Endings, Beginnings, and the Summer Crazies

So Harper and I were both finished with school last Thursday. The "big kids" (read: not preschoolers) had one more day to go on Friday, but the teacher I was subbing for had to come back for that last day so I bowed out with Harper.

The end of the school year has always felt bitter-sweet to me. I felt it as a student, as a teacher, and now as a parent. I still track life on a school calendar, do non-teacher people do this? Now that Harper has started in school I know that each "last day" is another step toward the end of her childhood. And while I'm having so much fun watching her growing and learning it is sunrise-sunset sad at the same time.

(AND we still have another year before kindergarten for her - which seems not quite right somehow. I don't want to rush her and in my teaching experiences I have NEVER seen a child and thought that a mistake was made in NOT sending them early. I would advise anyone in our same situation to go ahead and wait and give their child time.)

There are lots of things about the summer I'm looking forward to, but I was having a difficult time remembering them this morning when Harper planted herself six inches from my ear and started repeating, "I don't know what to do-oo, I don't know what to do-oo," over and over again. AND THEN proceeded to shoot down every suggestion I had with, "Definitely not that!"

Anyone want to board a bonus four-year-old for a few weeks???

Michael and Harper also have more time to play together now that Harper is finished with school. And by play I mean Harper teases Michael until he hurls himself at her in a screaming open-mouth head-butt/attempt to bite. It is actually, possibly, perhaps just a tiny bit funny to witness, but I sure wish I could press the mute button on that particular pastime because the sound level of that activity is set about thirteen-notches above tolerable.

It's all fun and games until Mommy's ear drums bleed!

So here we were on what is technically the fourth day of summer vacation and I had called my friend Chris by about ten this morning to beg for a play date as someone (me) was surely going to have a psychotic break if we didn't leave the house. She graciously opened her doors to us, the kids played for a while, and then we came home and both of mine took naps, amen.

I've already scheduled another friend for tomorrow. Swimming lessons begin on Thursday. And I am high-tailing it to Chicago for a girls' weekend with one of my best college friends before she gets married in the fall. I think we'll survive the summer, but I don't know, I may not be sorry when those yellow school buses rev up in mid-August...