Summer Ready

It's that time of year again when blogs start popping up full of helpful ways to keep your children from getting bored this summer. Predictably, some parents are excited to have lazier mornings and relaxed days with the kids home while other parents worry about how to fill the hours and what to do when there is no set schedule. I fall somewhere in between.

This year we have the added complication of planning life for a 7-year-old around naps for a 6-month-old. The older one hasn't taken a nap in years (including most of the cross country trips we've done) and the younger one needs to sleep at least 4 hours during the or he's a zombie. And while we are finally in the land of siblings, they are far from being each other's playmates for hours at this point and we find ourselves in much the same place as last year- looking ahead to long, sunny days with endless opportunities for the older, extroverted child who still has no built-in playmates.

So, in the interest of creating some semblance of a weekly plan for our days ahead, I scoured the internet for calendar ideas. While we have outlawed the word "bored" in our home in exchange for a healthy understanding that "boredom" is really just the lull between one finished opportunity and the next adventure to be had, I recognize that a little guidance in said direction can go a long way.

I came up with the following for us, knowing that there are things on here the older child can be doing while I am feeding the littlest guy and putting him down for naps and there is also some built-in quality time for us while the baby is asleep, which will go a long way for my older guy who definitely thrives on play time with his parents.

I'm going to print this out and laminate it- then we can add in which special activities we'll do each day as well as what's coming up that week in terms of planned time with friends, soccer or zoo camp or people coming to visit. My hope is that with some time spent on Sundays together filling this out with our dry erase marker, we can together choose something fun for each day and anticipate that time while also enjoying some structure and some freedom to the day. I took the idea of the themed days from something I found on the internet and thought it would be helpful to have some direction on one planned activity a day. I also know that we realistically won't always plan or execute something for every day and though I HATE not following through on stuff like that, I'm trying to go into this summer with a realistic view of life with a baby and its call for flexibility.

Here's hoping that my 7-year-old can learn some flexibility, too!