Are We There Yet? Half-way, At Least??

June and the beginning of July can be a bit of a whirlwind for many parents. School has just let out, so schedules have to get shifted and shuffled to accommodate child care needs. There's day camps, pool trips, and of course, vacations, because what parent wants to ruin their child's life by not giving them a cool vacation to brag about come September? While I don't have to worry about all this stuff just yet, my own work schedule and travels in the past month have left me a little wiped out, so I can begin to empathize with parents who not only have more children, but kids who are older and not easily appeased by Dora and Goldfish.

Fortunately, after the 4th, though, there seems to be a bit of a wind down. The advertising wizards of every major clothing retailer begin reminding us mid-month that the hot days and "Moooooom, I'm booooooored!"'s will soon give way to milder weather and a quiet house between 8:00AM and 3:00PM.

In 40 more days.

For me, I've had my girl at my side - except for her vacations up to the grandparents' house - since the beginning. While I'm used to multitasking, this summer I've noticed a decline in my productivity. I'm barely keeping up with vacuuming and dishes, and forget about getting clothing out of the baskets. If it's dirty, it's in a basket. Clean? In a basket. Personally, it's been a good day as long as I've worked out and remembered to move three dishes from the sink to the dishwasher. Maybe I'll wash a dirty pot or baking sheet. I might go crazy and dust a shelf.

It's clean enough, if you ask me!

Now, I'm looking at my calendar and realizing that if I am to begin training for my late October marathon, I need to get back on a regular running schedule... oh, next week. To reach my goal (3:30 or faster), I need to actually do some real running, too. I've skated by on 2-3 runs a week and doing everything else on the bike. This go around, I want to see if I can actually run like a real, live runner.With my 10K PR, I feel like I want to capitalize on whatever running gains I've miraculously accomplished by actually trying to train and not just hopping on a treadmill once every few weeks to sprint along to a Foo Fighters album.

We've gotten through a month of trips and festivities, now we have to get through this job change and soon, the start of preschool. I feel like all running plans should have a sub-schedule for parents! But at the very least, I'll be even better prepared when my girl's in school and I not only have to balance my running plans with my own responsibilities, but her life and activities too.

Most importantly, as my daughter gets older and sees the many hats that mommy wears, I hope she'll strive to be active, but also know when to let things go at the end of the day. If we learn nothing else from summer vacations, it should be that we can't possibly get everything done. Ever. And it's OK if we don't even pretend to want to try ;)

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How are you surviving summer, so far?

If you have kids, are they home or at day camp?