What Keeps Me Up At Night: Summer Sentiments From The Mind Of A Mom

On the way to camp drop off Monday morning, coming off an epic (but exhausting!) long holiday weekend- in some ways worse for the wear, but in most ways, so grateful for every crazy moment.

I didn’t expect this summer to be an emotional roller coaster for me, but it totally has been so far. And I think last night. while once again tossing and turning between the hours of 2 to 4am, I started to figure it out.

IT GOES SO FAST.

It’s like, July 4 is behind us, is the next THING back-to-school? Which means Alexa starts 3rd grade and Goldie will begin her last year of preschool and OMG then what if Alexa actually goes to sleep-away camp for 7 weeks next summer and then Goldie goes to Kindergarten and HOLY SH@T what are Brian and I going to talk about when they go off to college and we have an empty house and wait, what am I going to wear to their weddings and….

You get it. Right?

Next, the panic spirals me into “overly ambitious super mom” mode- at which point I reach for my phone and scroll through the dregs of the Internet to find day trips or easy weekend getaways or music concerts or ANYTHING that I can put on the calendar to do with the girls and soak up every second with them while I still have them, for the most part, captive. (Well, Alexa is all about playdates and such but without a phone to make her own plans, or a car to get to said plans, I still have a leg up…And I know the clock is ticking FAST on that…cue another sleepless night in the near future…)

Then, morning rolls around and, due to a combination of too little sleep and my general lack of patience/quick fuse with things like sunscreen refusal and “MOM MOM MOM!” noise (working on this, but Rome wasn’t built in a day…or 8.5 years…), the sentiments that had me teary eyed a mere 5 hours earlier feel like ancient relics.

Fast forward to the afternoon, when I am out shopping for water shoes for Alexa while our wonderful nanny picks Goldie up from camp. As I peruse the kids section filled with little sparkly sneakers that light up when you jump and cringe-worthy sandals emblazoned with Disney characters, I experience a sudden sensation that is almost like a punch in the gut, but instead of a fist, it is a flood of detailed memories buying similar styles for Alexa when she was 3 and watching her bounce up and down the stairs for hours, and taking the girls to shoe shopping in Greenwich with pockets full of quarters so they could go on the dinky little horse ride inside the store over and over and over again- each time just as exciting as the one before.

Part of me wants to forget the shoe mission and hightail over to Goldie’s camp in time to pick her up myself, and then watch her do the monkey bars over and over again until it is time to be the first in line for Alexa’s pick up, and then go to the beach and eat ice cream and french fries and play in the sand.

But part of me knows I need to get these shoes- and it will be so much easier to shop without the girls in tow- and I have a couple work things to finish up in peace and quiet before the girls get back to the house, and oh yeah, I will probably get in a tiffle with Lex about applying enough sunscreen and then Goldie will want a second ice cream and I’ll get snippy and….

Ugh. This motherhood thing is a total rollercoaster, huh? Feel free to chime in with a comment- it will give me something to read tonight at 3am when I can’t sleep. xx JF