School's Out For Summer

After a total roller coaster of a summer break, I can hardly believe school starts back up in one week.

This has by far been the longest, most eventful summer holiday ever! We took Fifi and Lolly out of school/nursery two weeks before the end of term in June. Since then, we moved to another country, had a 'two-week holiday' with Scott's mum here, lived with my mom for another month after that, Scott applied for and got a job, and we moved into our own house. One more week of holidays, and school will start for Fifi. It's been such a long, emotional, busy, stressful and exciting summer for all of us.

When we arrived, and had all the time in the world, we made all these plans for things we would do. We wanted to make this an exciting time for the kids, to help them transition. We made it to the zoo and a cave and the cinema and bowling, but there are still tons of things I'd still like to do with the kids before I run out of time.

Today, I'm taking them bowling again. I subscribed to a Kids Bowl Free thing that gives us all two free games every day until October 31st. We've only been two or three times, so I need to step it up to enjoy the promotion. I'd love to take them back to the zoo, too, and to Heifer Village and the local water park.

Despite our efforts, I don't feel like I've given the kids a very relaxing summer. It's probably just Mummy Guilt, I know, but with all the emotional stresses of moving twice in six weeks and looking for jobs and missing friends, I've been overly snippy and tired and cranky. As much as I wanted to make this move as smooth as possible for the kids, it's been hard all around to keep tempers from flying and the stress from bubbling over.

I guess it's probably been okay from their perspective. It's just that everywhere I go, all I hear and read is about how we parents are messing up our kids emotionally with our imperfections. It's like we better be perfect human beings who never get frazzled, angry, tired, grumpy, busy, stressed or hurried or we will damage their frail developing souls and cause lasting trauma from which they will never heal.

I get the point, but I wonder if the people who say these things are actually robots who have only robot children.

I keep having to remind myself that my brothers and I grew up with normal parents who lost their tempers, were busy with chores, got worn out, made us play outside so they could get some peace and sometimes even - gasp - punished us, and for the most part, we all turned out fairly unscathed...

So I'm just going to remind myself - and anyone else who feels the same - right now that just the fact that we do worry about damaging our kids and that we make the effort to build them up as best as we can, has to mean that we are doing something right. Our kids, in fact, probably are pretty happy. I'll keep trying to do better, but I am saying No to The Guilt.

And I'm going to love my last week with the wee rascals.