Surviving Summer Fun Times YOU ARE NOT ALONE

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

This week’s tired analogy: Summer is Groundhog Day. (The movie, not the holiday, although I’m not counting out that soon I will have reason to write that summer is like the holiday.) Repeatedly making sure everyone gets to their fun activities, making sure the house is still functioning and everybody is fed, things are taking care of. You know, the adult stuff, the stuff that reminds you that in large part, summer just isn’t the same as an adult. So, in an effort to prepare my children for adulthood, every day I ~~yell~~ say forcefully, “Pay attention and enjoy it while it lasts, kids, because when you’re my age in a million years, you still have responsibilities and you can’t do them with chocolate ice cream smeared all over your face!”

It is also like Groundhog Day because my son and daughter talk Minecraft nonstop. I’m convinced they’re just saying the same thing over and over again. Crafting, Redstone, Blocks, Building, Zombies, Rabbits. I don’t know what they talking about, but I can leave the room while they are mid-sentence and come back three hours later and they’re still talking about this game, probably still in the same sentence they were on when I left. They insist they are making progress or leveling up or winning or whatever indicates that the game actually has a point.

Craaaaaaamps. How much time do you really make your kids wait between eating and swimming. Asking for me. I don’t worry as much about them cramping up (because they do have just enough sense to stop swimming for that) as I do them spitting up (which is something by which I will not abide if I can help it.)

My boys went to a birthday party this week. Birthdays are pure joy for kids, and I like when my kids can help celebrate with another child. The only snag is that it usually involves my wrapping presents. I’ve got some sort of wrapping curse, and I’m wary of gift bags mostly because I’ve heard parents complaining about them – they’re “cheap” and look like there’s “no effort” – which in my case is completely true. But I need the “no effort” because my effort at wrapping is “shitty” and “why bother.” And frankly, as I give humans enough reasons to complain about me, I don’t need to add to the list unnecessarily.

I used wrapping paper for the board game, only had kind we had the cheap kind of paper, not the cheapest but pretty cheap, it always feels a little… damp. So it’s hard to wrangle into place. The second gift was shaped like an extra-credit question on a geometry exam and I did not have a box to put it in, so I used a gift bag. I tried to make up for that egregious misstep it by putting a shit ton (metric) of tissue paper in there. It looked okay actually. On the way there, the gift bag fell off the car seat and onto the floor upside down, spilling out gift and paper. So when we arrived at the party, I crammed it all back in and prayed for forgiveness.

It’s like the Pinterest gods mock me.

The kids watched Sunday Morning with us this week. Mostly they are entertained by the medicine commercials’ roving list of side effects, but occasionally the children are inspired. This week’s episode ran, or perhaps reran, a segment about children’s competitive cup stacking. And I groaned because I knew what was coming next: my kids dug out their cup stacking kit (that had remained dormant in their closet for months) and began cup stacking obsessively for hours. Sunday Morning made cup stacking even sexier to my kids when they implied that it helps with focus and it may help with math. I’d like to see the research on that. I do know that cup stacking does not help with mental health. Clack, clack, clack.

The kids are getting along so well that when one got a time out for reasons involving armpit farts and selective hearing, the other two children joined him and kept him company while he paid his debt to society. It warmed my heart a little bit, quelling the “I’m a bad parent because my kid is a maestro armpit farter” a tad.

And thus we survive and we laugh, despite a veritable flood all over town and in our backyard (we live in the flood plain) which has kept us from picnicking and playing baseball for a while.