I Love Summer Because....

Remember summer back when you were a kid and how wonderful it was? Blissful, lazy days. Warm evenings watching and catching lightening bugs. The smells of barbeque's. Swimming. Even with the mosquito bites and sunburns, summer was my favorite season. It still is, but lately I've been re-evaluating my love affair with the season. I'm thinking it is not as in love with me, as I am with it.

1. Broken or bruised bones. Three summers in a row have given us falls out of trees which resulted in concussions, skateboarding accidents that resulted in scrapes and bruises and most recently a fear that a femur was broken (it wasn't, thank goodness!), and trampoline injuries of various forms (and not just on the kids).

2. Nothing says "I have it together" by taking your kid to the doctor in nothing but his underwear. Or barefoot. Or wearing flannel jammies when it's 103 outside.

3. Artwork! It's great to see it in chalk on your driveway and sidewalk. It's great to see it on beautiful coloring book pages. Not so great to see it on your wall, side of your van, all over the two year old, or on your bills.

4. Speaking of artwork, how about science experiments gone bad. Like, the marker in the microwave? Or catfood in the bathtub water? Or bubbles in the dog water? Or creating mud pies with the hose and a bucket?

Ammon felt it was necessary to cook a marker in the microwave. It exploded.

5. Day Trips. I wake up thinking it will be a great day for a day trip! Let's go to the zoo, the museum, the park, the waterfalls, etc. Usually these places are enjoyable and fun for all of us. But don't we all get that one kid that HATES to wear shoes, or sit in the stroller, or dumps all your bottled water for the day in a nice trail behind you as you pull him along in the wagon? Day trips that end in muddy clothes, missing shoes, almost heat stroke from lack of water, soggy sandwiches, and speeding trips back home because you have a naked two year old WITHOUT a diaper on because you forgot them or used them all up.

6. Potty Training. This is the third summer I have potty trained one our kids during. My tactic is to let them decide when they want to potty train because I don't have the energy or time to fight with them. Joshua has finally potty trained this summer, and it's gone pretty well. But we still have occassional accidents and these usually happen at the same time as 'not having a diaper' or 'we're 15 miles from a bathroom!' or 'we just passed the bathroom and "I have to go potty" is uttered from the backseat'.

7. Amnesia. I think winter wipes the slate clean in your brain. You're so cold, so bored and tired of living in the dark that when summer arrives you are bursting at the seams to get out the door and enjoy summer and all the things you associate with summer, except for a couple of minute details, like the "adventures" from last summer. Which is good. I'm not complaining about the amnesia. It's what motivates me to get all excited and do it again the next year. Will our kids remember that we were ~this close~ to admitting ourselves to the insane asylum, or will they remember that trip to the zoo that was so fun because they got to see the baby elephant and penguins? I don't know if I drove my mom nuts during the summer, but I don't remember any bad summers as a child, even though it may not have been completely enjoyable for her, bogged down with the grown up things of the world that don't take a break just because its summer. And maybe this is why we have kids that remind us that summers are for breaks, that we just have to go with the flow for a bit, and so what if your marker is blown up in the microwave. We have 5 others.

I watched Joshua lay on the basketball court the other day by himself and watched clouds passing overhead. I thought about how this is what he will remember: watching dinosaurs and birds form in the clouds, watching the ants scurry by, getting licked in the face by the dog as he lay there and she came to inspect everything was alright on him, and the warmth of the cement warming him in the cooler breeze of the evening.
Aren't summers great?