School’s out for summer…and I am excited! It’s kind of like Christmas, so excited for it to come, enjoy all the fun things, then ready to say goodbye until next year. In the past, I have overthought summer a LOT. Do we have a schedule? No schedule? Theme weeks? School work? No school work? I’ve had summers where I’ve been so pregnant and literally just survived. Last year was just a whole different kind of summer that none of us had ever experienced.
Our kids (and us moms) are all coming off a school year that was just, well, one for the books. It was my hardest year of motherhood yet. All things considered, it wasn’t any one or two big things that made it hard, it was just a lot of little things. I felt like I was crawling a bit to the school finish line. Over the last couple of weeks I have done a lot of thinking about the kind of summer I want my kids (and myself!!) to have and I have decided to have myself a FUN MOM SUMMER.
What does a fun mom summer look like for me? Well, actually, “fun mom” isn’t the first title I’d give myself. I’m pretty practical, logical, and regimented so sometimes I have to work for my fun, ha. But I’m going to work hard at it this summer!
First, set some boundaries. For me this looks like setting up checkpoints during the day. Summer days can be So. Long. Especially when the summer heat really sets in. Checkpoints help move the days along. Things like a morning checklist, lunch time, quiet/rest time, activity time, etc. I want to be a fun mom but I’m also an introvert mom, so I need to know there is time in my day where I can be quiet and alone. If I don’t know where that time is, I get anxious. So I pencil it in every day. Then I’m free to be fun mom at the designated times!
Second, just do it. Sometimes getting four kids out the door to the park, or the pool, or the zoo, etc., is pretty dang hard work. But I just remind myself that once we’re out the door it’ll be worth it. I’m going to work on saying yes and being more spontaneous. My wise seven-year-old son once told me, “Mom, sometimes I don’t feel like going somewhere and I think it won’t be fun. But then I just do it and it actually is really fun.” I heard one of my favorite influencers, Emily Ley, once say that memories take work. And they sure do. I think I’ll look back at the times during my Fun Mom Summer where I just did it and be glad I did.
Third, positive momentum. Sometimes, I catch myself often thinking to myself, it’s been a really hard year for me, when I want to give myself a hard time for something. I’m prioritizing saying that this was a really hard year for my kids. And they need a Fun Mom Summer. Another favorite influencer, Ralphie from Simply on Purpose consistently talks about building positive momentum. So I’m not going to sweat the small stuff, I’m going to find the good, and we are going to have some fun.
Seriously, after this past year, I just want to have some FUN. At home, at the pool, on the road. Will there be not fun days (guaranteed…today was a doozy in my house, in fact). But I want to look back at this summer, somewhat-post-pandemic, and say, “Wow, I was a really FUN mom”.
