Summer is without a doubt my favourite time of year. Even more so since I’ve had children.
Warm weather (some of the time!), long days, a lax routine, and all that time just to play together. What’s not to love?
But, being my favourite time of year comes with added pressure to make sure I’m doing it ALL and having THE perfect summer. Instagram does not help with this, and I usually find I have to take a step back from my feed in summer. It can often feel like everyone is away all the time and having jam packed summers with their kids. It makes me question myself – am I doing it wrong? And how can everyone afford to be doing all of this stuff every summer?!
Our summer has been quiet, spent mainly at home, with no big trips or activities. I’ve written before about my struggle with our quieter summers, and I think my guilt and FOMO over summer time is just something I need to adjust to as an inevitable part of my personality – it’s going to happen, so I need to work out how to best live with my emotions and prepare for them.
We have had a lovely, low key summer, though. My boys have bonded as a trio more than ever before. And I wonder, would they have bonded in quite the same way had we had a hugely busy summer where they had little opportunity to be bored and listless at home? Would they have created the same silly games and in-jokes?
I remember my own childhood summers not for the big trips and the holidays, but for the vast swathes of time I’d spend with my siblings, doing not very much at all at home. Making up games, being a bit silly and reckless out of boredom. Waking up and doing the same things over and over again with our days was fun, not monotonous.
This is the summer my children have had this year, and I’m glad for that.
I wanted to remember some of the key parts of our summer, so I’ve jotted them down below. They are the sort of things that might not mean much to anyone apart from us, but I just wanted to note it down so I can look back and remember our summer of 2018.
It’s Coming Home
Otto’s favourite song of the summer. Which he proceeded to sing LONG after it’s relevancy had expired.
PoPo, RiRi, and ToTo
The boys’ nicknames for each other. Otto has been calling Rory RiRi for ages because he couldn’t pronounce his actual name. Rory started calling Arlo ‘PoPo’, which the whole family soon adopted as it’s pretty cute. Arlo initially hated it, but it eventually grew on him. Arlo and Rory both call Otto ToTo – and thus the trio of PoPo, RiRi, and ToTo was fully cemented over the summer.
Babycakes
So this game goes a little something like this:
Rory: “Arlo, you are babycakes”
Arlo: “No, Rory, YOU are babycakes”
Rory: “No, Arlo, OTTO is babycakes”
Otto: “No, Rory, Dada is babbycakes”
….and so on. It never ends.
Of course, this led to us introducing them to Babycakes by 3 of a kind, which is now one of their favourite songs.
DISCO BATH
Arlo has this thing where he refuses to believe that he’s nodded off in the car. In his head, he just doesn’t nap or miss anything EVER. “Who me? No. I wasn’t asleep. I’ve been awake this whole time”.
This one is very much a ‘you had to be there’ moment, but Sam and I were in hysterics when Arlo suddenly sat bold upright in the middle of one of his ‘I’m not sleeping’ car naps to shout “DISCO BATH”, before falling back to sleep again. (The disco bath is in reference to the futuristic shower / bath with lights combo that was in our hotel room at the time….told you you had to be there).
Sleepovers
One of Arlo and Rory’s favourite things is having a sleepover together. They pile all their beloved cuddly animals and pillows into one bed and sleep all snuggled up together. Sleepovers are limited to weekends in our house, but during the summer I let them have sleepovers whenever they wanted. At some point I guess they are going to get too big to comfortably fit in a single bed together, but it’s lovely whilst it lasts.
I will end this post with some of the snapshots from various day trips we took during our summer – just so I can have them all in one place. Swipe to see them all.
