Have you seen it? I dunno where it started, prob in a meme on the Martha Stewart website the ‘18 summers with your children ‘movement’? Bucket lists of expectation, sickly sweet sentiment pressure and instagram sodding perfection, I don’t buy it!!
While I may make the odd joke about surviving the summer, mainly on my Facebook page, I have to admit I’m not really in the hate it, lets drink gin camp either. I’m the inbetween… A preachy social media post about making every day of motherhood count will always be met with an eye roll from me. Don’t get me wrong I have even used the term ‘bucket list’ in a post before but, when it comes to the summer holidays , I pretty much just focus on getting from point A to point B with limbs still intact… of course we will make memories along the way, maybe I’ll shout too much, and the kids will remember that time mama lost her shit in a National Trust car park, maybe they’ll remember the beautiful day on the beach skimming stones, …. memories of my own childhood blur and fade into fussy snapshots of time, I certainly don’t remember the day to day….memory itself is bias and depends entirely on your disposition in life. My children’s personalities will decide how they view their childhood experiences far more than if I savoured the moment or not. Why pressure yourself? A few small outings? A little task a day.
Maybe it’s having my husband home that helps with the isolation that I know many mothers feel in the summer ? I’ve written before how the school holidays feel like a different life to us, a parallel universe where I get a lie in some days and we suddenly realise how much more productive we could be if my husband didn’t actually work – obviously we would be on the breadline if this were true though because I bring in mere crumbs.
Every summer I find myself torn between making those bucketlist memories and gettting shit done in the house! More often than not hubby and I procrastinate then cram an entire summers worth of outings into one final week, this year however something is different, maybe it’s because for once I’m not pregnant, or working myself…. we are doing more together as a family unit. Sure, the chores are divided at home and I need my usual re-nesting when we return from outings (that when you feel socialised out and wanna camp in pjs in the house to recover) but, between the days to ‘not a lot’ and chores, we are going out as a family. Not these back to back days of activities that I’m reading about other parents doing, just us going for a walk or a little trip away between pj days and puzzle fights, an odd treat in conjunction with the ‘you have a garden/playroom/sibling, you can’t be bored or hungry’ conversations.
It was a few years ago that Scott mentioned In The Night Garden Live. More than likely Ernie had been watching something on YouTube and there, sandwiched between Baby Shark and The Duck song was a family vlog on the show. My husband signed up to the mailing list and periodically updated me on the tours, where they were, when they were ending etc. Unfortunately we live in the South West, which basically means, that unless it’s The Wurzels, you’re not gonna get much beyond Bristol, so we saved and prayed the boy wouldn’t grow out of his Iggle Piggle phase. Finally the opportunity came, we booked an Air bnb in the Wye Valley so as not to stay in a city centre hotel with the kids, and we made our way to Birmingham to meet the big blue man himself.
Yes I know it’s commercial, yes we even wore themed outfits, but it was worth it to see Ernie’s face especially.
