Summer Days

[naomikritzer]

Molly has now been on summer vacation for one week. This week and next week, the girls are taking swimming lessons at a pool about ten minutes from our house. We've had outings of one kind or another nearly every afternoon: the trip to Hidden Falls on Monday, a playground on Tuesday, the usual visit to my grandmother on Wednesday, and today was Kiera's last dance class.

The weather has been perfect, aside from being a little chilly in the mornings (I would sure as heck not want to hop into the swimming pool, but the girls have not complained). I've kept them busy in large part because the spring weather was mostly so horrible, I look at any sunny day as this rare and precious thing that must be SEIZED WITH FORCE before it gets away. At some point I may start taking good weather for granted, but so far, nope.

The thing I'm having the most trouble adjusting to is how insanely long it takes both girls to get ready any time we're going somewhere. Swimming lessons are at 10 a.m. and we need to be out the door by 9:45. This morning, I told them to go put on their swimming suits and their sunblock a little before 9. Today, I also had them get their own clothes for the day, though I followed them upstairs so all they had to do was hand them to me; I put them in a plastic bag and tucked them into the swim bag to put on after lessons. They also had to put on their cover-ups and sandals, and brush their hair so that I can put it in a braid to keep it out of their way during lessons. This does not seem like a monumental list of things to accomplish in 45 minutes. We just barely made it out the door in time.

After the lesson, they showered, and then I handed them their clothes and sent them into cubicles to change. Then I sat down and read a book because it takes them 15-20 minutes to do that. We are not only the last to be out of the locker room, we're the last by quite a lot. The lesson finished before 11, and we walked out at 11:30.

The dance class was at 4 p.m. The community center shares a space with a library, and normally, Molly and I drop Kiera off at her class and then go to the library. But today was the last class of the session, so parents and older siblings are invited to stay and watch. That meant we needed to arrive early to get in the library trip, and earlier still to get in some outdoor playground time. I think I started them on the process at 2. They needed to clean up the Play-Doh they'd taken out to play with. Kiera needed to put on her leotard. Molly needed a snack. Kiera needed a drink. We didn't get there until 3:15.

I will say I have been handling it well: telling them what they need to do with plenty of time to spare, and then just letting them do it. It only frustrates me when I stop to think about it, so I try not to. Maybe the sunblock will speed up as they get better at it; previous summers, we've done it for them. (I'm still willing to do it for them BUT if they want me to do it, I'm going to use the no-rub spray, and neither one of them likes the smell of the propellant.)

No swimming tomorrow; we've got plans for an adventure at a St. Paul park with lyda222 and Mason. I went to Target today, so now Kiera and I have water shoes. (Molly also wanted water shoes, but admitted she'd prefer to just wear her sandals, so I saw no reason to get them for her.)

Comments

[gelsey.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Kids are like that. When I worked at Girl Scout camp one summer, you really learned quickly to get them started organzing themselves very early, and preferably have them set everything out earlier in the day.

And yet, there were some groups that were still late, no matter how early you started them at.

So you have my sympathies on that front :D

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Yes. It matters not whether I start the process an hour early or ten minutes before we have to leave, whether I lay out an outfit the night before or let her choose... I still spend the last five minutes asking Meg where her shoes are and why she is still in her underwear. She's just not motivated to get ready, even if she's thoroughly excited about where she's going/what she's doing that day. Then again, she's probably come by that honestly; I'm not the best at getting going and out the door, though I've trained myself to be better. Meg starts kindergarten this fall, and her school day begins at 7:45 a.m. I predict we will have a difficult adjustment period.

(And Rob, still a baby, can throw a wrench into even the most elegantly timed departure by presenting me with a filthy diaper as we head out the door. He also tends to fall asleep for naps about 15 minutes before we have to leave to go somewhere, so his sleep schedule isn't one.)

