I have to say that I enjoyed the summer for a short time...tolerated it for a time...and was anxious for school to start near the end. I feel like summer is just too long and my kids need more frequent breaks instead of one LONG 3 month break.
I enjoyed doing new things with them at the beginning of the summer, but my energy was pretty much gone by the end of July. My kids ALL have a lot of energy and no one here has a docile temperament. Lincoln was docile once...it was when he was really sick. Most of the time he is one big circle story like those If You Give a Mouse a Cookie books. He goes in and out of the house constantly and I am always trying to figure out where he is. He can make a mess more efficiently than any of my other kids have been able to do. He keeps me hopping when it is just me and him. Katelyn spends a lot of her time doing gymnastics routines all over the furniture kicking things and people she shouldn't even though she has been told a million times that she is "not allowed to do gymnastics in the house." I tell her to clean up her breakfast or practice the piano and instead she walks into the front room and starts doing a cartwheel? Ethan spends a lot of time telling Lincoln all of the rules he isn't following and protecting his precious Pokemon cards. I hear a lot of "Lincoln....STOP!" from his mouth. I love all of my kids, but that much intensity mixed with too much energy and not enough structure was too much for me when my emotions are still a little wild and my energy not up to par.
Anyways, I was looking forward to school starting because I feel like I haven't had a quiet moment in months. I craved the structure and I think they did too (even if they didn't know it). Me and Lincoln walked them to school the first few days. Every year it feels a little strange. As happy as I was to get some quiet, I was torn. It felt very weird to just leave them at school. It's not like I haven't done this before, but the feelings were the same as they have been in years past....maybe a little amplified. And coupled with the fact that I have said goodbye to another child leaves me feeling unsettled when I say a goodbye like this, even though I am told that they will come home after school. It's pretty likely that they will, but sometimes your kids don't come home even though they are supposed to. After they have left and come back several times, I start to feel better. Maybe its because I trust that they will come back after watching it play out.
When me and Lincoln came home on the first day, it was sooooo quiet. So quiet. It was welcome, but unfamiliar after the summer of noise and chaos (even though a lot of it was good noise). I didn't realize how much noise had been present.
I guess my point is that as excited as I was for school to start, it is always a little hard for me to just leave my kids somewhere and trust that their needs will be met. I worry that the other kids won't be nice or they won't eat enough for lunch and be hungry or they will be too afraid to ask their teacher for help if they need something or they will forget to take their coat out to recess and on and on. Katelyn recently told me that I was "overprotective" after I wanted to know the EXACT location of her friend's house. Overprotective? You bet Katelyn. That wasn't an overprotective move, but she was right and I told her she could define my behavior any way she wanted to, but it wasn't going to change anything. I would probably be pretty interested in her friends and their houses and their parents and their siblings in the future and she was just going to have to deal with it. I know I can't protect my kids from everything, but I do my best to make sure their needs are met and they are safe.
Lincoln really wanted his picture taken too. Love him.
