Sweet Summertime.
The days of no routines, a lack of rules, not caring (too much) about bedtimes. The weather is nice. A time when you don’t worry (too much) when the last time your kid bathed or if they have ice cream for dinner (at least you won’t have to cook). Life is just easy breezy.
You’re enjoying life in the sun, spending time with your precious angels as much as you can. Taking those perfect, happy, smiling, Instagram worthy pictures. But then you hit about mid Summer and now you’re thinking ‘who are these little monsters and when the hell do they go back to school?!’
You are all sick of each other. The fighting is constant, the whining is non-stop. They are eating you out of house and home, and they are STILL hungry and STILL complaining there is nothing to eat in the house when the damn pantry is bursting at the seams. And they are bored, even after you’ve paid thousands of dollars to send them to camp all day. They are bored…
Now you realize how insanely underpaid teachers are…
And pretty soon you have to start trying to reel everyone back in and get them back on some kind of schedule in preparation for back to school and all that does is start battles of ‘this isn’t fair’ or ‘it’s still Summer, you’re the worst.’
Right about now you are just counting down the seconds and pouring yourself a big glass (or two) of something.
And then it comes…the last week of Summer! It is finally here! You made it. You all made it. But wait…shit. Now you have to go back to dealing with early morning alarm clocks, the fighting to get them out of bed (how many times do your kids ask for ‘just 5 more minutes?!’), the figuring out the outfits, getting breakfast for everyone, packing the lunches, making sure everything is in their backpacks and everyone is out the door before they miss the bus. The fights to get homework done. The nightly showers. The earlier bedtimes. It’s like the movie Groundhog Day. Only we aren’t getting paid Bill Murray’s salary (or if you are, hook a sister up). We are paid in quick hugs hello (as long as no one is watching), extremely vague run downs of their days (‘we did nothing, I learned nothing, it was boring’) and them just wanting to know what’s for dinner (which they will naturally be pissed about). But would any of us change it?
I mean sure, we may lie and say we have to run to the pharmacy for female products just to get away (this serves more than one purpose). We may take a tad bit longer at the grocery store just for a few extra minutes of quiet time down the chip aisle. But we love our kids (most of the time). I’d do anything for them. But also, at times, I’d do anything for a little bit of peace.
Parenting…it’s a fickle bitch.
