I hate summer. I said it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not just the season itself \u2013 hello, Georgia\u2019s six months of torture \u2013 but the sheer logistics of it. Whoever sold us this vision of carefree childhood summers clearly never worked from home with three kids at that interim age where they\u2019re too old for daycare but too young to drive, hold a job, or disappear into a cloud of teenage independence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
My reality looks less like lemonade stands and more like a NASA launch schedule. Camps, camps, and more camps chew up a few hours of the day, but of course, never the right hours. Drop-offs at 9 a.m. when I\u2019m supposed to be reading emails, pick up at 2 p.m. when I\u2019m knee-deep in meetings. A week off between sessions that I try to fill with positivity and suggestions for entertainment, only to be met with sibling squabbles, too much screen time, and me grinding my teeth at my desk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I spend my June and July (and the last and first weeks of May and August, respectively) behind the wheel, shuttling the kids from one camp to the next with visions of money flying out the back of my Tahoe. These camps are not cheap, especially not the ones with the \u201cgood\u201d hours. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So logistically, I\u2019m already breaking. My work productivity is a staggering start and stop with an ever-growing to-do list. But then, there\u2019s the unspoken pressure to make it all magical. To give my kids a summer they\u2019ll never forget. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
While everyone else is seemingly ferrying off to summer vacations, I\u2019m over here trying to remember which camp is what week for whom and packing endless lunches, snacks, and water bottles so I can crank out a few hours of work a day, the money I could be using for vacations funneled into the pockets of the summer camp barons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I weep. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s chaos. And not the fun kind \u2013 the kind that stretches on week after week until it starts to wear down my sharp edges and I feel myself shrinking. I am not my best self when I\u2019m juggling long work hours, unpredictable schedules, and the emotional whiplash of kids who are somehow both restless and lazy. Togetherness stops feeling like a warm embrace and starts feeling like a small box with no opening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I look at them, gangly legs, messy hair, sweat beading on their brows, and I see it. They\u2019re free. They\u2019re happy. Rooted. I remember my summers moving around as a child. Going from state to state \u2013 new schools, new neighborhoods, never quite settling in. Summer for me was upheaval versus my children\u2019s controlled chaos. And I think I know which I prefer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
These months with my kids, chaotic as they are, are anchored in something steadier. I get to watch them stretch their wings in little ways; ways that I couldn\u2019t growing up. So even the boring days count. Even the bickering ones. Even the endless car rides to yet another camp, where they fight over song selections on Spotify \u2013 they count. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yes, I hate summer. But love and hate aren\u2019t mutually exclusive here. There\u2019s room for both. I might not be the Summer Solstice Mary Poppins. I might not have the time or the budget to make every moment fun-filled and sun-speckled. But I hope they remember the freedom, the opportunity to be bored, the room to roam, and realize that’s a particular kind of magic in and of itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n[mailerlite_form form_id=13]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I hate summer. I said it. Not just the season itself \u2013 hello, Georgia\u2019s six months of torture \u2013 but the sheer logistics of it. Whoever sold us this vision of carefree childhood summers clearly never worked from home with three kids at that interim age where they\u2019re too old for daycare but too young […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":948,"featured_media":227831,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_featured_image_position":"large","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18078],"tags":[9567,10109],"class_list":["post-227830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-inconvenient-truths","tag-parenting","tag-summer","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/948"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=227830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=227830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=227830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=227830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}