It always takes me some time to get adjusted to summer. I know that my friends and family who have "real jobs" that don't get summers off are probably rolling their eyes right now. Seriously, as a teacher, you go-go-go all school year night and day with work. Then summer hits and all the school work suddenly comes to a hault. That is the point when I find myself not knowing what to do with all the spare time. I take some time to be lazy... but that really does get old quick. I like to have a purpose each day. Anyway, this is how summer has always been for me. The first week or two are a little akward as I figure out what to do to keep myself busy, and then I figure it out and before I know it summer is almost over.
This year has been a little different considering I now have a busy baby boy to take care of each day. When summer arrived, I started out not knowing what to do with him all day long. I felt frazzled at the end of the day, but I really didn't do any work other than take care of Sam. I was surprised how difficult it was to do simple chores--like laundry, cleaning, and cooking--while caring for an 11 month old little boy. I wondered how my friends and family who stay home with their children do it. I craved interaction with adults and even a little time to myself to read or exercise and I wasn't getting anything done around the house. If anything, we were making a bigger mess of the house being home all day!
We are now a good month into summer break, and I finally feel like I've got a good routine that works for Sam and me. It's taken some trial and error to figure out the best time to eat, sleep, and play. It's not the perfect schedule...I call it the flexible schedule (that's the media specialist coming out in me). Give or take 30 minutes, we get up around 7:00 am and get ready to exercise. I usually jog or walk with Sam in the stroller. We get home around 9:00 and eat breakfast and Sam takes his morning nap usually between 9:30 am - 10:30 am. When he wakes up, we play for a while and then eat lunch around noon. After lunch, we head out of the house for a while. Sometimes we go to the swimming pool, the grocery store, or run errands. After our outing, Sam is usually ready for his afternoon nap around 2:30 pm - 3:00 pm. When he wakes up from his afternoon nap, Sam plays inside and we get ready for dinner. Sam usually eats dinner around 6:00 pm and we start getting him ready for bedtime at 7:30 pm. None of these events on our schedule happen at the exact time I've described here, but this is a sketch of what our routine looks like for the most part. In fact, Sam has even skipped entire naps at times. This schedule gives me something to aim for each day. It feels good to have a semi-routine so I can attempt to plan around his naps and feedings.
On Friday mornings, I take Sam to a Kindermusik class downtown. We go at 11:00 am on Fridays, so it forces me to make sure we get an early start on the day so he will have time for a good nap before Kindermusik class. The class is called "Sign and Sing". I'd like to teach Sam some basic baby signs so that he can start communicating what he wants before he is able to talk. He has made some progress, but at this point, I think the classes were more for my benefit than his. It helps me to see the baby signs and learn ways to teach them to Sam. Who knows if we'll be successful, but I figure it can't hurt to try to learn the basics--such as eat, drink, more, all done, hello, bye, sleep, etc. So far, Sam can do the sign for "more" and wave hello and bye-bye, but he doesn't seem to understand the meaning yet. He will do the sign for "more" almost any time just to get a rise out of me (I get excited when he does it). He often waves hello or bye-bye...but sometimes when I ask him to wave bye-bye to someone who is leaving he just stares at us. He may even wave after the person is out of sight. Who knows what goes through that little head of his.
Kindermusik has also been a great opportunity for Sam to interact and see other children close to his age. He likes to watch the other children at first and then he will eventually warm up enough to crawl up to them--especially if they are playing with a certain toy or instrument that he wants. I quickly observed the huge differences between girls and boys in this class. We sit in a circle and all the little girls sat nicely in thier mommy's laps, while the boys could hardly wait to dig in to the toy boxes and were crawling and running around the room almost constantly during the class.
I'll try to post some pictures soon!
