The Last Day of Summer

Today was the last day of summer break for my children.   We’ve told them it’s the last day before school, prepared them for the start of school, helped them understand things will be more regimented in the coming weeks and have generally set  expectations for how things will change starting tomorrow.   I’m not sure they really get it though.

Their lives are fraught with change and they handle it all reasonably well.   They aren’t particularly in tune with what it means to be “summer break” so they’re not overly upset it’s going to be over.  It’s also been nice that we’ve been to multiple birthday parties and school events in the past week at which my children have seen their school friends.    Given the past week’s events, I hope the start of school goes well for everyone.

Tomorrow both children understand they are required to come downstairs wearing clothes they’ve selected for school.   In the case of my son, there is an additional requirement that he wear underpants (he prefers to go without.)   When they are downstairs and dressed, they will be served breakfast.   They have been told they will be having school day breakfasts, and not weekend breakfasts.   This mostly means no pancakes, but it sets the tone for meals.

There will be no iPad.   During the school week iPad time is only available on weekends.  Right now I don’t think they’ll really care at all about this because they’ve been so involved with their back yard neighbor friends they haven’t been inside enough to ask or even care.

My husband and I are looking forward to the start of the school year.  I’ll have to report back here on how things are going in a week or so.

The Big Boy Update:  My son made a small friend at the pool yesterday.   I’m not sure the little boy wanted to be friends, but my son was in one of those, “I’m going to get all up in your personal space because I think you really want to be my friend because in truth, I really want to be your friend.”   The father was pretty cool about it, even though I think the smaller boy was fairly overwhelmed at times by my son.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  At an outdoor birthday party today I asked where the bathroom was at the site the party was being held at.   She said, “it’s just inside that door.   The bathrooms are pretty fancy here.”   As my daughter and I walked in I said, “this is a posh bathroom.”   She said to me, “I don’t see posh.   Is the posh on the floor?”

Fitness Update:  I went for a bike ride with my neighbor this morning.   She hasn’t done a lot of riding in many years so she wanted to see if she liked riding.   What she had done over the past few years was a lot of biking with young children, moving at the speed of four- and six-year-olds, which is no way to find out if you like riding a bike yourself because you hardly go anywhere.   We biked nine miles, including going into the park and on some trails.   She liked it and said she thought she could easily go for longer next time.    Then after dinner tonight, I got specially dressed and minimally prepared and went to the pool on my bicycle.   I swam 1.5 km, got out, put on my shoes and helmet and biked five miles.   I wanted to see how tired I was after the swim and what the transition was like going from swimming to biking.   For the first mile, my body was unhappy about the whole change-up.   It was telling me I was “so very tired” but it was a ruse, a lie—I was fine.   After three miles I was ready to go further but it was time to get back and put the kids to bed.   Good to know I could make the transition without difficulty.