Summer Plans.
We’re just plugging along here through our summer with nothing particularly fantastic happening. As with most summers, I had lots of ideas and plans for the hottest three months of the year and, as with most summers, a lot of those plans and ideas haven’t come to fruition….yet. We’re only a little past halfway through, though, right?! I still have another month to make up for my slacking! 🙂
Things we’ve done:
- Parks! I’ve never been much of a go-play-at-the-park kind of person and I knew that would be a struggle for me as a momma, especially as I have a hard time being around other moms. The mommy wars really are everywhere and I get incredibly self-conscious about B when I go to parks. He’s well-behaved, for the most part, but I think my hands-off parenting style rubs some other moms or care-providers the wrong way and I’ve felt more than a little judgment at various “kid” places (some of it may be me projecting….I do that a lot). So we started riding the bike to a local bird park or nature preserve or whatever it really is (we just refer to it as “the bird park”) and wander around freely there, visited by the occasional dog or bike-rider. There’s a nice little trail with signs all along it describing the various aspects of the environment there, including the bugs, animals, birds, plants, etc. If we’re still living here when B is old enough to understand it, I can see this as a great learning opportunity. Bonus: no pesticides! Our neighborhood gets a monthly dose of pesticides, so I’m hesitant to let B play on the lawn here (we don’t have our own yard as we live in a condo-type-townhome). The bird park is the nearly-perfect answer as it’s not too far away. There is always the potential for rattlesnakes, but that’s true of just about anywhere we go that isn’t a playground park.
- Picnics! I guess this can go hand-in-hand with the first one mentioned, but these involve E so I think of them as separate. We got in the habit each Sunday afternoon of stopping at a local eatery, picking up some gluten-free sandwiches, and heading to a park not far from there for some good, old-fashioned picnic time. We haven’t done it the last few weeks, but I’m sure we’ll do it at least one more time before the summer is over as I think we all enjoy it a lot.
- Decluttering! I really, really wish we had kept track of all of the stuff we’ve gotten rid of over the last few months as it has been a LOT. Both of us were huge Star Wars dorks before we got married and we had been lugging around at least two totes full of Star Wars paraphernalia that hadn’t seen the light of day in years. I actually used to have it all set up in a bookshelf in my room that I was pretty proud of. We finally went through the totes last week and I had the honor of throwing out 15-year-old soaps that had R2-D2 embedded in them, movie ticket stubs from every showing I had gone to of episodes 1 – 3, toy display posters from toy stores, and random stuff that I had, at one time, treasured because of the Star Wars logo stamped on it. Other totes have offered up my old Barbie dolls, which I thought I had gotten rid of years ago, E’s lab coat from the internship he had 13 years ago, and basic, various junk that I felt compelled to save at one point for a reason that completely escapes me now. Some of this stuff, especially the Star Wars stuff like a bag of C-3PO gummy candies that were at least 10 years old, or a piece of Turkish gum with Darth Vader on it that a friend had picked up on a trip back in 1999, I just kind of had to shake my head and laugh at. The amount of stuff we’ve gotten rid of has been so freeing and we keep looking for more stuff to go through and purge. We’ve also managed to sell quite a bit on Craigslist and eBay, which is just an added bonus.
And things I still want to do:
- Camping. Ugh. I keep chickening out. We’ve been talking about giving it a shot this weekend and attempting another 14er (we tried a few months before I got pregnant with B, but I failed and E chose to stay with me rather than keep going to the summit with the friends we had gone with – he’s a good man), but the weather doesn’t look cooperative for the peak we’ve chosen so that part may have to wait. Hopefully we at least go camping and aren’t eaten by bugs….or bears, and we enjoy ourselves so I can finally check it off my list! And maybe do it again before the summer is over. 🙂
- Library. I had really wanted to start taking B to the library weekly but, honestly, something weird happens every time I bring him so I’m hesitant to go there anymore. By weird I mean me having to be in the same space as other mommies/care-givers (see “Outdoors” section above) and something happens to make me feel like the world’s worst mother. Honestly….I don’t know what it is about this particular library, but there’s always something negative that happens when we visit. I’d find a new library, but I’m kind of in love with this one. I think I just need to take in the fact that I do have a different parenting style and that’s okay. B is a healthy, happy little boy and there’s proof in that alone that I’m not such a bad momma after all.
So at least my “accomplished” list is longer than my “to do” list. 🙂 I’m hopeful for the rest of the summer….there’s still a lot of time left!
