I am a summer gal, y’all.
Maybe it was growing up in the relentless Louisiana heat that forced me into such a love affair. I need the sun. The shorts and tanks and late sunsets. The pretty, brightly painted toenails in carefree sandals. I’m the no school, spend the day at the pool, gimme the sunscreen smell, sunshine lovin’ fool. I’ve wanted to be a mermaid since before mermaids were cool. I love every aspect of it every year. I need the sun on my skin to feel complete and balanced.
I had big dreams of being a stay at home mom and raising my kids outside and having zoo field trips and hiking adventures and swamp tours and outside play dates with popsicles and swimsuits and fill our days with all the sprinklers and water balloons and snowballs and all the other fun “summer only” things. #pinterestmomwinning
And then I had kids.
I’ve never been more ready for summer to be over than I am right now. My boys are 4 years old and 1.5 years old. They LOVE the outdoors. They love swimming and catching frogs and watching the lightning bugs. They do not love the constant sweating. I do not love the constant whining. While they do love being in a pool or splash pad, they don’t necessarily love the sunscreen rub down or the drive to get to and from said water source.
We’re outside for 7 whole minutes before their cheeks are flushed red and there’s sweat running down their little foreheads. Heat advisories ALL SUMMER LONG have forced me to reconsider how much outside time we get because I definitely don’t want either of them (or myself) suffering a heat stroke and I can’t seem to keep their cups full of water even indoors.
Oh, a cool front came through! Great! Let’s do a field trip because the high is *only* 93 degrees today (as opposed to the 97 degree high for the past 15 days). Cool. (See what I did there?) I choose Brec’s Baton Rouge Zoo because it’s kind of a decent amount of shade and doesn’t require sunscreen for the eczema baby. Pack the cups and the snacks and the battery-powered fan to clip to the stroller (that will only swirl hot, humid air around), and the diaper bag and water for myself. I can’t even get everything unloaded out of the car before everybody is MIS.ER.ABLE. They’re whining and they’re “so so thirsty” and now one needs to potty and the other one needs a clean diaper and EVERYBODY’s CLOTHES ARE SOAKING WET FROM SWEATING. We’ve only been outside long enough to get to the entrance of the zoo y’all. Abort mission. Go home and rent another Disney flick on Prime and hope the popcorn and cheese sticks and CENTRAL AIR CONDITIONING helps them forget about the #almostadventure.
Disclaimer: this happened only hypothetically in my head, but I have a pretty accurate imagination. Except for the part about renting another movie from Prime, that really did happen.
I need this torture to be over. They are not immune, they have not built up a tolerance, they’re susceptible and fragile. The plague of summer needs to end yesterdayyy.
Summer time was MY time, before kiddos. I was the first one out and last one in at the pool or the beach or whatever outside adventure I was on. That was in another lifetime. One day, Summer, I’ll be back for you. I’ll be back for a full day of sweating it out to gain that sting on my skin and my vitamin D consumption being at its all time high for everything in me to feel jussstttt right again. I’ll settle for amazing, early morning sunrises for now. Summer, keep sizzlin on, you relentless, humid beast.
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