and I don't care, because I love summer.
I first wrote this post in longhand, sitting at a friend’s swimming pool drinking beer and watching the kids play at six o’clock on a Sunday night. I could never do that on a school night – there’d be lunch to pack, last minute school work to get done, Diva would have to take a shower and get to bed…dude, I love summer.
If you’re a stay at home mom, maybe you dread it; most of the SAHMs I know do (full disclosure: I’m jealous as hell of SAHMs.) SAHMs suddenly have kids in the house and under foot unless they schedule activities, and then they spend all day ferrying the kids from one place to another. My hyper-organized sister does not enjoy summer break.
Ah, but summer is as much a vacation for us working mommies as it is for the kids, even if we do still have to get up and go to work every day. No homework! (In what grade will Diva start doing her homework unprompted and unassisted? Can anyone give me a rough estimate?) No schedules! Late bedtimes!
I don’t have it that bad; I only work part time. But even just working six hours a day, I have to maintain a tight schedule. Diva has about an hour’s work of homework every night, which takes her between three and four hours to complete, because The World’s Slowest Toddler has grown into The World’s Slowest Second Grader. Plus there’s martial arts twice a week, and I need to work out a few times a week, and I try to cook dinner once in a while, and Diva needs to be in bed by 8:30, and I need to write, and somehow we seem to go from 3:00 to 8:30 in about two hours.
But in the summer, I blow off the bedtime. Diva’s signed up for eight weeks of different day camps, and some grandma time, and a week at my sister’s, and if she goes sleepy a few days a week, what’s the harm? The hours I normally spend haranguing about homework can be spent writing. We eat supper later, we swim at the Y till 9:30, and I don’t yell quite so much. It's a beautiful thing.
I'll be singing a different tune come Labor Day, which in other parts of the country signals the approach of fall but here in Houston means we still have two months of soul-sucking sauna-like conditions ahead of us. But for now...
Happy summer!
Oooh, I am all about the summer, too! And as our summer last year in the Midwest sucked (cold, rainy, ugh!), I say bring on the heat this year!
ReplyDeleteAnd as a teacher, summer vacation still generates all the excitement it used to when I was a kid!
Bring it on!
Oh, hell, yeah. I'm all for Summer. I was a SAHM. but even so, I could never wait for Summer to get here. It was as much a vacation for me as it was for the kids. I liked having them home more and I LOVED not having to keep track of everyone’s schedule, planning lunches the night before,making sure clothes were clean and homework was done and baths were taken and no one was overtired.
ReplyDeleteBut as for the “unprompted, unassisted” homework? I have no words of advice. Good luck with that one. Erk.
I love summer too, but I've gotta say I love it more here in Colorado than when I lived in South Texas. Something about those ninety-degree-plus days with humidity in the stratosphere that just sucks the energy right out of you!
ReplyDeleteI'm totally with you on this Kinsey! As a working mom, I love summer and no schedules and deadlines, no lunches to pack, no homework to harass kids about (ditto what PG said, good luck with that!). Even though I have to go to work (though I have 4 weeks off this summer!) it's still like a holiday from all that other stuff.
ReplyDeleteDitto to all of it!!
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, more writing time because the kids are out playing while I sit on the patio with my feet up. What is it about being able to be outside that makes them more creative and less in need of my attention and input?! :)
Erin
I'm loving this week because Diva's at the Houston Zoo and the earliest I can drop her off is 8:45. My normal work day starts at 8:30, so I pushed it back a bit, and we've gained 30 minutes in the morning. Amazing what a difference 30 minutes makes.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could visit the blog during the day, but I can't - I'm at work, and I just don't feel comfortable doing it, and especially not commenting from work. So I'm always hours behind you guys and I usually don't bother commenting cause I figure everyone's moved on...