Summer Time Blues

I get this way EVERY mid-June.  I really need to go back and find more examples.  While all the teachers and all the kids (and probably a lot of moms) are sooooo excited about summer finally being here and the crazy schedule of the school year on hiatus, I get sad.  This is really the only time of the year I have working mom guilt and really wish I didn't have to go to work.  But it's not just that.  It's also that the end of yet another school year means that my kids are a year older and it realize how quickly it's going.  It's especially hard when my kids had a wonderful school year and I'm sad to be leaving those fantastic teachers behind and have worries that they will lose their momentum or not have as great of a year next year.  (Yes, I'm an advocate of year round school since I know "year round" does not truly mean they are in school year round. But obviously that is not going to change any time soon around here...and I digress.)  Strangely, I'm also sad that with summer here, I won't be getting my kids up and to school each morning for a bit.  As stressful as it is sometimes to get all four of us out the door by 7:30, I realize that it wasn't so bad and I am going to miss it.  I'm going to miss our morning drives to school and hugging/kissing them as I drop them off.

I am looking forward to seeing Caroline in fifth grade next year and all the exciting things that come with being a fifth grader but I also see it as her last year in the "safety" of the sweetness that is elementary school.

I'm looking forward to seeing Bryce in third grade where he will start to get "real" grades for the first time but that always worries me because I know how hard of a time Caroline had transitioning to third grade.  But we are prepared as parents this time, at least.  I just know Bryce has a hard time with changes.

I'm looking forward to seeing Piper as a first grader doing what her siblings would call "real" work but I also am sad that my baby will have the cute, fuzziness of kindergarten behind her.

This summer should be fun too.  My mom will continue with her usual Mondays (Mondays with Bertie!) and I know she's really missed them this school year as it was her first time she hadn't seen my kids on a weekly, child care basis since, well, we had kids!   And then the other four days we will have a off for the summer teacher coming to the house to supervise/entertain them.  (I don't like calling it babysitting since they truly are not babies and they can do so much for themselves including hurt one another..so many adding refereeing to her responsibilities?)

I just need to get into that summer swing of things where I get to leave a little earlier from work because I don't have to drop the kids off in the mornings (cry) and we spend our long evenings outside enjoying the warmth.

But don't mind me....just wait for me to get sad again in August when I'm stressing about a new school year starting and how I'll handle all the fall schedules again after taking it easy all summer.

Seriously, BCPS?

Why in 2013 when most children have attended preschool or daycare before kindergarten do the schools feel it is necessary to do "gradual entry" for kindergarten???  In a day and age when a lot of people work this just seems like the most ridiculous thing to me.  Obviously we just got our schedule for Piper's first week of kindergarten and unfortunately they handle kindergarten entry almost exactly like our old school did.  School starts on Monday, August 26 here and here is her schedule:

Monday:  No school
Tuesday: Meeting with teacher and parents at 10:30-10:45
Wednesday: No school
Thursday: Partial day 9:30-2pm (normal day is 9:15-3:45)
Friday: Normal day - she can finally ride the bus

WTH?  UGH!  I am so over this.  I was talking to my neighbors about it because two of them are school teachers and they know that they won't be able to take off and they aren't sure what they'll do.  My brother and his wife, for example, they are BOTH teachers.  Teachers can't take off the first week of school.  Never mind the fact that it's the first week of classes for me and it's probably the worst time for me to have to take off.   My neighbor who is a third grade teacher believes it's more for the school than it is for the kids.  The kids will be fine.  Thank goodness that Piper is on the Tues/Thurs schedule because my mom is off on Mon/Wed and can watch her.  But that means I will be going in super late on that Tuesday (plus the fact that I have to work until 8pm the night before thanks to orientation that I have to attend) and then I have to go in late on that Thursday because the kindergartners start AFTER the other kids and are not allowed to ride the bus.  Jason is taking a half day to pick her up.  Again....WTH?  Every single other parent I've talked to (and there are 5 kindergartners in my new neighborhood this year) are all unhappy about it.  The first week of school is already chaos with adjusting to the schedule again and this makes it worse.

Aside from all that, I'm trying to decide which mornings I will let the older kids ride the bus in the morning and which days I will start them at the before-care program.  I want them to ride the bus in the morning so the bus driver knows that they will ride the bus in the morning only occasionally (the secretary at the school told me to do this) and always in the afternoons.  But I also want them to get acclimated to the before-care program/schedule too.  Grrrrr.

Oh and my days of attending two back to school nights has begun.  Our ES is so big that they split it over two nights with the primary grades on one night and the intermediate on the other. I will be like this until Bryce and Piper are in high school and Caroline is in college so I guess I need to get used to it.  When Piper is in 5th, Bryce in 7tth, and Caroline in 9th, I will get to go to three so I am counting down waiting for that!

