grasping at summer rhythms

Oy, but our lives are busy!! This musical we are involved in -- every ounce of my time seems to be wrapped up in rehearsals and sewing costumes and painting scenery, writing up bios and soliciting advertisements....

Still, we're trying to hold onto a very basic rhythm to our days. As always, we start, following breakfast and chores, with a morning walk. We've been sticking to our country neighborhood rather than the state forest because humidity and bugs are a bad combination.


Of course, our walk includes a stop at the ever-shrinking frog pool. (Not to be confused with the actual frog pond at the state forest.) We're sort of vested in these frogs, we've watched over their eggs, and we drive very carefully on rainy nights when passing our pool. It would really suck to flatten our frogs!




One of said frogs.

After our walk, and usually some outdoor play, we have snack. Then the kids have a chunk of time to do whatever they want while I have a chunk of time to do whatever I want. Lately, that involves a lot of stuff to do with the Musical. But in theory at least that time slot should include things such as, oh, say, catching up on all the housekeeping I missed out on during the previous semester. Ah well, there's always August....

As I work on making the kids lunch, they sit down to do a bit of handwriting practice and a math worksheet. And after lunch, and before rest, we have a story from a wonderful book called Buddha at Bedtime by Dharmachari Nagaraja. I skip the moral at the end of the stories-- I'd rather the kids draw their own conclusions, but this is a nice collection of trickster-type tales. And the kids actually applaud when I finish each story. So to say they are popular with them is an understatement.

This entire morning schedule is preempted on Tuesdays by a visit to the Occupational Therapist. J's joining Zoo Boy during his sessions for a "tune up" of stuff he needs some work on, including work on both of their food issues, and a course of Therapeutic Listening (which I'll try to write a post about at some point).

The afternoons are for adventures, and we've hit a few museums and the lake when the weather and our rehearsal schedule allows, but mostly our afternoons have been absorbed by the play in one way or another. I've already vowed to spending most of August sitting on the beach not moving.

J's taking one dance class this summer, his first Modern class, and he loves it (although he is pining away for ballet...) and plans to continue with it in the fall. And of course there are rehearsals 3 evenings a week for 2 hours a shot. That'll pop up to 5 evenings a week for 3 to 4 hours the week before the performances.

A new part of our summer traditions are the local outdoor concerts. Here's the boys this past Sunday enjoying some Latin jazz music.

So it's a simple rhythm, and even that we're not sticking to as closely as I'd like to, but this play WILL be over eventually, and then we can laze our way into the rest of summer. I have a busy fall planned for the boys, so we need to do some serious relaxing before then!