Fast and Slow Summer Days
I have a love-hate relationship with summer.
I have a love-hate relationship with summer. I love doing outdoor activities with my family, and sitting in my backyard, and summer food. I hate feeling overbooked without any downtime, overtired kids, and mosquitoes.
The thing is, my kids aren’t even enrolled in a lot of “stuff.” They go to camp every day while my husband and I work, but the hours almost identically coincide with their school day. I enroll them in swimming lessons, because that’s a necessary life skill, but it is one half-hour lesson per week. That’s it. We’ve tried soccer and taekwondo and the kids aren’t interested. Fine by me — I’d rather have fewer things on the calendar anyway.
Last night, I sat out on the deck in my backyard for about an hour, alone. We have a pond with a waterfall. The trees are so lush with summer leaves that I can barely see the neighboring houses of our Chicagoland home. It feels more like the country life where I grew up than suburbia.
But whatever we lack in scheduled activities, we make up for in other outings on the calendar. Today, I am taking my older kids and meeting a friend to see “The Incredibles 2” (and a cold movie theater sounds amazing on a day that is predicted to be 93 degrees). Then in the afternoon, I am taking my baby to a play date with…