Not that I'm not happy school is starting.  Quite honestly, this summer has been tough given the very rainy weather we've had.  I think the kids have swam less than they ever have.  And while I've been grateful for all the help we've had this summer between my mom, my FIL, my brother and Moira, I'm looking forward to a more constant schedule.  Not sure what we'll be doing next summer for childcare but I'm thinking we may be going the nanny route.  I'd love to do some periodic camps (not all summer...I cannot afford that!) but I'd need someone who could drive them and/or pick them up.   Or maybe I just need to put them in daycare.  (Insert evil laugh here)  I've threatened it on their bad behavior days and sometimes I think it might be better.  But I'm not going to worry myself with that right now.  There will be plenty of time when it's nice and cold outside.

School Transfer

Now that we pretty much know we will NOT be in the new house by the beginning of the fourth quarter of school (April 15), I'm starting to reassess what we are going to do with the kids.  Way back in the fall when there was potential to easily be in the new house by the fourth quarter, I was a strong advocate of moving them sooner than later. But now that we won't even settle until the earliest April 15, I am thinking that leaving them in their current school is the best option.

One of my motivating factors was Caroline and the relationships (or lack-thereof) with her fellow classmates.  Things have improved greatly so I'm not as worried with letting her finish the year out.  I even asked her what she would want to do if given a choice and she said to finish the year.  (Although I think part of it could be because of her budding relationship with Joey...more on that later....I can't handle it!) 

I think Bryce actually wants to finish the year with his class, so he's an easy sell too.   Here's hoping that over the summer I can take the kids in for a tour or something.  I'm not sure how they handle new kids or how they assign them to their new teachers.  I need to talk to some of my connections who already have kids there.  

So I guess now we just need to let the teachers know to anticipate that we'll be there for the rest of the year. My only other issue is that if they had transferred to the new school that they would have been able to ride the bus to and from school which would have helped my FIL immensely since he will be the one taking over for the remainder of the school year once my MIL starts watching the twins when Kelly goes back to work.  I feel kind of bad about it since it's out of the way but they're already doing it now so hopefully it's not a big deal.  But I do need to talk to them about it.

I will just need to figure out when to do all the transfer paperwork to make sure that my kids are assigned to the proper classes for next year.  I will need to get Piper registered for kindergarten (ack!) too.  

Summer starts in mid-June and we've just firmed up our plans for that.  I was thinking that perhaps we were going to have to look into some kind of daycare for the summer but it looks like we've figured it out.  My mom will continue to do Mondays, my FIL wants Fridays, and then between me, Jason, and my brother, we will do Wednesdays.  As for Tuesday/Thursday, a former co-worker of mine and I connected and her 15 year old daughter is going to be watching the kids for those two days.  The kids are excited that they don't have to go to a daycare and that they will have a teenager watching them.  I have high hopes as she has some camp counseling experience and is very artsy/craftsy.  I'll have her meet the kids once we are in the new house though. 

I'm feeling a lot better about this now as I was having major anxiety realizing we needed to figure out summer plans and thinking about the move, etc.  At least this has worked out!!

Too Hot to Blog

OMG, it is hot.  HOT.  It's going to be like 105 here today or something crazy like that.  So glad we did our Mt. Vernon trip last week.  It was warm but nothing like today.

It's been a good week though.  Thankfully Monday through Wednesday were decent days and it only started really warming up yesterday.  The kids spent Monday at my mom's and then spent Wednesday into Thursday at my IL's.  They just love going up there because of all there is to explore.  My FIL always takes them out to the river beach and they explore and have fun with Kodi (the dog).  I got home from work yesterday and they had just arrived home.  Boy, did they have a LOT to tell me.

I could tell how much they missed me based on how they were talking a mile a minute.  Even Caroline had lots to say and she's the one who usually keeps things to herself.  Piper had fallen asleep on the way home and was glued to my lap for the next two hours.  Bedtime was a little tough too as I think all three of them were pretty tired and no one wanted to go to sleep, especially Bryce and Piper.

They were hanging out at home today with Nana and Big Dad. Nana had some things for them to do as I'm pretty sure they won't be going outside.  I know we'll probably spend the whole weekend at my mom's pool so I didn't think they needed to go swimming today and I know Caroline's friend, Sophia, has been sick so they wouldn't be playing today either.

They broke into my craft storage in the basement the other day and I'm guessing they'll be doing that again today. I also finally got around to creating a Bored Jar that has a bunch of one line ideas of things to do and if they pick something out of it they HAVE to do it.  Although if they picked something out of it today that says to do something outdoors it might not be such a good idea.

I have a sudden hankering for a diet Cherry-Limeade from Sonic.  A big giant one.  Might have to indulge that later.

