The Seven Day Countdown

I had the best weekend.

It was just what I needed, being here at the end of summer (and therefore on the cusp of losing my sanity. Long story short, it involved my kids spending the night with their grandparents, celebrating a friend’s 21st (plus a few) birthday, sleeping in, a delicious breakfast, an indulgent take-your-time-and-don’t-worry-about-getting-paged-to-the-Kids-Club kind of workout, a trip to the beach with my friend (the first time I’ve been to the beach in many moons where I was able to pack one small, teeny bag to hold my stuff), an afternoon with a book, and an evening at the movies.

Jealous?

So here we are on Monday. At first glance it’s an ordinary Monday, but if you look a little closer at the calendar you’d notice it’s the last Monday before the kids start school. I wasn’t teaching any classes this morning so I really was enjoying my one of my last mornings of not having to rush kids off to school (I am teaching tomorrow and Wednesday, but repeat performances of this lazy morning will be held on Thursday and Friday).

Tomorrow is Cole’s open house, Wednesday we find out who Mason’s Kindergarten teacher is, and Friday is his open house. I am so excited for it all!

And then there’s my girl Lila. When the boys depart on Monday I’m sure I will have my share of sadness and bittersweet moments. But I am really, really looking forward to spending some time alone with my girl. It’s been nice having the boys around all summer but I miss my mornings of last spring, where it was just me and Lila. She’s my sidekick. She’s really good at it too! I’ve discovered lately that I’m a bit lost when I’m without all of the kids, so at least I still have one to keep me company. And this might sound really strange, but I've never had one-on-one time with a two year old. When Mason was two, Cole was six months old, when Cole was two, Lila was a newborn. I have really learned to appreciate alone time with my children.

The summer has ended with a bang. The boys did a little set of swim classes last week and were proud to get diplomas at the end. (***Dislclaimer: All photos are craptastic iPhone photos. I forgot my camera. Hey, no one's perfect.)

They learned the backstroke and the freestyle stroke, and Mason has proven to be a wicked fast freestyle swimmer. His only (and quite significant) downfall is that he forgets to pick his head up and breathe. But watching him tear across that water freestyle is some kind of amazing. Cole is more interested in diving to the bottom to retrieve things off the pool floor. The kid is a solid hunk of very heavy muscle. Buonacy is not his forte. They both have taken to jumping off the diving board, something that looks so freaky I don't even know if *I* would be brave enough to attempt it. But that's little boys for ya.

On the last day all the kids were allowed to go down the waterslides twice, which is a huge deal because typically you need to be 48 inches or taller to go down them during park hours. On one hand this is cool because they were excited and had so much fun. On the other hand when we go there on our own to visit it’s going to be tough to explain to them that they’re not tall enough to go down the slides when they can clearly remember that exception being made.

Excluded from swim lessons due to the broken collar bone of the Summer of '10, is Lila. Still as cute as ever.

At the end of the school year I had decided to keep the kids home all summer, mostly due to Mason’s increasingly more vocal request that he was getting burnt out of school. Truth was he’d been attending almost nonstop since he turned three. I am proud to say that with the exception of one week of vacation bible school, they have been my constant companions. Let’s just say that next summer a little bit more scheduled activities will be involved. As much as I enjoyed the low key nature of most days, my sanity is on the line here. Plus Mason in particular has been requesting me to enroll him in a different activity every five minutes. Soccer, tennis, basketball, bowling, more swim lessons… you name it, he wants to do it. What’s summer for if not to explore some interests?

So here I sit, on the cusp of major changes with my family. I am bad with change. Extremely. But time waits for no (wo)man, and Change it is a comin’.