in which I nearly lose my mind
Well, we have made it through our first week of summer vacation. But it wasn't without its casualties. Ok, I was the only casualty, but I think I'm going to make it. We always start out the summer wide eyed and full of hopes and dreams, but often by the end its just a survival situation. Well, things crashed and burned pretty quickly for me, but I think we can right this ship and sail on through the summer. At least we will try. Scott says I came out of the gate too hot, with too many things planned.
Monday morning, 9am on the first real day of summer vacation we had swim lessons. All five kids had swim lessons. It was going to be great! I would just sit on the side and read a book for 40 minutes. Here is John (above), waiting to be placed in his class. The kids had swimming lessons at this place in April and May and have been doing great. This is at an outdoor pool in Layton that puts one of those big bubble tops on the pool in the winter time to make it indoors. We did swim lessons blissfully under the bubble in the spring. No problem. For summer swim they use a different pool that is right next to the big bubble pool. The other/new pool has a ((gasp)) DEEP END!!! Grant and John are not used to swimming in the deep end and it has been quite a traumatic week of swim lessons as a result. Many tears have been shed. The swimming they are being asked to do is appropriate for them but its scary when there is a 10 foot deep pool to cross. I get it. Grant has sat by me instead of participate for a lot of the time. Finally his teacher came and yelled at me one day about his poor participation and frequent tears. He wasn't very sympathetic about the deep end thing. ((eyeroll)). I know that he's just doing his job so I thought it was very nice of me to not yell back at him. There, that's my good deed for the week. You're welcome teenage swim instructor.
Here is Grant (in the background) attempting a dive. Grant's main teacher (the one who yelled at me) has only been there a few days and they have had subs the other days. This was a sub day.
In the background, Anna diving.
Matthew diving
Anna on the diving board, Grant closer up attempting a dive in the deep end. Grant gave a pretty good effort at first, but as the days went on he was more and more resistant to trying things in the deep water.
Matthew on the diving board, Grant diving in front
Matthew jumping in
Anna trying a dive
After a few days of Grant sitting by me on the side for part of the lesson, John saw and thought he should do it too - sitting on the side, that is. Swim lesson fear/anxiety is contagious. John had been nervous and anxious the whole time but I don't think he saw sitting out as an option until he saw Grant doing it. Here is John trying a dive in the deep end one day. John's teacher is very patient and sympathetic to his worries. I might see if he would give them private lessons. I saw another parent asking so maybe he is already in high demand. :).
Grant rethinking this whole diving board thing
So, after our first somewhat unsuccessful week, I resorted to bribery. I offered to buy any kid a toy from the aquarium (our planned trip this weekend) if they can stay in the water and at least TRY what is asked of them. They don't have to do it perfectly or even do it right, but just try. In general I think bribery doesn't really work that well with kids, at least that has been my experience. But it doesn't stop me from offering it from time to time. It works better with older kids. So, as I write this we have had one perfect swim lessons day (post bribery). Scott is not sure bribing them was the best tactic, but I feel it is totally worth it if they will stay in the water, try even if they are scared and learn to swim a little better (if only a little). So we'll see how things go tomorrow. Grant asked if he could get a smaller toy if he only tried for one of the remaining days. I told him it was an all or nothing prospect. So hopefully things still go well for the rest of the week.
At the swimming pool one afternoon. Per pool regulations I'm supposed to be within arms reach of any child 5 or under. Luckily that only leaves Emma. But its trickier than it looks to stay within arms reach of her at the pool. I feel kind of dumb just walking after her everywhere in the shallow pool, but I'm trying to follow the rules. I can't imagine what it would have been like when I had multiple kids under five at the pool. So its not "sit by the side of the pool and read a book" time for me yet.
At the end of the pool time I got out all the towels and realized I had brought five towels instead of six. I forgot to get a towel for myself. And that sums up my life for the past year. Self care is important - and I also count. Next time I'll bring a towel for myself.
Monday is our park day - we went to a new park last week.
