Summertime Blues

Have I mentioned how this Summer is eating me alive?  If I ever in all my childhood told my mother I was bored, I repent most fervently now.  (Though I don't think I did that much, I was a fairly self-contained low-key child.) God, in all of His good-humor, thought I needed to learn about boredom.  So He sent me Sir O, the bellicose.

Sheesh.  A little overkill, wasn't that?



But despite the admitted inevitable futility of our attempts, we keep coming up with things to do.  I am the queen of arts of crafts - all of which are rejected after one or two rounds.  We fit in outings when we're feeling brave or can borrow an extra pair of supervisory hands.

I find I am so much more than outnumbered these days.  I'm like an ant in a tsunami half of the time.  And the other half I am playing catch-up, trying to remind everyone inside the house that everyone outside of the house is holding me accountable for their shenanigans, even and especially when I have no control over them.

This is Sir O at my little sister's final/Senior Ballet recital.  I've been trying to take him on dates to  get him used to the idea of behaving himself in public.  He seems to mistake the purpose of these outings to be an exercise in stressing his mother out.  I'm going to be stubborn and keep trying.

Oh, the messes at my house.  My kids are gross, I'm just going to say it.  I am the only thing standing between them and a major cockroach infestation.  Luckily, from what I can tell most kids are gross, and would happily live in total squalor.  There are a great many moms run as ragged as me.

Ah Bunny, the squishiness.  Just stay this way forever and ever, okay?

The Captain has decided I need more learning curve than just the anxiety and belligerence of Sir O.  His apraxia has been pushing lots of buttons lately.  The list just keeps growing of seemingly small things that are going to be "issues", possibly forever more.  Piled all together they begin to look formidable.  I need to sit down and process that in a post soonish.

chopping block and life when you're the fourth

So - as she approaches 8 months old, Bunny's hair was becoming a struggle.




She had rubbed so much of it off, and it was growing in so light - it was looking scragglier by the day.  I was finally resigned to giving her a real hair cut.






When I had my first haircut, being an oldest child, it was a production.  Lots of pictures taken before, during, and after.  I'm sure I had my mother's undivided attention throughout the entire process.  Alas, Bunny is the fourth child.  And her first haircut went something like this:

I scheduled haircuts for all of my boys on the evening Mr Renn has to work late.  I asked if we could squeeze Bunny in there too.  To clean her up a bit and de-scraggle her as much as possible. We headed over to our hair lady's house with my 12 year old cousin to help out, we are always a traveling circus.

Because Sir O was being especially ornery that day (and every day this summer) I bribed him into going first.  Then our congenial Gentleman was begging to go next.  And just as his haircut was wrapping up, the Captain peed all over the nice hair lady's sofa.  He hasn't had an accident in 6 months.  Of course I was unprepared for that, so I sequestered him in their bathroom, and ran home for a change of clothes and our carpet cleaner.

And so it worked out that instead of even being present for Bunny's first haircut, I was running home and back and cleaning up pee.  And when she emerged all pixi-fied I was quite melancholy.  Not because I didn't like her haircut, but because I missed it.

But you know what, hair is just hair.  And hair grows.  And Bunny hasn't a clue that she looks any different.  Nor should she.  Nothing that's real has changed.  Nothing that lasts has changed.  And she has plenty of bows.

swallow me whole

Summer has proven to be a much brawnier thing than I am.  I don't stand a chance against the great swaths of unstructured time with so many strong willed mini-men and nobody but me to impose order or structure or civility in any form.  I am kept on my feet from morning until night just putting out fires and tidying up after the fire-starters.  Moments to myself are alarmingly rare.  And so it goes.



I may or may not be counting down the days until 1st grade begins for Sir O.  Or the days until all my kids move out and my house will stay clean for long enough to be worth cleaning.  Except I know I will miss all this busy chaos.  It's awfully alive over here.  The pace is exhausting, but the innocent narcissistic energy with an electric hum is pretty fantastic, in its way.

Still, naps?!  Magic erasers?! Oxyclean?!  Mighty Mini Popsicles, carpet cleaner solution by the gallon, ikea art smocks, the thousands of times in a week I am yelling "Where are your shoes?!",  The hundreds of meals I've made that nobody is willing to eat, the many nights that I have pint-sized visitors around 2am, library outings, playing in the sprinklers, toting reluctant kids to and from swimming lessons, and forever feeling guilty that we aren't fitting more music practice into the crazy organic form our days take.  And when to write?



Mosquito bites, sunscreen, a million items lost and half of them found again, deadheading the rosebushes, watering the flowers, harvesting from our own garden, birdwatching at breakfast, the kitchen floor wars, not to mention the boy's bathroom revolt, lots of discouraging late night conversations about whether/how we will ever have a home of our own, fair quantities of shattered glass, Sir O riding the pink bike I got when I was 7 or 8, sending the older boys out with magnifying glasses and watching them figure out on their own how to fry bugs, watching Bunny start popping out teeth like a pez dispenser.



And a fair amount of headaches and backaches and ubiquitous sleep-deprivation pain.




Full, fragmented, crazy, wonderful, exhausting Summer.