[naomikritzer]

I remember observing that there was a point at which I could have turned to one of my daughters and told her that in fifteen minutes, the Fabulous Princess Bus was coming, and she'd be able to get on it and ride to Disneyworld in the company of all her favorite Princess characters, while feasting on ice cream and sushi and periodically getting off to go down waterslides, and all she had to do to get on board was to be dressed and ready in fifteen minutes, and she'd have missed the bus.

(And you think 7:45 is bad? Molly had to get on a school bus this year at 7:05. Fortunately, she has no problem getting up in the morning -- today, she got up at 6.)

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

Yipe! Yes, 7:45 is not bad in the great scheme of things -- the high schools here start at 7:05. Meg's pre-K was an afternoon school (a blessed relief, with our newborn schedule earlier this year), so we have a lot of training up to do.

We'll have to be out the door at 7:15, though, the first week, while all the drop-offs and bus rides and so on are sorted out. (We aren't taking the bus, as I discovered I would have to drive her to the nearest bus stop anyway, and at that point I might as well just take her to school, which is a scant 1.3 miles away.)

Missing the Princess Bus -- yup, that would be Meg.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Oh, so it's not just my kid? That's a relief! Honestly, if DD's dance classes weren't literally two minutes' walk from the front door of our apartment, she'd have been late to practically every class this year. And I have never seen a child take so long to put on a pair of snow pants!

I am trying to handle it better. I would like to think that if I didn't also WOH, and therefore have places of my own to be and deadlines to meet and suchlike, I would be more patient ... but possibly I'm just not a patient person :P. I also get quite a bit of reading done while waiting for DD to finish things (like bedtime snacks: How can it possibly take 15 minutes to eat four apple slices? How?).

And thank you for reminding me that DD needs water shoes for Water Play Day on the last day of school next Wednesday! ::adds to list::

[naomikritzer]

Target has them for $7 in the shoe section. (They also have similar though not identical water shoes for $10 in the sports equipment section, go figure, plus "water socks" for something less than that.)

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Alas, we do not have Target in Canada. (We have Wal-Mart, but not Target. Something is not right with the universe.)

But I am confident that Zellers will come through for me :)

[naomikritzer]

You don't have Target?!?!?!?! Canada is far more foreign than I'd realized.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

It is and it isn't. (Don't forget the bilingual cereal boxes/boîtes de céréale bilingues.)

We don't have Macy's, Nordstrom's, or Marshall Fields (we have The Bay and Winners instead), but we do have Sears; we have RONA, which I think you don't have, but we also have gigantic Home Depots as well as the ubiquitous Canadian Tire (which sounds like an auto parts store, and originally was, but in fact sells everything from camping gear through bikes and hockey equipment to placemats and small appliances as well as auto parts). We don't have Friendly's, Applebee's, or Perkins (I think it's Perkins?), but we see them on TV all the time, because we all get American TV (well, maybe not up in the Arctic).

We do, as I mentioned, have Wal-Mart, and we have Costco, and we also have Super 8 Motels and 7-Elevens and Dairy Queen and Pizza Hut and a wide variety of other American icons ;).

But I keep hearing all these great things about Target, and it remains a source of abiding discontent for me that we don't have one. Whichever Industry Canada bureaucrat was responsible for saying "yes" to Wal-Mart and "no" to Target did a Very Bad Thing.

[notthatedburke.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Target, if I recall correctly, only just recently finished expanding throughout the U.S. They went in to New England a few years ago, somewhat after WalMart. So maybe they just aren't ready for Canada yet. But when they are, since plenty of people in the States call it Tar-zhay, it should fit right in in Canada.

[joykins1.livejournal.com]

My son will be dressed and ready in 5 minutes.

I allow 45 minutes for my daughter.

[yankee-in-texas.livejournal.com]

Half an hour here, if I ride herd. If I don't follow along and keep things moving, it never happens. As in, never. As in, an hour later it's time to be getting in the car and when I say so, both kids start screaming and crying and they aren't ready and they are in tears and instead of getting ready they are running around the house screaming. Ernie screams and Bert cries.

Ernie is particularly bad about changing what she's doing. She needs warnings are reminders, because she simply will not change what she's doing until a better idea embeds itself in her brain.