Everyone was sorry we didn't have bread to feed the ducks and geese
Grant got to participate in a spontaneous water balloon fight on our street one afternoon
Matthew had a scouts court of honor this week and needed to be in uniform. I got him scout pants from the scout store but they are not hemmed. I pinned them up with safety pins and then just kept putting off hemming them. I have no where to put my sewing machine and have been busy and just never got around to getting it out. After several courts of honor with safety pinned pants, I finally committed to fixing his pants. This was on a particularly crazy afternoon. I googled how to hem scout pants (I don't sew that well) and the first result was about how to hem them with Badge Magic - the stick on adhesive you can use to attach scout badges. I had some Badge Magic and was feeling particularly desperate so I Badge Magic-ed the hems. It doesn't look perfect but if you don't look too close, its fine. And I think better than the safety pins. I also finally changed Matthew's council patch and troop number to be correct for Utah. I had bought the numbers a few months ago, but didn't remember what order they went in. I mean there are only so many combinations, and I was pretty sure it started with 5.
I checked before sticking the numbers on. It only took me five months to get this done.
Yeah me!
Matthew's scout troop played Quidditch after the court of honor (the game from Harry Potter)
It was good I fixed his pants.
Matthew was a keeper
I've heard of people (muggles) playing Quidditch but wasn't sure how they would do the Golden Snitch part. Well, in this game, the Golden Snitch was a ball attached to the waist band (that you can grab off ala flag football) of an older boy (also dressed in gold) who I think must be on the high school cross country team. He was fast and had a lot of endurance and the Seekers were younger scouts, who had trouble catching him. He would run off through the neighborhood (we could see flashes of his gold jersey from far away) and then he would reappear and do a few laps around the field before disappearing again. Just like a real snitch would. It was so cute. Here (above) one seeker makes a dive for the snitch and gets it. They played another game that was going on a little long. Finally the leaders told the snitch he had to stay on the field, (the game ends when the snitch is caught) to make the game wrap up quickly. And it did. The kids had a lot of fun.
The pumpkin patch has rallied. There are pumpkins growing in nearly all the little openings now, along with a healthy amount of weeds. I spent a while on Saturday weeding the openings, but otherwise have spent very little time in the garden.
I baked a sheet pan carrot cake this weekend because I wanted to. I have been wanting to make one for a while but haven't because I thought no one would like it except me.
More kids liked the carrot cake then I expected.
The kids shaggy hair finally got to me enough to schedule hair cuts
Grant has a permanent head scar (just like his Dad). You can see it when his hair is short.
He
got this scar about a year ago just before leaving California.
Trying out another new park (another Monday) near our house right after hair cuts.
Anna was sad that she brought sandals to the park instead of regular shoes and sat on the bench crying the whole time (half the kids there had sandals on). But her hair looked good so there's that. That didn't make her feel any better about the shoes.
Most of my summer stress revolves around the kid's friends coming and going and unexpected playdates. There are lots of kids on this street and lots of them want to play with our kids a lot, which is great...for the kids. As an introvert person I find the coming and going and extra unexpected persons around kind of stressful. This was never a problem before living in Utah where there are so many kids so close by. The first few days of summer there were a lot of kids wanting to play. Our kids were going in and out without telling me where they were going, random kids were running through the house, mystery shoes were lying everywhere and some of our children kept asking me to start ambitious projects (let's make face scrub, let's make rock candy, let's start a lemonade stand) while I frantically tried to prepare dinner. After recovering from one very crazy afternoon (I didn't recover until a couple days later) I wrote a few rules and talked to the kids about it. I thought they knew not to invite friends into the house or go out to a friends house without asking but several of them (all of them) needed a reminder. And then some friends like to come in uninvited. I'm considering just having quiet hours some days of summer where we close all the blinds and pretend we aren't home. It sounds so silly but some days I feel very anxious about all the craziness. This past week I thought I was going to have an anxiety attack as people kept shouting things at me and kids ran all around. I've never really thought of myself as anxiety prone until this past year in Utah. It has helped me realize I need to be more mindful about including self care in my life (and bring myself a towel when we go to the pool) and also to do things that bring me joy even if there is no real logical reason to do it (like make a carrot cake knowing probably no one but me will eat it just because I would like to make a carrot cake). After one bad morning I closed all the blinds and had Matthew and Anna baby sit while I went on an outdoor rage run. I always run faster when I'm very upset. But I did feel better afterwards. I asked the kids one morning if we were going to survive summer. One kid said, "I know WE will survive, but I don't know if YOU will." I'm not so sure either. Pray for us.
