Pause in the point of this blog post to say 1) my girls are chasing have princess pull-ups on their heads and they are chasing around their brother trying to "crown" him with one too. This is after they took turns suggesting "games" to play. He says "let's play my planet is in my room, your planet is in the living room, and we have to stay on our OWN planets!" She counters with, "how about we play "I play in our room too"... my clever clever kids.
2) my Internet service is down. I seriously hate blogging via the iPhone.
3) my friend on Facebook posted an article about how all pre ground coffee has ground up roaches in it. Guess what I'm drinking?? Roach coffee for me! With non-organic milk! And white sugar! Surely I'm going to seize up any moment now.
4) a glimpse of sun through the window is giving me hope. Maybe my tomatoes will survive!
Okay, thats all. And this gets me in a round about way to the point of my post. How to find a summer rhythm for your house. Not that I know how, mind you, but that I'm trying to figure it out. Clearly points 1-4 above demonstrate my brain is somewhat scattered these days by... wait! Look! Squirrel!
Ah yes. Summer.
I'm allowing myself this week, and possible next week, to get shit organized and figure the rhythm thing out.
I realized the other day how little my kids actually play with toys around them. Legos. A few dolls. A box of blocks. That's really their regular go-to play things. Everything else is the occasional amusement or something for baby dear to pull off shelves and toss on the floor. So as I was picking up after one such incident the other day it occurs to me, "why not just pack it all away?!" Brilliant! And, Oh Yes, I'm going to. Yesterday I packed away a lot of books they simply don't look at very often and I got down two more boxes to slowly hide away toys from random corners. The beauty of this scheme is when we get them out in October it will be found treasure! I love rotating toys. I love even MORE having less to pick up. Oh, lazy mama! Cruel mama! But I think their play benefits too. Which is how we have all three kidlings now in the bedroom fighting over who is the king (or queen) of pee-pee castle...yes, they are all wearing pull-up crowns now.
Ha ha ha!!
Okay maybe I should intervene....nah.
So, once toys are simplified and the house reorganized I'm thinking of a schedule that is like this:
Breakfast
Coffee/writing/playtime (so the day feels lazy and summerlike)
Circle time
Story for the girls
Morning Reading time, working through a classic like " the secret garden"
Outside for gardening/chickens
Inside for lunch
Nap for baby / quiet time for bigs (which would be huge because this never happens but they need it as we've been staying up later than norm this summer)
Activity based on day of the week (washing/laundry, craft, baking, painting or games) (or maybe some schoolish stuff?)
Outside again
Inside for dinner prep while kids play and HELP PICK UP (I've GOT to get them doing regular chores, a post for later perhaps)
Dinner
Bath
Books (reading classics with dada!)
Bed
(Glass of wine, ice cream, tv, book, collapse in exhaustion, etc)
Somewhere in there though I want to do some of his alpha phonics book, so we keep his reading progressing, and free reading, and nature journaling, and I also wanted to have maybe one morning a week where we go to a lake, if its nice, like a summer tradition with mama. And then maybe every Friday night we do a bonfire with dada? Something like this.
And somewhere in there I want to 1)keep working on my writing projects (plural!) and 2) take up oil painting... HAHAHAHAHA! Oh I crack myself up! Dada got me paints and canvases for Mother's Day. Do you think paints last 15 years? Because that's how long it's gonna take.
Phew. I think I need to start getting up early again ... which lasted one week last time I tried... Maybe the earlier sunrise in summer will make it easier?? I need to do it. Starting next week....
So those are my summer rhythm thoughts.
It will probably end up being a week to week thing, I'm guessing, and I'm pretty sure we will be starting up full school by August. He already asked yesterday. Ha!
But I'm actually thinking of going hard core, putting up a schedule that feels relaxed and summer like and sticking to it. How is that for ridiculous??
Okay, back to my roach coffee. Yum!
Happy (almost) summer! If you have any planning tips and summer traditions let me know!
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