Fast and Slow Summer Days
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 other babies. Due to a scheduling snafu, my husband has a doctor’s appointment at the same time, so I have to drag my older kids along. The promise of sidewalk chalk and the Nintendo 3DS has helped.
Somehow into the day, I also need to squeeze in grocery shopping and having the two older kids make Father’s Day cards. There is also some yard work to do and I’d like to paint my toes.
So yes, love-hate relationship with summer.
I thought that I would have some time alone this morning. The baby woke up at 5:50 am. As per usual, I grabbed my laptop with the intent of writing while feeding her breakfast. That plan dissipated when the 6-year-old appeared, informing me that the cat was drinking the water on his bedside table.
In between shoving banana in the baby’s mouth, supervising the consumption of toaster waffles, and insisting that the kids clean their shared room, I managed to write this. A tribute to the cycle of summer, which thankfully has a designated end point.
Now the 6-year-old is crying for some unknown reason and the baby just threw her sippy cup on the ground in announcement that she is done with breakfast. That is my cue that writing time is over.