girl, who has a shorter memory, is not as at home. She misses the village, or more accurately, the donkeys that are called Magarey in Bulgarian. She peers between the fence posts in our small town neighborhood as we walk down the street calling plaintively “‘Garey? ‘Garey!”
How little time we have together as a family in our day to day lives is newly shocking to me.
My husband came back from Bulgaria a little earlier than we did. He converted our car to run on liquid natural gas, he took a weekend to go visit some friends from university without us, but since our routines have resumed at full speed, we haven’t seen enough of each other to really check in.
I know it has only been three days, but there is no way life could have been like this pre-vacation. I didn’t feel like this before we left…Could it be that we really live only while we’re away from it all? Can it be that I have to live on memories of my family until we take another break?
How did you spend your summer vacation?
Sounds like you are truely blessed with a great summer. Enjoy the memories and be glad you can give that to your kids. I don’t have that and truely desire to give that to our kids.
Besides, think about it this way, a busy life means that your kids are healthy, happy, and content to live their lives in the manner that you have blessed them. Take it from me, I am very glad to have to get up in the middle of thenight to go to Little Man’s room to get a diaper to change him since it means we are not in the hospital any more. ALthough, I do miss that all elusive sleep of more than 2 hours.
Enjoy your kids’ crazy schedule. I am as much as a sleep deprived mommy can enjoy anything. We actually got back to church last night and it felt good.