When my oldest was born it almost seemed as if time was standing still. She was never a good sleeper and is just now at 5 years old consistently sleeping peacefully through the night. Those long nights of getting sleep in 2-3 hour blocks seem to last a lifetime. It felt like she was an infant forever. Then baby #2 came along. A great sleeper! His first few years seemed to fly by.
Now my oldest is registered for kindergarten and my youngest will be attending preschool 2 days a week. How in the world did we get here? I remember the days of longing for things to do with the 2 of them. Going to the playground, my youngest in the Baby Bjorn while my oldest traversed the playground with her friends. Summers ran into fall, winter and spring. The only thing changing was the weather. There was no real crunch for time. Vacations were scheduled when we felt like the crowds would be low, weather at home miserable and when my husband could get away from work.
All of that is about to change. We will soon be shuttling one child to kindergarten, scurrying across town to drop off the other. Slaves to the school schedule. Homework, all of the homework. Vacations will be dictated by when the best time it is for the kids to get away. Add on top of that any extra curricular activities the children might want to do. Gymnastics, soccer, music, golf, the list goes on. Our days will be busy. Very busy.
As I was thinking about our plans for the upcoming summer I suddenly became a little sad over the fact that Kindergarten would start around the second week of August. Both kids want to take swim lessons (those are two week blocks everyday).What in the world are we going to do the rest of the summer? Nothing. And I think that's the way I want it.
Before I know it both of the kids will be in elementary school. Summers will soon be filled with summer camp, going to friends houses to play, sports camps. Those days will quickly turn into the years my kids spend their summers babysitting, mowing lawns or having a paper route to earn a little money, riding their bikes through the neighborhood with their "gang" of friends. Those days will morph into "real" summer jobs, first cars, going out in the evenings with friends. Before I know it they will ONLY be home in the summer. Off to college, working full time all day and then meeting up with friends for parties, concerts and fun at night. Their only existence in our house will be to sleep and if not for the extra dirty dishes you probably wouldn't even know they were here.
So THIS is the summer that we will blissfully do absolutely nothing. We will spend our days playing in our pool and hanging out in our backyard. Eating ice cream for dinner and staying up way too late to play outside. Climbing up the slide on the backyard play set. Lying on our backs in the cool summer grass to watch the clouds, letting sticky Popsicle's drip down their legs all over the patio, leaving red and purple puddles for ants to find that we can watch "work". We will spend our days blowing bubbles and watching them float over the fence to the neighbors yard seeing which one makes it the farthest. Setting up the sprinkler over the slide to make our homemade water park. Picking dandelions and letting them wilt in a plastic cup on the kitchen counter.
I plan to cherish every moment of the squeals of delight as they jump through the sprinklers, the smell of sunscreen on their skin and when my youngest tries to run away from me when I go to spray it on him. We will wake up most days with no plan. No time schedule. No where to go, no place to be. I want my kids to become bored. To try and find something to do with a box of scrap paper, crayons, glue and leftover scraps of material. To use their imaginations to create something wonderful.
I want to remember this day, this time, this summer. Because as every parent knows tomorrow they will be a little bit older...
