When I say I need a break, this isn't what I mean.

Those of you who know us know this last week has been a bit difficult.
One week ago today our older daughter broke her left radius.  She had a minor disagreement with a scooter about which direction they should head in.  As of today, she has the purple fiberglass badge of honor.
Not to be outdone by his sister, her frenemy one grade above her busted his right arm in football practice on Tuesday.  Just like any other male, he had to injured worse...so that led to a surgery to put three pins in his elbow and two nights in the hospital.  She missed one day of school.  He's missing a week.
Thus our fall schedule suddenly has cleared up quite a bit.  Now we have a lot more single driver nights, and our weekends pretty much open.  Especially since the other middle boy decided to drop cross country, realizing running three hours plus a week was a bit much on top of his six hours a week of ballet, finding time to practice his cello, and his three "advanced" classes.  It seems all of them have had stark reminders of their mere mortalness recently.

What has come out of this is seeing how our oldest son has matured.  We can trust him to make a meal for his siblings if we're tied up.  We can trust him with checking homework and bedtime stories.  We haven't had to nag him (too much) about his own homework.  He's even gotten up early to take the bus to school because he knew we were in up to our limit.  He pulled his weight as a full fledged member of the team.
No, it's not a permanent thing.  He's still a kid, and will be allowed a breather now everything is sort-of-back to normal.  He still disappears to friends houses, wants to stay up all night playing on STEAM instead of planning school projects, and avoids "regular" chores like folding laundry and loading the dishwasher like the plague. These moments of amazing maturity are just those, moments....but I like what I see when I see these glimpses of the adult he is becoming.

The "babies" have survived..but are really glad to have mom back.  I suspect I won't have a moment alone for at least a week, but that's okay.  I wouldn't want it any other way.