My summer, all summer, every summer

Day 0, evening: I think to myself, "Boy, the kids seem pretty tired from the weekend travels and running around. We'll just stay home tomorrow."

Day 1: morning: I try to get up early so I have some quiet time and can get a little school work or writing done before too many kids are up. When they get up like 12 minutes later, we begin a cycle of nursing, changing diapers, pouring milk and juice, making five different breakfasts, cleaning up and picking up (forever, always), helping with crafts that require an ungodly amount of glue and yarn, untangling yarn, playing outside, googling "how to make a tin can phone," helping make a tin can phone, trying an experiment with milk and soap and food coloring, helping find a library book, getting morning snacks, putting Mary Cate down for a nap. I look at the clock, and it's 9:30.

And it continues that way for most of the day. We're trying, with some actual success, to cut back on screen time. But even the maximum recommended two hours leaves roughly 14 hours hanging out together. That's a pretty long time. So by 4:00 the kids are picking on each other and they're bored and there's conflict to manage and they're talking to me all at the same time which makes my head feel like it's full of bees, and I haven't had one full thought in 6 weeks.

So I think to myself, "That's it. We need to get out of the house. Tomorrow we'll run errands/go to the park/visit the library/do some grocery shopping/go swimming/visit Kevin/work at the Holly Way house/go to the home improvement store/do something."

Day 2, morning - nope, noon: "Why did I think this was a good idea? We do not need to get out of the house. WE HAVE NO BUSINESS GETTING OUT OF THE HOUSE."

Because it is ridiculously difficult getting out of the house. I honestly do not understand how we can be ready and out the door for school by 7:15 but when there's no hard deadline, we are always--no exaggeration--running two hours later than expected. It comes down to the fact that an outing requires all five kids to be dressed, awake, and wearing shoes. That seems pretty simple, except that: Mary Cate takes two naps (and we discovered the naps are important to keep her from waking up every half hour all night), Annie sleeps until 10:00 if we let her, shoes are never in a normal location, while I'm finding one kid's shoes another goes potty for which they remove their pants and shoes, so then I have to locate them (again), while walking to the car one kid plays in the water table and needs a new shirt...and so on. And then there's the stuff--wallet, phone, diapers, drinks, snacks, maybe sunscreen and bug spray. I don't think we made it out of the driveway once without running back and forth to the house four times and lots of frustration on my part (sorry, kids.)

The outings are generally fun, though. Always rather tiring in an adventurous kind of way. (As I've said before, the grocery store is a genuine adventure with a posse of kids.)

Day 2, evening: "Definitely need to stay home tomorrow."

And repeat.