There are many terms to label a mom. There’s Granola Mom, Helicopter Mom, Tiger Mom. I’m starting a new label: August Mom.
I’m a stay at home mom and the summer does quite a number on our brains. In June we are still reveling in not having to make lunches and follow up on homework. In July we’ve hit a stride and almost a routine… almost. The zoo is still fun. Going to the movies is still a treat.
Around July 29th things start going pear shaped. You regret not sending them to camp or you regret using up all the camp time so early in the summer. The zoo is now just hot and expensive. The movies are crap and you will do anything to not hop them up on boxes and straws full of sugar.
Food in general takes on a confusing form. The once-stocked fruit bowl is just a display of soft warm fruit while the pantry is full of snacks that are boxed, and can be reached by children. Food that can be opened and closed by small hands.
My patience by August has been totally used up and rung out. Bedtime is both the promised land, and a mine field. It’s a treacherous dance of dangling over the edge of sanity while screaming the phrases, “BRUSH. YOUR. TEEEEETH!” and “PJs. NOW!”
Story time is mostly forgotten. It used to be chapters in fiction books without pictures. Now half the time they are allowed to give up story time if they want to watch an episode of Teen Titans. (have you seen this show? If you haven’t, it’s basically made for the parents who watch television with their kids. It is not a chore.)
Discipline: If you do something to piss me off, you will lose an entire day of games. It will happen usually around bedtime and be in effect for the following day. By 3pm the next day if you’ve not done anything too heinous like set your sister on fire, you will most likely get your game privileges back. It will be stealth, however, in the form of “Yes you may go to (so and so’s) house and that is the ONLY place you are allowed to play games.”
3 hours later he comes back happy, I’m happy, the neighbor’s kid is happy, it’s a win-win.
I may have big plans to make a pot roast for dinner. If by 2pm the temperature in our non-airconditioned house reaches anywhere above 83, I will be ordering pizza. Left overs take on a whole new life form. There are whole evenings set up like a fancy buffet, only it’s actually leftovers you pick from.
And any fun-loving, light-hearted wife bot I may have residing deep deeeeep down in my soul has been devoured by the irritated, always nagged and rapid-fire-questioned sweaty, un makeuped Momster that takes over in August.
I nearly de-spined my husband last weekend when, for the hundredth time, I was the one to get up and deal with the kids in the morning. (after early-rising grandma greets and manages them) I woke up and stood over his snoring body imagining all the words I could carve into him with dull crayons.
So yea… August mom. She tries, but she’s very comfortable with her boundaries and she understands once those perimeters are breached, there is no coming back. Everything is about convenience, ease, and cooperation. There is still a glimmer of hope in her eyes because the God-blessed promised land of September is at the end of the alcohol-lined, take-out littered tunnel. We know we can get there if they would just stop bickering and arguing!
Hang in there!!
28 days to go ….. Hmmm… methinks that is not a coincidence!
Sarcasmica 