Not at my house.

Grant and I said we were never going to do this but we have over-scheduled Tyler.

Next week he starts camp at the ‘Y’. Then on Thursdays he sees his counselor and has yoga. On Saturdays he has Reading Camp and on Sundays he has swimming lessons. At the end of July he takes a week off regular camp to go to Soccer Camp. Then there’s homework from the Reading Camp and from the Occupational Therapist plus a “Don’t Forget Everything You’ve Learned This Summer” packet from his teacher.

I am exhausted just writing this! How did this happen? Well, Tyler is a bit behind in reading and he does not enjoy it so we thought the reading camp would be a good idea, and he needs to learn how to swim; plus he loves soccer…He’s going to need Yoga just to relax from all the other activities.

In over-scheduling Tyler, I realize that I have over-scheduled myself as well. How am I supposed to get him to these things on time??? I am fighting depression again, along with my other health issues, and with that comes a feeling of being overwhelmed. What am I going to pack him for lunch every day? Will I remember the sunscreen? How will I handle the extra laundry of bathing suits and wet towels?

School was a breeze compared to what this summer will be!

Are you a chronically ill mom who finds summer challenging? Have you over-scheduled yourself?

Or maybe you are a well mom who feels overwhelmed too and it really doesn’t matter what your health is like.

Please tell me I am not the only one!

Photo courtesy of moneysavingmom.com

The post Over-scheduled first appeared on Mama Sick.

As I got older I still loved summertime.  That freedom (except for when Required Summer Reading came, let’s not even go there) to play all day, watch Gidget , Get Smart, and all the other reruns I could ask for, to read the books that I wanted to (Judy Blume books, read about ten times each book, anything by Paul Zindel, and Harriet the Spy, another book I read ten times) and the days that never ended, being able to play outside until nine ‘o clock at night.

I loved my summers so much that even now, as the weather gets cooler and with only two more days left to go, I still shiver when it is “Back to School Time”.

Of course, this was probably the most unique summer of my life.  For the first time ever, Tyler stayed home with us, except for four weeks of camp that were three hours a day long. It was easier having him stay at home, by the time I would get back home from dropping him off, it was practically time to pick him up!

I have to say that when Tyler graduated from pre-school at the end of June, with Grant and I both disabled, I didn’t think we were going to “make it” with him being home all summer.  It truly was the first summer he would be home with us, as he was born in September so by the next summer, he was already in daycare.  How was I going to hide my pain from Tyler? How would Grant lay on the couch all day, crippled by depression and anxiety?  How would I hide my meltdowns when I got bad news, from either the Social Security Administration or another diagnosis?  How would I just make it through the day?  There was just NO WAY this was going to happen.  But it had to, because Grant and I could no longer afford daycare/camp/preschool, or whatever you want to call it.

I was not optimistic.  I thought that we were going to have to end up putting Tyler in some sort of camp, that the money was just going to have to be found, in some way.  That this was just not going to work.

With just two days left until my son starts his first day of kindergarten, I can now say, “We did it! We made it!  Woo hoo!”  

I feel really good and proud about Grant and I s’ abilities to stretch our limits to the max.  I really think we gave Tyler a good summer.  A big worry that I had was that Grant and I both do not well in the heat.  Depending upon if you want to look at it as a blessing or a curse, Tyler, due to some of his sensory issues or perhaps his OCD, abhors water; the beach and the pool, and my pediatrician told us not to force him into the pool or the ocean, that it would be doing more harm than good.  So, I guess you could say, none of us were into many outdoor activities during the super hot, poor air quality summer of Central New Jersey.

When Tyler was not at camp, which again, was most of the summer, we lived at the library.  We are fortunate enough to be in a township that has one of the greatest local libraries as far as children’s programs go.  Tyler “read” to a therapy dog, which got him over his fear of dogs (!), joined the Lego Club, did arts and crafts and “took in” an hour long program on butterflies.  All free!  He also did karate.  We do plan on continuing library programs and karate, but we will see how it is all going to work once Tyler’s school schedule starts.  We are blessed with full-day kindergarten!

I was also worried about how Grant and I were going to get our work done.  Grant, if you do not know, is a freelance writer, I am a voiceover artist and this little blog that you are reading requires a lot of attention, more than I would have ever imagined.  Grant and I definitely made less money this summer because we had less time to devote to our work, but any decent camp around here is about a grand a month (I know your mouth might be hanging open if you do not live in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey or Connecticut) so we were probably still ahead of the game.

My routine would be to get up when Tyler got up, make my coffee and get right on the computer, of course tending to Tyler’s needs like a breakfast snack, as he doesn’t like to eat a lot when he wakes up, breakfast, and any bathroom…”issues” that he needed help with.  I would also try to throw in some housework, a laundry here, a dishwasher run there.  I worked to 1:00 every day and then it was quitting time with me devoting the rest of the day to hanging out with Tyler or getting out to do something.  We did see The Cars 2 (Tyler’s first movie!), Winnie the Pooh, and The Smurfs. Tyler did get outside during camp, and he did go to the park a few times with my mother and Grant and even me!

