Both my kids are now in school full time, from 8 am to 3 pm.

No, it’s more like

I have recently started participating in activities that I had abstained from in the past due to the pursuit of such activities being an exercise in futility.

What are they?  Oh, you know, stuff like bathing regularly and being able to hear myself think.

I have been immersed in 24/7 child care for so long that seven hours on my own feel awfully strange.

I have to keep reminding myself about tiny details, like that it’s okay to sit down to a meal without having to worry if the boys have had theirs, and that I can now pee with the door completely closed.

And locked.

That last one is still taking some getting used to.

Summer vacation 2015 felt like the long weekend from hell.  Each day was so much like the other that I felt as if we were on constant rewind.

Even my boys were bored out of their minds with so much free time.  The other kids in our neighborhood were either at camp or on vacation.  Sure, we had swimming and karate classes twice a week, but what else is there to do to fill up the many, many hours of radiant sunshine that is summer?

That’s right.  Video games.

And don’t even get me started on the fights that these games caused.

Each morning I would wake up to the sounds of screams and shouts, some excited, some plaintive, some whiny, and some of them combined with tears.  I would stumble my way to the living room like a zombie, still half asleep, the effects of not having gotten enough rest clearly showing in my puffy face.

Blogging?  What blogging?

I am an avid reader/follower of many different, wonderful blogs, and I hate when they don’t get updated for extended periods of time.

Of course, I would never do that, I prided in myself.

Which just goes to prove that it’s easy to blame the chipmunk if the nut has fallen from the tree.

Didn’t get that?  I didn’t either.  I think it’s my summer brain still doing the talking.  Or should I say typing.

But you know what I mean.

Oh, the onslaught to the parental brain that is summer vacation.

And don’t forget its evil sibling, which is the transition from late nights and lazy days to early mornings, parent teacher conferences, PTA meetings, and homework.

Shudders.

No, it’s not that we don’t want to spend time with our kids.

What ever gave you that idea?

It’s just that summer kids are bored kids.  They’re bored kids with bored friends who are so bored that they start thinking up of devilish things to un bore themselves and then they end up not bored, but also not very happy.

Like my 5 year old, who thought it would be fun to go all George of the Jungle on the long living room curtains.

Watch out for that coffee table!

He flew right into it.  On TV, little birds go round and round your head when you crash into something, but in real life, you get a big hole in your chin, where, upon impact with the coffee table, your incisors chewed through your lower lip.

You get blood that looks like a chocolate fountain coming out of your mouth, 3 hours in the ER, and seven stitches.

And you get a momma with severe heart palpitations from the stress.

And that’s not even the worst part.  You want to know what the worst part was?

The worst part was that when they were all backpacked and ready to head out the front door that first day of school, I didn’t want to let my kids go.

That’s right.  Even after this crap fest of a summer, all I wanted that day was to have my sons stay home with me.

Figure that out if you can.

I wanted to diaper them, feed them mush from a jar, and have myself be their go to person for their boo boos, their stories, their meals and their play time.

I wanted them to be my babies forever.

With precious little brains left, I had no time nor energy for creative wording, so I just gave up attempting blog posts during the summer.

And because of that, I forgot the password to my WordPress account.

Late in August, when the reprieve, AKA the first day of school, was right around the corner, I attempted to log in and failed.

Five times.

And now that I’m here, that’s all I had to say.

Hope your kids are enjoying being back in school as much as mine are!