Friday eve.
It’s almost the weekend. You can see it, practically taste it.
But first, Thursday.
For reasons that don’t always make sense to me, Thursday is the toughest day of the week in our house. Nine out of ten Thursdays come with some kind of exhaustion-fueled meltdown. Most of the time, those meltdowns belong to one or more of my three kids, but honestly, sometimes Thursdays get me too.
By the time Thursday rolls around, the week has already done its thing. The lunches have been packed and repacked many times. We’ve had early mornings and late nights with sports practices, school activities, and community commitments.
Monday, we felt ambitious. Tuesday was productive. Wednesday was a true hump day, halfway there. By the time Thursday evening rolls around, we realize we are cooked!
Thursday is when everyone’s patience seems to run thin. Homework will indeed feel hardest on Thursdays. No one will know what they want to eat, but they will be starving and then crying because they can’t actually pick a snack. My motivation to cook a homemade dinner will be minimal.
I think Thursday is hard because we have already used up our best energy on the early parts of the week.
We’ve shown up to our many commitments, powered through, and given our best. But the finish line of the week is so close that it almost makes it feel worse. We’re not quite at the relief of the weekend, but we are running on hopes and dreams to make it to Friday afternoon.
Thursdays are usually good for random tears for no reason, food refusal from my amazingly good eaters, and heading to bed early because we are just done. I have learned to try to give as much grace as possible on Thursdays. We do something easy for dinner, usually breakfast food, say yes more often than other days of the week, and try to make it smoothly to bedtime, and the grand finale – Friday!
Thankfully, Thursday ends. Friday comes, and the energy in the house shifts. Everyone has a renewed ability to make it to the weekend, and the pressure from the week is released from all of us. Thursday brings more noise, more mess, and far more emotions in our house. But once the day passes, the weight is lifted, and we are on smooth sailing into the weekend.