I have to say that overall he was very good for someone who is about to turn five, with the exception of him still needing to learn that when we are on the phone you do not talk to us. That “when I hold up my hand like a stop sign, it means you should not interrupt me” solution is not quite working out.

Because we didn’t have many plans, except for doctor appointments and special programs at the library, we had a lot of flexibility so I was able to keep what I like to call “Lupus hours”. That is, sleeping when I want to sleep.  Grant was for the most part able to take over when I needed a nap or be up when I needed to go to bed for the night at 8:00.  Grant likes to joke that due to our disabilities we make one full parent together, but I do think we managed pretty well this summer!

And now with just a holiday separating us from when Tyler begins kindergarten, I am beginning to get misty.  I am actually going to miss having my child home so much with me, because at almost five, he is able to do a lot of things by himself, and with some exceptions, he is a joy to be around. Don’t worry chronic moms, or just moms with young children…it DOES get easier!

Those “back to school blues” are kicking in.  Physically, Autumn is the worst time of the year for me because of the drastic changes in weather.  And then Autumn leads to Winter, which is a bummer all around.   And now, my little boy is starting what will be the first of I hope at least 17 years of school for him.  He is nervous, and so am I.

I guess you can say that for the three of us, we are all going back to school.

The post The Summer of Chronic first appeared on Mama Sick.

Inspired by Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop

3.) Share a Summer Camp memory.

I was a strange type of kid.  I got called WEIRD, LESBIAN, FREAK, ALIEN, etc. in junior high school.  Except for some reason that I cant explain, it didnt really bother me.  I knew I was better than the kids who were making fun of me and I always had this This Too Will Pass kind of attitude.  Having a best friend name Jennifer who got called the same stuff made it a lot easier.  Jennifer and I were as close as two best friends could be and we didnt need to be friends with someone else who didnt want us in their clique.  This is not to say we had no other friends though.  Jennifer had some older friends, I had a boyfriend and my clique, if you could call it that, was of the brainy kind.

Youre weird, you know that? Thank you, I would say, infuriating the would-be bully.

Emily and Jennifer are space aliens, space aliens. Whatever.

The summer before we were going in to the eighth grade, Jennifer and I went to the Summer day camp through our township.  We hated to be spending a summer amongst THOSE people, but it was the only way if you wanted to be assured of getting a job as a Counsellor in Training next year, that you be a camper before eighth grade.

Camp was pretty fun, actually, with a lot of field trips to the Jersey Shore; the beaches and rides at Asbury Park , the water slides and the Haunted Mansion of Long Branch.  These are the field trips that really stick in my mind, because, besides the fun, they were a way to beat the heat!  If we didnt have a field trip like that, we were stuck in non-airconditioned classrooms or out on the field, playing soft ball or kick ball, my, ahem, favorites.  Jennifer and I were the types of kids who were always picked last for the teams.

When lunch came, you were pretty much on your own, after all, you were a whole 11 years old.  As long as you stayed on school grounds, you could eat anywhere.  Jennifer and I usually ate in the woods surrounding the school from the housing development, and afterwards we would go hiking.

Where do you aliens go for lunch?, the other kids would ask us, since no one dared go into the woods, but we liked them very much.  So peaceful, so much time just to talk and a break from the dunderheads we were going to camp with.

One day it was extremely hot.  We ate quickly and sat by a brook.  I cant stand this, I said, I cant survive in this heat!

I dont remember whose idea it was, Jennifers or Is, but we had about 45 minutes left of lunch period, and so we decided to leave school grounds, in search of a house with a pool! We scratched and scraped our way through the woods until we were in the development and began to explore.  A few minutes later we heard kids laughter and splashing.  It was like an oasis in the desert!  A couple of moms were watching their young kids playing in the pool. We had our camp shirts on, opened up the fence and told the mothers that we were so hot and asked if we could use their pool just for a few minutes.  They were surprised but they said yes.

Jennifer and I had a blast and we even played with the little kids in the pool!  I think the hostess even gave us some snacks and drinks!  Finally it was time to go back to camp.  Mind you, we had gone swimming in our t-shirts and shorts so when we arrived back to camp we were soaking wet.  The other campers noticed that what looked like profuse sweating was actually a couple of cooled off weirdos.

How, how did you get so wet?, they asked.

Oh, I said.  Well, you know how you guys are always calling us Space Aliens?  Well, we are and we just built our own pool and went swimming.

The kids took a step back from us.  They were so stupid and so inside the box, live and die by the rules, it didnt even occur to them that we could have left school grounds and FOUND a pool!

From then on, the Space Alien taunt pretty much disappeared from their unimaginative list of names that they called us.

Because you wouldnt want to cross a Space Alien now would you?  Bwah, ha, ha, ha, ha!

The post Alien Summer Campers! first appeared on Mama Sick.