Zen Mama Wannabe

Getting Back to Our Normal Routines

6 days left of summer….I have started the countdown.  In a week, my son will be starting school again, my daughter entering Pre-K soon after that, and life will get back to the normal routine.  What the heck is normal??

I know, I have it easy.  My son is entering 2nd grade – there is not much to get ready for.  Most of his clothes still fit, he doesn’t need school supplies per ce (just a check for the teacher to help with the cost of general things).  My daughter’s situation is the same – no new clothes or supplies needed – I even think last year’s lunch boxes and backpacks will suffice.  So what is the big deal? 

The big deal is ME.  Returning to school means returning to routines, ones that have been gently phased out during the summer months.  It means stricter bed times (and EARLIER ones too).  It means getting up early (for me – not them – they are ALWAYS up early) and not only getting them ready for school, but ME too.  It means frantically rushing around, no matter how good my intentions are the night before, as I try to do the near-impossible: get the 3 of us out of the door on time, appropriately dressed, fed and groomed. 

May I be honest?  I hate it!   I like to ramp up slowly, drink my coffee, clear my head, check the headlines in the newspaper (if I REALLY have time) or on my computer for the news of the day. (I like to be in the “know” and if something has happened in the country or the world, I want to know about it – not hear about it half a day later from some moms chattering at pick-up time). 

In a perfect world, I would wake up an hour earlier and my kids would wake up an hour later.  Then I could do my thing and be ready to greet not only the day but my family as well.  But you have not seen me up an hour earlier – it’s not perfect – unless you want to say it’s perfect-ly awful.  I am not interested in waking up before dawn, I am interested in getting more much-needed beauty sleep.  I was the one, in my working girl days, who wore out the snooze button on my hated alarm clock, sleepily begging each morning for just a minute or two more.  Now of course I don’t need an alarm clock – I have two early birds of my own – and even without a full-time job to head off to, I STILL find myself having to be up and at ‘em and out the door before 8:00am.  Another example of Life’s funny sense of humor.

So, do I take advantage of these last few days and continue with our lazy routine?  The enjoy it while it lasts plan.  Or, do I take the more responsible route and start getting us back into the school-day schedule?  Perhaps gradually (in these last 6 days) getting the kids to bed a little bit earlier – even if it’s just 5 minutes earlier each night.  If I could stick with that, we just might be in good shape on the bedtime front. 

Of course, the bedtime I need to work on the most is MINE.  Staying up until midnight most nights just isn’t feasible for this Zen Mama Wannabe if I want to be coherent and functioning by 7am the next morning.  I wonder if you can turn yourself into a morning person?  Hmm – I have 6 days to experiment – if I want to go that route.  What would YOU do?

What's your Summer Dream Vacation?

"What's your dream?  Everybody's got a dream."  So says the guy walking Hollywood Boulevard in the movie Pretty Woman (a perennial click-flick favorite of mine).  More specifically, what's your summer dream vacation?  Where would you go?  What would your dream be?

An obvious, shoots-out-of-my-mouth-without-thinking kind of answer, is the Caribbean.  Beautiful white sand beaches, warm turquoise-colored water, lots of sunshine, fragrant warm air, tropical drinks and a whole stack of books and magazines to peruse and delve into....sounds heavenly.  The only time I've been there is on my honeymoon - but it was all that and more!

But two kids later, being able to peacefully sit ANYWHERE for more than 10 minutes, is unheard of.  And this Zen Mama Wannabe, who spent her teenage and college years baking in the Southern California beach sun (with baby oil slathered on - for heaven's sake!) has become fully aware of just how damaging the sun's rays can be.  I'm all about the high SPF sunscreen now, and sweating my "tushie" off laying in the sun is no longer what I like to do in the name of  “fun.”

A European vacation sounds divine...never been anywhere across the Atlantic, and would love to go.  But I can't help but think, if I'm gonna travel halfway around the world, and explore a region(s) I've never been to, I certainly want to do it up right -- meaning nice hotels or chateaus, site-seeing at all the not to be missed museums and landmarks, experiencing the world-famous local cuisine, touring and tasting at some of the best wineries and vineyards, etc --  and all this means one thing: an accompanying babysitter!  All ready it's way WAY out of my price range  - although, I did say this was a DREAM vacation - but until my kids get older and the trip becomes more feasible, I think I'll put this one on the back burner.

So then, what would the ideal vacation be?  This may sound odd, but here's what has been calling to me lately:  renting a beach house in Maine for a month.  Why does someone who lives in California - the land of beautiful beaches up and down the coast - dream of flying all the way across county to rent a house on the beach in Maine?  Not sure, other than I took a brief trip there about 7 years ago, to see the area where my father was born, and I really liked it.  It had a good vibe.  Seemed like a great place to go in the summer.

Renting the beach house for a whole month is a big key to it all - a week just wouldn't cut it.  I want to settle in, to have time to explore and relax.  I want (it's my dream, remember) my sister and her family to fly out and stay for a week, maybe even discovering more tidbits about our family history.  I want my best friend whom I hardly ever get to see and her family to come up for a week.  Then have my in-laws come for a week if they can, leaving us time in-between all that company to just hang out and regroup.