Summer Solstice

Yesterday was the summer solstice and since it was SO hot and such a long day, I decided we needed to celebrate!  My kids and 5 other neighbor kids came over to play and I was sort of prepared.  My mom sent home water balloons that she had along with an old baby bath sponge since I had some game ideas for both.  I stopped on the way home (secretly) and picked up 4 quarts of Rita's too.

After dinner I started filling up water balloons and the kids came over - it was still over 90 degrees!  (Big thanks to my neighbor, Nancy, who is 9 months pregnant, who came down with her boys.  My other neighbor wanted to stay with Sophia but her younger daughter was sleeping.)  I thought I had a lot of balloons....a bucketful with 8 kids is NOT a lot.  But they had fun.  We did a typical balloon toss and when that wasn't a whole lot of fun (either one kid was a lousy thrower or the other was a lousy catcher), we just had a water balloon fight.  Now THAT they liked.  I turned the sprinkler on for them as I got ready for our next game...sponge relay.

We actually had 2 evenly matched boys and girls teams so we just divided them up like that.  They had to submerse their sponge in water and then race to the deck steps and squeeze it into their cup.  First team to fill up their cup twice won.  It was pretty much a tie both times.

They liked that game so much, we played twice!  I had to get ready for the next game and so we let them run in the sprinkler again.  It was so nice to see all of them playing so well together.  The next game was Wet T-Shirt Relay.  They lined up in boys versus girls again and then they had to send one team member down to get the t-shirt out of the bucket, put it on, and then run twice around the bucket.  Nancy and I were there to help them get it on.

The kids really enjoyed this one too although I was surprised that Caroline liked it as much as she did because they did a similar game at school for field day the past few years and she refused to play!  Maybe it's because they were all in their bathing suits last night.

Then it was time for Rita's!  (My photographer didn't get any photos of this part either, but I was grateful that he got 2 of the events.)  The kids were so excited to have four flavors to choose from - Cotton Candy, Blue Raspberry, Fudge Brownie, and Swedish Fish.  After all that running around they deserved a cool treat!

After snack time, I tried playing a game similar to Hot Potato with the sprinkler (the kid who is hopping over the sprinkler when the water stops is out) but that didn't work out so well.  We just let them frolic for a while longer before two of the sets of kids had to go home.  My kids and Sophia stayed out another hour or so and then Caroline had Sophia spend the night.

So all in all, I'd say it was a pretty fun evening.  Maybe it will become a tradition....I always felt like I wanted to celebrate the solstice somehow but wasn't sure how.  This may be the right way to do it!  (Of course having it be 100 degrees on the first day of summer helped too.)

Summer Structure

While technically yesterday was the first day of summer vacation, today is more the first "typical" day of summer vacation.  The kids spent the night on Sunday at my mom's and then spent the whole day there swimming.  Because they didn't wake up at home, "Operation Must-Do List" was delayed by a day.  But that's okay because yesterday was so hot and summery, I'm glad they spent it swimming.  I even ended up taking a half day at work to spend it with them.  (I've decided that from here on out, I will be taking the first weekday after the last day of school off of work!)

I was kind of glad to wake up this morning and see the rain so the kids would get a little break from the hot sun, but a little worried since it most likely meant a day inside.  However, I stayed up late last night putting together a checklist of "Must Do Lists" for each child for each day of the week.  They will have daily tasks that include cleaning up their room and weekly tasks that vary by child.  Caroline liked seeing something with her name on it and looking so official.  Of course, it's day one so she was totally into it and was already upstairs journaling (one of her must dos) when I left.  (She told me I can't read it though - guess it's private.)

One of Bryce's daily must-dos is to read.  Of course, Bryce says that he hates reading. But if you're around Bryce for any length of time, you'll notice that the kid is constantly trying to read everything he sees and often succeeding.  But if you ask him, he hates it.  In fact, I just called a little while ago and the girls had gone with my MIL to the library but Bryce opted to stay home with Big Dad.  Why?  "Because I just didn't want to go and I hate to read."  Ugh.  Bryce is a secret reader.  He stays up reading books when he thinks no one is looking.  I'm not worried, I think he's just trying to be oppositional.

I also went to the craft store on Sunday and loaded up my cart full of goodies.  The kids didn't even know where I was going so they have NO clue the things I bought.  I got 500 sheets of construction paper, various foam crafts, 50 tubes of glitter glue, various wood crafts, new markers, wind chime kits, and sun catcher kits. I even got some extra foam crafts in case another kid happened to be over playing.  I know it won't last all summer but at least for a few weeks until I can come up with some other fun ideas.

I also printed out the calendar of our activities and commitments for the summer too so it's easy to see where we have to be when.  Hopefully, this will help my MIL manage the days with the kids and give them some structure to their days.  I'm sure neighbor kids will be around playing too which always helps.