Alas—Relinquishing My Duties as Summer Mommy Extraordinaire

Don’t get me wrong—I love my children. I can hug them and squeeze them and kiss them all day long. They are spoiled rotten by a doting mother who loves them to pieces.

Like many of you, part of my job as Summer Mommy Extraordinaire is to come up with ideas for the day, because, quite frankly, it’s mandatory in my summertime line of work. The question “Mommy, what are we doing today?” is inevitable every morning as we eat breakfast and watch another rerun of “Sponge Bob,” my daughter’s favorite. It’s my responsibility to come up with the daily summer game plan.

You see, if I’d known the full scope of the job description of Summer Mommy Extraordinaire, I would have prepared a little better. No one trains you to be part manager, chauffeur, caddie (yes, I carry their crap everywhere), domestic engineer, chef superb, playmate (and I don’t mean one of Hef’s, though if that were part of the job description, I would not have qualified), innovator, tutor, and disciplinarian.

By the end of August, we’re all done. We’ve played, we’ve swum, we’ve had a Dominoes competition, we’ve vacationed, the kids have visited their grandparents, I’ve encouraged them to write an essay and read, and now, we are left twiddling our thumbs.

My son and daughter are both changing schools this year. This may make some kids nervous; mine are anxiously excited.

“What should I wear on the first day?” my son has asked me. This is unbelievably ironic coming from a kid who, most of the time, can be found in Under Armour shorts and shirts. I fight with him about clothes more than I do with my daughter.

“I’m excited to ride a bus,” my daughter said. Okay. That’s not so bad. I’ll take that, though I’d really like to hear her say something like, “I can’t wait for my teacher to show me how to conjugate verbs, diagram modifiers, and learn more about fractions.” But we take what we can get.

We have reached the end of summer. Our brains have turned to mush. We haven’t thought much about anything but tennis and baseball lessons, hanging out with our friends, enjoying being outside, visiting with family, and playing with our Harry Potter wands (“Stupify!”) as we plowed through all the movies over the course of our summer break.

It’s time to go back to school and get those brain cells moving again. My duties as Summer Mommy Extraordinaire must be shelved. Stick a fork in me; I’m done.

For now.

Because it won’t be long until we hear those hair-raising words again in ten short months: “Mommy, what are we doing today?”

Next year, I’ll be more prepared.

Yeah. Sure.