This little food-y murder scene showed up on my bedroom floor a few weeks ago. I walked over it about 7 or 28 times before it caught my full attention. How long had it been there? Lord knows.

Throw this starchy vegetable massacre at me in early November and I would most likely put together an all-hands-on-deck-this-means-business-no-more-corn-until-your-hair-is-gray family lecture.* It would be accompanied by charts communicating the location of trash cans in our home (one of them actually opens for you when you walk near it, making it virtually impossible to not be aware of it’s location) and graphs showing the percentage of delicious, golden kernels that can reasonably be left on a cob to be deemed ‘complete’. The proper answer is zero percent so imagine with me a slice-less pie graph, a bar-less bar graph and the like.

BUT, catch me in late July aaaaaaand it’s kind of awesome.

In place of a lecture, I go all ‘Ron Burgundy’ on my kids. “What? You pooped in the playhouse, flushed six dimes and a Shopkin, AND you managed to dig this out of the fridge then drop it like it’s hot on my bedroom floor?! Heck, I’m not even mad; that’s amazing.”

In truth, I tend to think I’m going to hold it together during the three months when our hemisphere takes a bow to the sun. I spend the several weeks prior dreaming up plenty of routines and schedules like ‘Make Something Monday’ & ‘Time to Read Tuesday’–I mean, if that doesn’t scream “This will be the summer of your dreams!” I don’t know what does. Gag. me.

And then, without fail it happens. The mid-summer switch flips.

A time of year when schedules go out the dirty window, daily fruits and vegetables are replaced by 1st popsicle and 2nd popsicle, and “educational play time” turns into straight-up screen time (because watching Daniel Tiger is basically the same as going to school and church at the same time, am I right?!)

Aside from the example pictured above, there have been multiple happenings in the last month that are only further proof of this phenomenon taking place.

Here is the condensed list:

• I stopped wiping faces. I swear my kids have tan lines in the shape of crumbs and milk mustaches.

 

• My son pulled his Spider-Man skivvies down to his ankles and peed in the middle of the yard. At the neighborhood yard sale. And at a BBQ. And at every park this side of the Mississippi.

 

• I was making the kids PB&J for lunch yesterday and, after spreading the peanut butter, realized we were out of jam. I unashamedly subbed it with this. 

 

• One or more of us showed up shoeless at the following locations:
  • Costco
  • Coffee shop
  • Church
  • The hardware store (where ALL things sharp are just waiting to be stepped on)
  • More birthday parties than I can count

 

• Going swimming = Taking a bath

 

• One of the chores on our daily chart is to clean the playroom. It has looked like this for about one trillion days. (Not pictured: sippy cup of spoiled chocolate milk on the play kitchen. Because I wanted to walk away from this post with the teensiest bit of dignity.)

 

I could go on, but I’ll spare you.

All of this to say, post mid-summer switch is good. It’s stinkier, sweatier, sidewalk chalkier than regular ol’ summer and I truly think it’s where some of the best memories are made.

 

Much Love,

Kylie

 

*If my children take after their father, they would be ready to partake of corn again at age 16. Sorry, Love. I had to.