I want to eat a lobster roll and wash it down with a chilled sauvignon blanc.  I want to take the kids blueberry picking and show them where their Grandfather once lived.  To go bike riding down country lanes and get all sandy and dirty playing on the beach.  Oh yeah, and sit in an adirondack chair on the porch and read (did I mention that stack of books I have? How great would it be to actually make my way through them?)!  Excuse me while I sigh, and dust off my rose-colored glasses - - ah yes, now that sounds like a dream!    

3 Days and Counting

I'm not sure our summer vacation has been going well. No, that’s not true – I thought it HAD - of course it’s only been 3 days, but thus far I thought we had accomplished quite a bit.

We went to the beach one day – a beach we had never been to (being “new” to the area) so in a sense it was exploring a whole new spot.  Playing tag with the waves, building sand castles and miniature towns, even a LONG game of catch, all made for what we thought was a great day at the beach. 

That was yesterday, a day that ended with a playdate with my son’s best friend and brother (their parents went out for a date night and we watched their kids; in a few weeks they’ll return the favor – we’ve only done this a couple times, but I must say it’s a fabulous system).  Unlike the playdate I mentioned earlier (see my previous blog), this one just flowed organically and the kids all had a great time (even my little one – who hung with the older boys for quite a while before going off to happily play on her own). 

So imagine how shocked we were to hear our dear son say that the summer really hadn’t been going as well as he had thought it would.  EXCUSE ME?

Day #1 included an outing to the park, with Grandma along for the ride.  It included Grandma playing ice cream store in the sandbox with them and Mom (me) playing a mean game of catch. (Our future Major Leaguer is really learning how to throw the “heat” and I jumped out of the way as an act of preservation at one point, as the baseball whizzed past me – much to his glee).  We did puzzles together, played a board game or two and even managed to fit in a routine doctor’s visit for hearing and vision testing (their eyes and ears are perfect – so why is it he doesn’t always hear me?  Hmmm). 

Day #2 ended up being fun, but got off to a very rocky start.  I confess I lost it on Friday, putting any aspirations of being a true Zen Mama to shame, and started scolding the kids for their attitudes and behavior.  Sadly, it turned into a rant where I just couldn't stop.  Finally I told them I needed a time out.  It was 95 degrees outside in the shade (and no air conditioning up here anywhere - which I like in theory, having lived in a place where we had to run the air conditioner practically nonstop for several months) and it was brutally hot.  Perhaps I overheated. 

He started getting a bit whiney about the lack of “field trips” so far this summer (field trips = fun outings).  He pushed my buttons, I started feeling bad and thought maybe there was some place we could go – with the prerequisite being that it had to be a COOLER spot to be in (which narrows the selection process down considerably).  She wanted to go to the beach (logical choice on a hot day); he didn't.  But he - being Mr. Verbal - had to go on and on about the 9 reasons why it won't work etc.  It turned into a whole thing. 

I was on the fence - the beach sounded like a lot of work, I didn't really know where to go or have the right stuff to bring (it was all packed away until yesterday).  It's a good 30-minute drive on these narrow, windy mountain roads so not the easiest place to get to.  I wanted to do something fun for them, but he was making it so not fun. 

So, we ended up NOT going (after my big lecture, I had had it) and I spent the afternoon outside watering the garden.  Little one played in the little fort on top of the swing set, but he moped around saying he was bored - because there is NO screen time in the afternoons - and that just made me mad too.  Finally, he came out to help me water, and from there I got the idea to spray water on the slide and make a water slide.  Our very own “Splash Mountain” – or almost.  The “ride” involved me squirting the slide, then being at the bottom to catch them EACH time, because as we found out the first time, a wet slide = a slippery slingshot.  On the test run, he went FLYING off the slide - and through the air too!  Seeing his skinny little body shoot across the yard like a cannonball struck me as hysterical and I couldn't stop laughing - probably a good thing because he was a little taken back and not sure whether to be scared or think about his scraped knee, but with me laughing so hard, he started in too. (ah – another potential crisis averted – thank goodness this Zen Mama Wannabe occasionally has a sense of humor).

Thankfully, our day turned around and they had a lot of fun on my homemade water slide.   The bad news is that it got old for me real fast, like after the 5th or 6th run.  But, I hung with it as long as I could – after all, I was still feeling like I needed to redeem myself – and knew I created a hit when it was ALL they talked about at the dinner table that night.  Who knew we had an potential amusement park in our own backyard??!

Anyway, if I recounted all that we have done so far in our first 3 days of summer vacation, it would sound pretty good - like a fun time was being had; certainly we're not just hanging at home, being vegetables.  So that's why I feel a little out of sorts when I hear him saying it hasn't been a great summer vacation, because I think, "What more do you want??"  Every day can't be Disneyland!!!?!?!!!   

Probably some good lessons here about managing expectations for ALL of us.