Adapting

Not only is my employment life changing at some point in this month,  (our site will be owned by a new company by month's end)  but for the past 2 weeks Kirsty has been working from 3 to 7:30 in our clubhouse.  She is covering the shift usually worked by our clubhouse director. (that spectacularly lucky woman is visiting with family in the Caribbean.  I am insanely jealous. LOL) 

What that has meant is that our usual family routine has been upended more or less the past couple of weeks.  The first week I had a bit of time off so it was less noticable.  The kids only had to spend time at the clubhouse on two days. This week it will have been 4 days. 

It is not a long time.  I leave work at 4.  But it is a change.  And of course it isn't the only change, because we all come home and Mom stays there.  We are a family who almost never have a meal with someone missing.  So this too feels odd to us.  She is not here when the littles go to bed.  This felt weird to both of them.  Lissa adapted more readily.  KC spent a few nights trying to stay up.  Spent a night in my bed because he made himself all anxious and unhappy at his bed time.  By now, with only a day of this left, they are pretty well used to things.

In the grand scheme of things, none of this was calamitous, or even particularly difficult.  K and I are both good planners. She has had supper together and in a crock pot or on the back of the stove, every single night. So we have eaten at almost the exactly same time despite this shift.  But the fact that the kids did have a bit of a challenge with all this points out the obvious.  Yes, kids are resilient.  By week 2 they had pretty much embraced the new normal for us.  But they had issues adjusting.  How much harder would it have been if the situation was more earth shaking?  That is why after 9 years one of my children still has some issues that pop up.  He's been through earth shaking changes and a small bit of him is always waiting for something big on the Richter scale of life to happen again.