Summer Do-Overs

School ended on Friday. I'm glad.

Last year at this time I was excited to have a great summer with the kids and their friends. Then reality (or pregnancy, rather) took over and I found myself feeling rotten physically and emotionally. It was all I could do to go through the motions of making sure everyone ate and didn't smell too terrible.

This summer here is how I plan to make up for last year.

Instead of trying not to scowl at the kids' friends when they come over I want to be the involved mother I have been in the past. (By which I mean, apart from planning a few activities for them, regular teasing of all children that happen to be in the same room as me.)

Instead of shutting myself up in the house for the entire summer I want to get out and walk and play ball and swim with my kids. (just to give you an idea, I have walked more in the last two weeks, even before school let out, than I did the entire two months of summer last year, or probably even my whole pregnancy)

Instead of watching my house fall down all around me we have a very solid cleaning schedule wherein we all do our chores for 1/2 hour together and I check the kids work and they check mine (with more tidying throughout the day).

Instead of burying my own nose in a book for most of the day and letting the kids' library books become many, many months overdue I will take them to the library once a week, I will read to the little ones daily and the older ones will each read at least one book per week.

I also meant to do weekly themes with art and science projects and fun lessons. Not sure that's going to happen as I'd hoped, but I'll try to do something. . .

As motivation to keep to this schedule, especially the keeping things very tidy part, Greg is offering Ev and Dave each 2 złoty (about 70 cents) every day that they do it. That sounded like a lot to me (we're cheap) but then he added on the end of the list that they may not whine. If they whine once, they get nothing that day. He is confident we won't be spending too much money with this plan during the two months of summer. I hope he's wrong!