After finally feeling relief from May‘s shenanigans, I was finally feeling like I was ready for summer.
What we thought was our last trip to the laundromat, wound up not being our last. After the pipe was fixed and I was elated to finally do laundry at home…our dryer decided to stop working. Luckily we were able to get one within a few days, but the laundry pile certainly didn’t stop accumulating. I am just glad everything worked out in the end. Hopefully the shenanigans are behind us for awhile. Knock on wood.
We celebrated our oldest son’s 8th birthday this month with a Fortnite themed water extravaganza. We had water guns, water balloons, and I turned the front yard into a battle zone. Along with all of that, I made some treasure chests and drop boxes, just like they have in the game. For the first time ever, we invited school friends to his party; 4 wound up coming of the 7 he invited. They had so much fun! After the majority of people left we wound up having a bonfire with smores. The kids always love that! Two of the friends wound up staying the night, along with my nephew. That was quite the experience as we have never had friends over before. I was beginning to wonder why did I ever allow this to happen, but the kids were so happy.
We took the kids to the splash park the following Monday. It was a spontaneous decision; I really just needed to get out of the house. The splash park was busy, I think there was either a summer camp or a daycare there. The older boys wound up making a few friends to play water wars with. At one point, one of these kids kept throwing his shoes in the bucket that dumps and got it stuck inside of it. Chris had Pickle get on his shoulders (with my assistance in getting him up there) to reach the bucket and luckily got the shoe out. Woohoo! The kid thanked Chris and said, “thank you so much. My mom’s punishment would have been to never have my computer again. So thank you, thank you so much.” I guess it’s a good thing he got his shoes back haha.
My mental health has really been struggling this month. It impacted my sleep A LOT, which then impacts literally everything else. I was in this terrible place for a weeks time. But, I am safe and I am still here.
After I was finally feeling somewhat better, I started meal planning and compiling the grocery list. I am still trying to go more vegan for myself. I also have been feeling like making some Summertime treats with the kids. Pickle asked me to get stuff to dye his hair blue. I had basically an entire bowl of bleach left after doing his mohawk, I did wind up doing my own too. I decided on pink for my color. The pink did not take as well as I wanted so I wound up going ontop of it with the blue that Pickle had leftover. I have this sort of “mermaid” colored hair now.
We wound up making home made lemonade and pineapple upside-down cake. Oh, we also tried this “mermaid mocktail” that I found on pinterest (pink gatorade and pineapple juice basically). The kids seemed to enjoy that. I don’t particularly like gatorade, but with the pineapple juice added it was tolerable for me.
Father’s day weekend we randomly decided to go to the stock car races. The kids have been showing a lot of enthusiasm for it this year, so they were pumped to go again. We went knowing Chris’ parents would be there and thought it would be fun to surprise them. We had a good time and luckily the weather was nice. Plus, sunsets at the track are always so beautiful.
Bug (2), finally had his first dentist appointment (covid restrictions made it impossible for the past year because of having other kids with me). It went great. He laid there like he had been there before, let them brush his teeth, and then picked out a prize duck. He has officially been off of his binky for 3 weeks and has stopped asking about it. I basically just one day told him, they were getting yucky and we threw them all away. I was surprised he didn’t throw a huge fit at bed time (when he would use it). He is talking in sentences, knows all of his colors, can count to 12, and knows the differences between late models, sprint cars, and modified cars. He is getting too big too fast.
I was still struggling some at the end of the month with my depression. After one of my DBT group sessions, I decided to make a to do list for the remainder of the month. I had stopped making my lists about a month ago or so. I figured maybe it would help inspire me to get some things accomplished; which turned into an interesting unplanned day the next day. Monkey’s doll needed a hair treatment again. We wound up giving her doll a haircut, then her a haircut, and then even Bug got a trim. That same day Monkey and I made some brownies. We spent some time in the little kid’s room putting their beds together into its bunkbed form and cleaning up their stuff. They are thrilled about the bunkbeds.
June 24th at 245AM. I was laying in bed, trying to go to sleep, watching New Girl (yes, again). It started thundering outside. For a bit, all I thought was, “cool my flowers will be getting watered”. All of a sudden, it started sounding like we were in a hurricane. I took a peek out the window, I couldn’t see anything from mine because it was pitch black out. I went to the kid’s room and looked out their window and it looked like the trees were nearly horizontal. I checked the radar on my phone and it was showing we were expecting 70mph winds. At first I thought, ‘okay, this is fine’. Then the winds seemed to really pickup. By this point my daughter was half awake from her dream that had her yelling. I checked the radar again and decided we should take precautions and head to the basement. I picked up Bug (who was slightly awake at this point) and had Monkey follow me. I tried to wake up Pickle, but he did not want to come with. Chris didn’t feel it was necessary either, but I already had the youngest 2 and decided to follow my instinct. The little kids and I spent about 20 minutes in the basement listening to the storm, checking the radar, and talking about the trees. Nothing crazy wound up happening thankfully.
