Well the Dog Days of Summer are here. What am I saying. They've been here for 365 days a year. I live in summer all year. Yup. Sucks to be me huh? Yeah. Now that you're done screaming/rolling your eyes/trowing your mouse/cursing me lets get back to the fun.Okay so my boys need routine. Schedule. I hate it. Well that's what I used to say. But with Brenner I learned ... or eventually caved and admitted that Kemper was right and put him on a routine first and saw him just take off. Everything was so much more fun and easier. Then I did the dreaded schedule thing. I hated it at first and now love it. Beckett is a schedule baby too. Brian is for that matter too. I can tell what time of the day/night it is by what they're doing. For instance; the tired thing. Brenner gets louder and wilder to keep himself awake. He'll also suddenly start doing his and any one's chores to be so helpful you won't want to send him to bed. Actually it's almost 10 pm and I think I hear him cleaning the bathrooms. I can barely make it back out of the tub so I'll "let" that one slide. "just for tonight". ;) Beckett will start scratching the back of his head, his curls and looking from side to side. You've got about a 4
minute window here to get stuff ready before full on melt down and bodily injury will start. He'll get fully pissed that can't get to bed. But he'll never give up and fall asleep anywhere else. Wants the bed. Brian will start jiggling his knee and eating to stay awake. But if he sits. He's toast. He can and will fall asleep anywhere he sits. My favorite is when he asks me a question at the dinner table and is listening and I can see the glaze come in and the eyelids close and he's out. Still sitting up and kids all over. Also at night talking. He'll do the same thing. Come to think of it. Mostly it's my voice that'll put him right out. Now I thought I had an annoying and whiny voice. Must be either really soothing to him because he just loves me so much and I fulfill his heart or it's about the same as all the crazy languages he has to deal with at work. Whatever. I love the man and he works too hard.Okay so back to my point. It's summer time right and schools out and all the fun of living on an undeserted island should have some perks right? Well they do. So I decided to make a goal and do it for the summer. I told Kemper so it would have to stick. I was going to make more home made meals. Cook from scratch. Try new recipes all the time. Freshen up things and clean all the time. Sit down and play with the boys more. I was going to be care free and go with the flow and do all kinds of fun and wild things. I wasn't going to not do things because of nap times and dinner times and bed times and activity times. I was going to go to the beach. I hate the beach. Because it all comes home with you. It's everywhere for days. It ruins your washing machine. Causes diaper rash from the outside and from the eating of it from the inside. It stays in your hair for three days. It's all over the floor. Beckett hates to be wet or sticky. That's the beach (sunblock) and ocean for ya. But I was going to do it. I've given way to just "seeing how things go". It has afforded us to do some really fun things this summer. And I'd like to tell you it wasn't so bad and we all had fun and it'll be the new me. but I can't because I would be a LIAR!!! It sucks. It's hard and I can't wait for school to start so I can go back to who I was and have my little house the way I want it. I mean some of the stuff I'll do but I really really like having the boys in bed and asleep by 7:30 EVERY night. I do chores for 30 minutes and then clock out. LOVE the clocking out part.
So that said ... Fun was had. I can appreciate the extremes of both types of parenting. I think I"ll do a mixture of both. But going to the extreme did show me that my kids did not die because nap was later than usual or started in the car. Dinner will still get eaten and the house still got cleaned up and we all still had a great time. I think I'll keep the schedule during the week and then just play on the weekends. I want to implement it into daily life more though.
We did loads of fun things. And in no particular order other than it's what i could think of in the time given.
1. Free military Zoo Day2. 4th of July Fun Run -(yup I did it)
3. Brian swim race (stay at beach for 4 hours at 0600 hrs)
4. Had kids and car packed for beach night on a Tuesday.
5. Got Beckett into the ocean
6. Ate sand. Well. Beckett mostly.
7. Family BB Q's
8. Swim lessons (walked 2 miles for 2 weeks)
9. Library day.
10. Kid outings all the time.
11. Wii day
12. Cartoon day
13. Impromptu lunches with dad. (notice was given 3 minutes prior to Beckett nap and we went.)14. Week alone with Beckett.
15. Mani Pedi at VERY questionable "establishment" by creepy "maybe gay" Korean man???
16. Girls night out
17. Run errans sans children
18. Scrapbook almost every other night.
19. Start Christmas cards.
20. Take up stamping.
21. Be pregnant whole time
22. Change of commands - 2? 3?
23. Cub Scouts
24. Hang out with neighbors and get eaten by bugs and no complaints.
25. Dress up for Premier night of SITC. Heels and all.
26. See it again with the girls.
27. Celebrate "sneaker's" miracle (I'll post on that later)
28. School shopping
29. Discovery Center
I think that's about all I can think of now. I'll snag some more pics later and stick in here of all of the stuff we did in some "mini" blogs of the events but you get the gist of it. I came. I saw. I did. Oh and tomorrow it all begins again. OOOOOOOhh.
