Weeks 5 & 6 (or 7, or … Who knows? Help!):
Grocery List:
- Ingredients for another baking project (Why did I do the first one!?!)
- SNACKS
- Trough for snacks
Activity List:
- Nothing is good enough after a week of pony rides and chasing chickens at their grandparents’ house.
Chore List:
- Periodically scan rooms with a disgusted look on my face.
- Accidentally sit in syrup that was spilled on the couch.
- Rage clean.
- Repeat.
Summer Goals:
- Survive.
I can’t believe we are at the midpoint of our summer! As I had hoped, the vacation was a welcome break from the summer doldrums. My in-laws live on a large piece of property and have neighbors with all sorts of animals. My girls loved it, and I enjoyed watching other people tend to their demands. But like most changes in schedule, three tiny monsters (and maybe one adult monster) were created. How can I compete with two-dessert days, pony rides, and untethered iPad usage? They are bored with everything now. And I’m spoiled, because I got to sleep in everyday. There aren’t any grandparents here to wake up at 6 A.M. and toast my kids’ waffles. What are we going to do!?!
I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to let their summertime imaginations flourish. Isn’t that, like, a thing now? I feel like I see articles pop up daily on my news feed about how kids these days don’t have enough unorganized play. So, this is perfect. No planned activities leaves more opportunities to create their own fun and come together as a team. I mean, just the other day, they created a game together. I overheard them working out the logistics. Someone would do something to annoy me and get scored based on my reaction. See? Flourishing imaginations and teamwork. It’s working already.
And speaking of flourishing, we actually BAKED CUPCAKES! It went a little bit like this. “I want to do it! I can’t do it! But I want to do it!” and so on until we were all crying. I was able to post pictures of happy children decorating cupcakes on Facebook, so I successfully proved to everyone that I am not crazy for voluntarily staying home with my kids all summer. I mean, look at those smiling faces. I am super mom. I even weaned the whole house off of snoballs. Instead, I have started giving my kids popsicles in the bathtub. They are contained in a self-cleaning apparatus, and I can watch the whole thing in an air conditioned environment. I think I’ll just add the word “genius” to the end of that super mom title. Thank you very much.
So, you see, everything is great over here. My girls are happy (and hungry and bored), and I’m doing just fine (hiding in my cold, dark bedroom listening to what can only be described as a scene from Gremlins). We still have a month of memories to make, and I am totally fine. Great, even.
It’s all fine and great!
