waiting for summer

Today is Friday, June 19.  Wyatt and Quinn and I just finished a nutritious lunch of microwave popcorn.  The boys are now settled into their respective corners watching Nickelodeon.  I'm really tired.  Ross' brother came through this past weekend with antibiotics for us, and after 4 days on amoxicillan, we are finally coming out of the sick fog that surrounded us for nearly three weeks.

Ross was up at 6:00 am today.  It's moving day.  He's been in a temporary office space downtown since December and his new office space was cleared yesterday for move in.  I'm excited to see the space, and excited for him to not wake up so early, having a slightly shorter commute.

You see, I have to be up and in the shower at 6:30 am.  Yes, lots of people get up that early.  Yes, I used to do it all the time.  Just last year I was getting up at 5:30 am to go to the gym.  But, I don't want to do it anymore.  I am tired.  So insanely tired that I cannot even figure out how to stop being tired.

But, I'm up, and dressed and ready for the day by 7:00 am.  I don't dry my hair anymore.  It's long enough that I just let it go all morning and figure out what to do with it later in the day.  I wear hardly any make-up, because I'm lazy.  Lately, it's more of a tinted moisturizer, a little bronzer to hide my pale, and some mascara.  I gave in and bought really expensive (for me) mascara.  It's amazing.  It's the only thing that makes me look even half away.

The boys start waking up.  Wyatt is usually up first, between 6:30-7:15, followed by me blasting Elliott out of bed at 7:30, and Quinn?  He wakes up when he wakes up.  His schedule is a little nutty these days and I'm too lazy to worry about it.  #thirdkid

Once we are all up, it's time to make beds and get dressed and brush teeth and eat breakfast and pack lunches and snacks and review homework or spelling words.  If there is time, the boys play mine craft, watch a tv show, and sometimes stand at the fridge and eat a second breakfast.

We leave at 8:40 in the morning to get the boys to school.  Wyatt is done at Noon, 11:00 am on Fridays.  Elliott finishes at 4:00, 2:00 on Fridays.  Then, a couple days a week we rush home and Elliott changes into his baseball gear while I fix him a snack because he has baseball practice at 4:30.  We rush out the door just in time to get him there.  It's a challenge.  Our goal is to beat a kid named Tacoma.  When he comes, he's always last.  We just don't want to be last.

Why share this schedule on the blog?  Well, because it's June 19th.  My kids still have 9 days of school left.  Then, a very gracious 3 whole weeks off before they start the new school year and new grades on Monday, July 27th.  But, lest you feel bad for our abbreviated summer, the boys only go to school for 3 weeks and then, true to the most horrible schedule of all four year round tracks, they are off again for three weeks, and we have summer number two.

Summer number two is sort of like dinner number two.  Remember that episode of "The Office" where Kevin at two lunches and two dinners?  Well, it's like that.  It's leftovers.  We miss out on cousins and group activities because summer #2 finds everyone back in school mode.  It does leave museums and splash pads and swimming pools empty, which is nice, but it's not summer.

It's summer number two.

Year round school is for the birds.  Particularly, with my children being in a dual immersion Spanish language program, year round school, with it's random breaks in the schedule makes learning Spanish very difficult.  I suppose a lot of people like it, but having two boys who love to be in school makes it a challenge.  It also makes the adjustment to being home for 2 - 4 weeks at a time a challenge as well.  It's June 19 and I am already dreading the month of  November.  My boys don't go to school the entire month of November.

And bedtimes.  Last night, at 9:00 pm, we were desperately trying to get the big boys to bed.  "But its not dark outside" said Wyatt.  "I don't have to go to bed if it's not dark outside", both boys said, almost in unison, mocking their exhausted parents.  Those boys got chased up the stairs with threats of wet willies and wedgies, their teeth brushed and their butts in bed.  Elliott, as per usual was out lie a light.  He does that.  He plays hard all day and crashes.  Wyatt, as often happens, has a harder time falling asleep and needed his dad to hold his hand and sing him a song.  Quinn?  He was watching Scooby Doo in his room because bed time doesn't apply to a kid who wakes up from a random late nap at 6:00 in the evening.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel.  Our school district has announced that they will be phasing out year round school.  Oh, I hope that it happens for us first.  I hope that it happens when my kids are young enough to want to do stuff with me, and not just find friends to ride their bikes around aimlessly with all day.  I hope it happens in the next two years.

There is a chance.

A small chance.

Until then, we will impatiently be waiting for summer.

Me waiting more impatiently than everyone else.