Natalie Ogbourne

With winter’s chill rolling off him as he and his siblings came in from the wintry night air, my son asked, “Can we have our friends over to play boot hockey?” Flanking him, his sisters, echoed the question silently with their eyes.

We live in Iowa, and of the ten years we’ve lived in a place with a pond nestled in the woods behind our house, three of them have granted us good ice. He’d dedicated himself to keeping the ice clear—shoveling after each snowfall so that it would be open to play with his sisters, with his dad, with his grandpa and his uncle. And now he wanted to invite his friends—their friends.

My default response is “no.” It’s easiest for me and probably expected by my family. Still, I considered our calendar, formulating my answer—and my defense—in my mind.

We were in what had come to be our family’s busiest season. The weekdays were packed and the weekends were worse. There was, I knew, one possibility. One. After play practice, a practice that involved all three kids, most of their friends, and me. That meant we’d all—the kids, their friends, and me—show up at the house right at lunch time, the kids starving and me empty-handed. And this—for me—was an actual problem.  {Read the rest at Kindred Mom}

Linking this post over at Lyli’s place.