The logistics of family life

Lately, my greatest challenges have been in the arena of family logistics.

Dictionary.com (my favorite dictionary, because I don’t have to spend time finding the dead tree version which I am absolutely positive is somewhere in my office) defines logistics as: The planning, implementation, and coordination of the details of a business or other operation.

Since my wife recently took a full-time job in addition to her part-time job, family logistics have leaped to the forefront of our concern.

What was once relatively simple is now… not so simple.

I used to basically do the same thing every day: Wake up, go to work, work, go home, go to sleep.

Now, there are a whole lot of extra steps.

Wake up, figure out who’s doing what, find out I’m taking the kids to places they need to go this morning, wake up kids, change diaper, make bottle, get girl dressed, get all the backpacks, lunchboxes and other accessories together, get children loaded in vehicle with all their accessories and all my accessories, deliver smallest child to grandparents’ house, deliver largest child to nursery school and then, and only then, go to work.

And that’s all just by 8:30 a.m.

Which wouldn’t be so bad, but there is not really much predicting what sequence of events will happen from day to day.

It gets even worse when it comes to vehicles.

We have two vehicles, but only one of these can carry both children because we only have one child seat per child.

The smaller vehicle can carry the larger child, but only if it is just the larger child and the larger child’s child seat must be moved to the smaller vehicle.

If both children must be carried in one vehicle, it must be the larger vehicle because the smaller child’s seat requires hours to move from one vehicle to another.

Can you see how this can lead to confusion?

There are a lot of details to remember, and if you drop one, the results could be catastrophic.

I have left lunchboxes behind, laptop computers, camera bags, etc. but I have not yet left a child behind.

Not yet, but I am starting to appreciate how it could happen.

There are a lot of days, when I’m not sure which vehicle I’ll be driving, and if you keep things in the car, like I do sometimes, this can lead to problems and confusion.

Some days I’ll be the kids’ driver in the mornings, but in the afternoon, my wife will take on that job and so we’ll have to do the "vehicle swap."

Have you heard about the "vehicle swap?"

I’ll drive through the parking lot looking for the car my wife drove to work so I can replace it with the one I’m driving – it gets confusing and complicated. Thank heavens we have cell-phones, I honestly don’t know how we’d manage to coordinate everything without them.

Maybe we need to invest in a second set of child seats — this might gives us a little more flexibility in vehicular logistics. The problem is that they are pretty expensive and they get outgrown relatively quickly and like new cars, their value depreciates dramatically after a few peanut butter and jam mishaps, juice box spills and cheesy poof slip-ups.

And then there are the times when one of the vehicles has to go in the shop.

Then we’re on to a whole different plan under those circumstances.

And then there are times when a child has to go to the doctor…

And then there are other times and other circumstances. Lots and lots of different and greatly unpredictable circumstances.

Now I’m starting to appreciate how good I had it when I was a bachelor.

Talk about simplicity at its finest.

I now understand how I was able to spend so much time reading books, watching movies, hunting, listening to music, etc.

At the time, I didn’t realize it, but back then I had what is known as "free time" a commodity that every parent remembers and appreciates for its scarcity and precious rarity.

Now I’m starting to really appreciate how hard it was for my Mom and Dad.

They had two boys, two full time jobs, a working ranch with cattle (which is like at least an extra two full time jobs), they lived 40 miles from where they worked and 100 miles from the nearest set of grandparents…

When I think of that, the logistical challenges my wife and I are facing really don’t seem all that challenging after all.