School/Summer

Okay, peeps.

I know so many people across the country are wrapping up school, Memorial Day is this weekend, signaling the unofficial start of the summer, and it is dang near impossible to keep our eye on the prize and power through this final 10 days of our academic year before we can stop zooming and dealing with required assignments.

On top of all that, we seem to have officially flipped the weather switch and gone from relatively okay to heinous Texas summer. Oye. So, basically, our cherished afternoon bike riding time has become pretty miserable due to complainy pants children.

So...this has been us a li’l bit this week when we’re stuck without an outdoors outlet:

Transitions, my peeps. Life is full of them.

So.

What to do, what to do? 

Let’s start with the complication of getting our outdoor fun on, despite the heat. We shall now be setting off on our biking adventures early in the morning. Or we won’t be doing them at all. And, instead, we shall SWIM. Problem solved.

Next up: school. And wrapping it up.

I am soooooo grateful to have made it through these past 10-12 weeks without too much angst on the distance learning front. In fact, in our household it has been quite the opposite. 

I know some parents might want to throttle me a li’l bit for admitting this, but we have kinda sorta thrived during these past months.

Our routine has been fully in place since Week 1, the expected nature of it all has cut the kiddos’ whining down by quite a bit because they know what we’re doing, during every part of the day, and—this is the most major bit of all—the kiddos have been playing with one another so much more than ever before. 

(*Pause for grateful weeping.)

So...some perspective on this front: at this time last year, I was kind of pulling my hair out quite a bit for a solid 6-9 month period. The kiddos were in a phase (particularly Chica and Little Man) where they just wanted ME to be the one to play with them, all the time, allthetime.

And full disclosure: I’m a super active, involved parent, but nobody—and I mean, NOBODY—can be on call to play with their beloved little ones, 24/7. Nor would it necessarily be healthy for promoting independent play.

It led to me feeling guilty every, single time I had to tell them no for whatever reason (I was cooking, folding laundry, too tired, dealing with another sibling, and on and on and on), and it was just a vicious cycle of feeling like I was constantly coming up short. When, in actuality, I was spending oodles of quality time with them, but just not every waking second at their beck and call for imaginary games of their particular choosing.

It was a rough, rough phase. Probably one of my toughest, to be honest. And I even posted about the depth and breadth of it, here (around the holidays, after I’d already lived through many months of it):

http://delappenings.blogspot.com/2020/01/playingto-your-strengths.html?m=0

But.

I’m freaking ridiculously excited (and sort of nervous, in case I jinx it) to admit that, holy cow, what a difference half a year makes!

And I 100% believe that it’s a combination of the kiddos aging a bit, plus these unique, pandemic circumstances. Plain and simple.

For example, over the past few months, my three crazies have been conditioned, schedule-wise, to know that after breakfast, they all have to head upstairs and play, play, play.

Go nuts, make a ton of messes (and holy goodness, do they), get out every single toy they own, and just SELF ENTERTAIN. Without fighting (well, without fighting too much or too loudly), until they’re individually called downstairs to me for their one-on-one school time.

So whatever combination of kiddos is upstairs while someone is downstairs, or if all three are up there while I’m preparing school work or dealing with other to-do items, they just play and deal.

And, yeah, sure, they come downstairs with complaints and problems and requests all the time, but most days, they can go a decent chunk of time without interrupting.

And it is the ONLY WAY we have been able to manage home education while maintaining our sanity.

Seriously.

But the beautiful bi-product of all of this is that they have become so much more resourceful and imaginative both individually and with one another. And I could not be more grateful.

Yesterday, I literally texted the hubby in the afternoon: “I don’t know what’s happening. Pod people have taken over our children. They’ve been playing too happily for too long. I’m scared.”

No joke. Verbatim, what I texted him.

And it turns out—when they hollered for me to see their discovery—they’d been fashioning their own telescopes our of paper and tape, and playing investigator out the window...

And what did they find???

Two deer, just boldly grazing in the lower part of our backyard.



It was so exciting, and stinking adorable.

Then today, it was a giant bug on the window that had them all crazy and excited.

We’ve now seen all sorts of birds, bugs, geckos, our two deer friends, and last week, the most magnificent fox friend, prowling around our pool. I mean, talk about fun and resourceful entertainment. 

These are the moments I will remember months from now.

So, though we may be dreading the heat and missing some of our bike rides, we’re so excited about the swimming.

And though we may be counting down the days until we can be DONE with official school so we don’t have to be held accountable to anyone other than ourselves, not much will change around our house. We just get a pass on turning things in to a teacher, or completing busy work we don’t really need.

We’ll be sticking to our schedule of math and literacy work each morning, unless we, inevitably have days were we just don’t wanna.

Because my babies are happy and thriving at the moment. And I just don’t want to rock the boat!



So...here’s to the looking transition of late spring becoming early summer.

Here’s to the stuff we can take off our plate.

And here’s to the stuff we can keep.

So we can all stay exhausted but happy.

Over and out.