Summer fun?

Oh how to approach scheduled writing time when my head is still reverberating like a gong from all this mornings fun? The only way I know, with the truth, and here it is folks. I am not a joyful mama. What I mean by that is that all the super fun activities that I have placed on my (things good moms are supposed to do to facilitate good summers and happy childhoods) checklist, turn out to be excruciating misery. I envy, oh how I envy those mamas who can bask by the pool with five littles in tow, and get dirty on the beach, and participate in water fights, and forgo schedules to linger into the evening, and get home exhausted and say, that was a blast. That my friends, is how I envision those things when I write them on the list, but in fact, the execution of them feels as though I were trying plan a complex heist with substandard evil minions.

Today: the park. Can't be that hard, right? First, my children behave as though they have never before left the house, and therefore do not know that they will need such things as footwear and jackets.  They have also clearly forgotten that public bathrooms are icky nasty disgusting and must be avoided at all costs. While I am trying to facilitate the assembly of gear, bodies, and preemptive potty trips, the smallest is, as usually hatching an escape attempt. Everyone has now put on their muddiest boots and traipsed through the house back and forth as many times as possible.  We are late.  I am flustered.

But, it will be fine. My oldest, responsible child has promised me that she will stay with her brother in the little play area so that I can focus on bible study.  That, my friends, was a marketing ploy, engineered to lull me into a false sense of security about choosing the park. Small son is thus abandoned to his own devises to demonstrate that he has more guts that brains. Boys. He does this in front of Baylie's next year preschool teacher, to make my stellar motherhood public. There are tears, though fortunately, none of them are mine....yet. The bible study is like turrets syndrome, I try to focus on my friend, but, my son's life is at this stage, basically a series of escape attempts, so I holler, and when that inevitably produces nothing but feigned deafness on the part of my children, I run after my son mid conversation, repeatedly.

By the time it is time for lunch, my son needs a nap, but he wants to keep playing, or at the very least, do some open mouthed kissing with the strange dog nearby. Anything but sit still and eat. Middle child has applesauce all over her pants and has set her spoon down in the grass.  I am sure strange afore mentioned dog or it's predecessors have peed there. I can't think about it. My son is contemplating investigating the vroom vroom cars in traffic.  Picnics are fun. Yay.

We have not really accomplished lunch, but we cut our losses and wrestle smallest urchin into the car kicking and screaming, which he does all the way home, and beyond.  I sarcastically thank largest urchin for all of her help. The doctors office calls to reschedule Levi's appointment, but, from all the screaming in the background, they can tell this is not a good time. They are very perceptive. If we do not nap soon there will be more tears, and they will be mine.

I want so badly for my children's childhoods to be filled with memories, where their mom was not uptight, but my exhausted brain can not compute how to execute my list without it being just another thing to check off. Our bible study is about fighting back with joy. I know enough now to understand, my perspective changes everything, but I do not know how to translate this into reality, not amid the bad attitudes and the meltdowns about shoes. I am blessed.  I know it.  I see it, but sometimes I don't know how to live like it. I want to dig in, burrow down in my hobbit hole where we are cushioned by routine, but what can you do when you have kids but try again? Instead, we will dig out. I will seek the secret to joy on the go. Each item on the list will be an experiment in joy. God must certainly be as sovereign at the park and the beach as he is in our very own cozy cookie carton, so I pray I will learn to find him there, among the germs and old gum, and that he will be larger to me than they.