Wondering about the great life decisions I made to get to this point? Check out the last Sweet Summer Funtimes update here.

Day 25 – One son was up at 5:00 in the morning moaning and sniffling because his nose was stuffed up. Yet for some reason he refused to blow his nose, preferring to act as some sort of horrific alarm clock of misery for the rest of us. When I finally marched in there and forced him to blow his nose, he was fine. Not stuffy at all. For the rest of a day he enjoyed and I stumbled through, bleary-eyed.

It was Reptile Day at my daughter’s camp. Reptile. Day. Seeing this on the calendar sent her into fits of apoplexy. She envisioned slo-mo attacks from prehistoric critters like camp was suddenly going to be gladiator situation. She did not have fun that day. I’m sure some kids did. Kind of kids whose parents let them have reptiles in the house as or dinner.

Day 26– This morning the weather was a balmy 60 degrees and raining. The boys insisted on wearing shorts to camp. I think it’s some sort of warm light/macho/Braveheart thing. I’m just not sure how it’s those things. Meanwhile, I’m in a sweater.

They’ve taken it upon themselves to practice the piano for over five hours a day on and off. When they’re not playing “Clocks”,

they’re trying to figure out pieces with the hunt-and-peck method, which I do not recommend to anybody who has an eardrum. Occasionally they take a break from banging on two different pianos of the house so they can play Rock Band. My children have many gifts, but the gifts of Rock Band mastery and tone accuracy are not among them. (Un)fortunately, the ability not to get bored singing “R-O-C-K in the U.S.A” 100 times in a row is one of them. I know some of you are saying “Encourage them! It’s wonderful! I have to force my children to practice piano.” To which I say, after much twitching, there has to be a middle ground. I think we’re fighting on the same side this war. It’s a War on Sanity.

Day 27 – Camp drop-off can be a shit show. No matter how early we all get up, for some reason, it’s a race out the door. Once at the various camp drop-off points, it’s a demolition derby, aided and abetted by strollers 2 or 3 across (two separate moms), and dogs, and the crying kids, and the campers who all crowd the sidewalk, making my hasty escape rather difficult.

It’s ok, though. I’m perfectly delightful because of all that. Like, camp drop-off delightful.

Day 28 –  Took the youngest to gymnastics. We continued her classes to keep her skills up because God forbid she loses all momentum on her falling down every three seconds into a foam pit. I sit for an hour in a loud, smelly, hot gym and watch my daughter making sure I’m watching her every move. I made the mistake of looking down at some point because I thought perhaps I’d caught fire, and another kindly let me know that my daughter was trying to get my attention and didn’t she at least deserve that?

It’s like taking them to the pool without the trench foot.

Day 29 – No sleep because everyone in the house, including the dog, snores. I may have taken the kids swimming. I  don’t remember. Pretty sure they ate today because all over the house are wrappers from all the snacks I hid from them so I could eat them after bedtime.

Day 30 – no sleep again last night, mostly because I didn’t get any snacks yesterday. One child begged me to let him sleep in my bed insisting it would be “fun.” He sleeps like he lives – uneasily. Lots of tossing and turning. I honestly don’t know how dragging myself around but I’m feeling and looking and probably smell like a carcass at this point. Somehow my husband sleeps through it all. Fortunately, he took on the Costco responsibilities, because I’m pretty sure had I gone, the 20-pound container of peanut butter-filled pretzels would have seemed like a good idea.

Husband brought home a 5-pound bag of almonds wrapped in coconut, bathed in chocolate. He is a good and wise man.

Day 31 – Kids. They can’t just take the easily-accessed strawberries and wash them themselves. They prefer the strawberries to be decapitated and sliced and cored and butterflied or julienned or something that good parents probably do.

They’re not suffering, though. Today I went into the random kitchen appliance drawer, the one with all the measuring cups and potato peelers and the stuff I use once a year. I saw the ice cream scoop. Now, I don’t usually bother with the ice cream scoop, because (a) they don’t work that well and (b) I usually just eat it out a pint anyway. If I’m putting things in bowls because I’m feeding the children and I don’t want them to think that it’s appropriate to eat out of the pint. So, long story short, the ice cream scoop is more a placeholder, if you will. Something people have in their random appliance drawer and something non-heathens probably use. But there it lay, that scoop. And it was filthy. With ice cream. Melted chocolate to be exact. Probably Ben & Jerry’s. One of my kids tried to use the ice cream scoop to get him/herself ice cream, then in an effort to “clean up” and/or hide the evidence, put the scoop back in the drawer. The kicker is that the drawer is literally just a half spin away from the dishwasher, and I’m so tired these days if I’d noticed it at all, I just would have assumed I’d gone classy for awhile and didn’t remember. Anyway, cleaned out that whole drawer. All members of the house deny doing it.

Day 32 – July 4^th, the original Brexit. If the amount of neck-dirt, chocolate on their faces (despite not eating any chocolate), and ability to narrate 32 minutes of fireworks nonstop is any measure, it was a success from which we may never quite recover.