Everyone promises that once we have a “schedule” all will fall into place.

It sounds so nice:
8-10:we play
10-2: we nap
2-5: we do an outing
5-7: we play and eat
7-8: we get ready for bed
8-8: we sleep.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

The reality is often much blurrier:
8-12: scurry about, run to the gym, cry, attempt to not watch television
12-3 or 4: we nap some days, while others we chat in our cribs or cry
4-5:mommy feels like pulling out her hair and starts counting the minutes until Daddy comes home
5-8: counting the minutes until bed
8-8: toddler asleep; infant sometimes asleep, sometimes screaming or eating

I have come to the conclusion that, at least in my house, scheduling is a myth along the same lines as sightings of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster—super cool in theory, but in practice, probably just a man in a yak suit.

Wouldn’t it be nice to just abandon the myth? Let it go? Every time someone alludes to their schedule--“I would die without it,” my cousin says—I want to ask: How do I get one of those? Can I use my Target gift card to buy one?

My cousin is the mother of two kids 20-months apart who also manages to send holiday cards (I don’t), remember birthdays (not I) and get a hot meal on the table each night while her husband works 24 hour shifts at the hospital where he is training to be a surgeon.

I must be some kind of defunct Mama that I can’t do the same. But the reality is, most parents say their kids were not on anything resembling a schedule for at least the first year.

I also tell myself that one day even we will have a schedule. When the kids are five and six they will have school and I will have my freedom back. But until that day, I am embracing the chaos that arrives each morning at 8—right on schedule.