A Perfect Day

Despite its many highlights, this summer has been a struggle for me.  I'm such a fount of negativity lately that I thought I should share this perfect day with you.  (More accurately, I should say it was a great day -- there was still fighting, and poop on monkey bars to clean up -- but hey, this is as close to perfect as we're gonna get.) 

I took Georgia to "Kindergarten Move-In" to drop off her school supplies, and she sat on the rug with the other children!  (That's huge.)  June went with Joe and Waylon to her last park district soccer class and got a little plastic trophy.  (Might as well have been a Nobel prize to her.)

Knowing that our summer days are numbered, I texted Beth around 10:30 to see if she had any upcoming beach trips planned that we could get in on.  "Yes!  Today!  Toss your stuff in a bag and meet us at Montrose beach at 11:30!"  Spontaneous beach trip?  Sure, why not?  I threw the kids in front of a Kipper episode and ran around like a mad woman gathering swimsuits and packing ridiculous quantities of food.  (The children expect the equivalent of Thanksgiving dinner approximately every two hours.)  This whole endeavor was all the more crazy since we now live in the suburbs, but so what if I'm in denial of that fact?  The beach was hot.  The water was still.  I finally loosened up and let the kids buy ice cream treats from one of those bicycle cart vendors, realizing that my allergy thinking on the matter had been backwards all along.

Waylon passed out before we even got out of the parking lot.  Traffic wasn't too bad.  As soon as we got home, the kids went straight to skinny-dipping in the pool to get any remaining sand off.  Wait - let's linger on that thought for a moment longer - because the ability to skinny-dip in your own pool in broad daylight is about as good as life gets, as far as I'm concerned.     

A simple dinner of leftovers.  A little bit of outdoor playtime before bed.  Waylon crashed out before 7:00 (and proceeded to sleep for 13 hours).  With no more Waylon to interfere with the pieces, the girls and I tried out June's new Goldie Blox set.  Kiss, kiss.  Lights out.   

Of course, part of what made yesterday's adventure great was that we have nothing planned for today.  I think I'm happiest with a mix of big stuff and nothing at all.

I regret not snapping a photo with my sister or her kids, or our friend Kirsten and her kids who were also there, because it's those fleeting moments of conversation with other adults that make my best days better.

I'm starting to dip my toes into the waters of returning to work, and I spend a lot of time both wondering what type of job I should seek, and thinking that, while this has been a grand experiment, I'm perhaps not 100% cut out for full time stay at home motherhood.  But I have to admit that days like yesterday are when I most appreciate not having a job to get to.

 


Dude, you are holding melting, dyed sugar on a stick - why are you chewing on a shark?
He's really pretty sweet, I promise. Not sure why he often looks so serious.