The days have been blending together ever since school got out. On Saturday the 26th, I was awoken by my phone vibrations. Half asleep still I realized it was Chris calling, which only happens on Saturdays when he is getting off work. It was before 10AM and he was already on his way home! Woohoo! He then made a comment about going to the zoo and I agreed so long as I wasn’t being rushed out the door. It was seriously a great day for the zoo!
80° but cloudy and breezy, we were there for about 2 hours or so and it started sprinkling. Pickle had brought his birthday money this time as he wanted to buy himself some dippin dots ice cream. Unfortunately all the locations we came by at the zoo weren’t even open. We started making our way back around to the entrance we came in on. Pickle started complaining that his toe hurt. He wanted to stop and check to see if it was bleeding. We stopped and he decided he needed to walk without anything on his foot. I decided I didn’t want this to be a battle and to just let him have this one. Generally there isn’t anything on the ground at the zoo other than dirt and mulch. So, we continued on.
We just so happened to walk upon an ice cream stand that was open on our way out. We got in the back of the line and the person in front of us turned around. She worked there. And this was when the day went very south! She told us, “Unfortunately the person in front of me is the last customer for today.” We could not get the ice cream and Pickle completely lost his cool. He waited all day for this ice cream and was finally excited that he was going to get it, just to be told “nope sorry”.
I tried talking to him about how I understand why he is upset, but we cannot be in control of their business. I tried using the STOP skill that I have taught him when I learned if from DBT group. It helped a little bit. Then he randomly just was yelling about how dumb the place was for doing that after he waited all day. We were still walking while trying to handle the situation. We came upon another treat area, this one was definitely still open. They didn’t have Dippin dots, but they had ice cream. We got in line. Then it started raining more. We decided we didn’t want to pay $9 per person for ice cream and that we would stop somewhere, on the way home, and get some instead. I even reminded the kids going out for ice cream was on our summer bucket list. Everyone was happy with that decision.
We made our way to the parking lot. I was pushing bug in the stroller and noticed pickle struggling to walk on his foot. I had him get on my back to help ease the foot pain for a few minutes. Then he got down and Monkey needed a turn. So I had the younger two and then Chris was craddling pickle, to be funny, while we walked the rest of the way to the car. We got our ice cream from Sonic; okay I got a strawberry limeade instead. We ate in the parking lot and stopped for some gas. When we got home I decided to vacuum out the car and wipe everything down (it still hadn’t been cleaned after our mudrun😬).
After all of that fun, I did some dishes, made some cookies, made tacos for dinner, and we watched some dirt track racing.
Sunday was pretty typical for us. I “slept in” until Chris woke me up. We got ready and headed out around 1230pm. We made a stop at target and then headed to Chris’ parents house. We usually spend every Sunday with his parents and his grandma. Chris was doing some work on our car, replacing the brakes. The kids were playing outside, so I decided to lay in the grass and read my book. It was pretty hot, so after maybe 45 minutes or so, I went in the garage. We (me, Chris, and his dad) were outside for quite awhile, reminiscing about life. The kids were outside running around when all of a sudden Bug started screaming so loud. I couldn’t quite see what happened, but I heard someone say he hit his head. I could already see the bruise on his forehead. It was dark blue and looked like it had a road rash on top of it. I took him inside and Chris grabbed an ice pack for him. He was still crying and Pickle was trying to help him feel better. He wound up giving him some mnms. Of course, that made everything better! We continued the evening with dinner, cake and ice cream (for Chris’ birthday), and then hanging out in the backyard with more reminiscing. Sunday funday at it’s finest.
The last few days of the month weren’t too crazy, pretty typical in fact. Today is Chris’ birthday, but he never knows what he wants to do and never asks for anything. The only thing he wants is a racecar; maybe one day-maybe. I did make a black forest ice cream cake. My family decided to put together a little party for him last minute (he doesn’t know yet). Oh! I finally started the kitchen ‘re-do’ project. It’s going to be quite the process for me, but progress is progress!
This year really is flying by. Now on to the next month I guess!
Things to watch:
- Infinite
- Why Women Kill
- Raya and The Last Dragon
- Luca
Things to read:
- The Handsmaid Tale by Margaret Atwood
- Holding Up The Universe by Jennifer Niven
- A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams
Reclaiming My Sanity 