Here are just a bunch of photos from our super fun day at the Norwich Winterfest Parade. Caroline got to be a judge, the weather was great, and we brought home so much candy we still have some almost a week later.

Sometimes our town looks like the place they film Netflix Christmas movies (I’m obsessed with Netflix Christmas movies), and this was one of those days.

This is my (and your) affirmation for today:

Just because something works for other people, doesn’t mean it has to work for you.

My Facebook has been flooded with think pieces, sorry not sorry posts, and memes decrying “kids these days” and their need to be constantly entertained. Mostly they’re complaining about Pinterest Moms who schedule their summers so kids are always doing an organized craft or attending a camp or attending enrichment activities. “Kids need to be bored!” they shout, “It’s good for them to learn to entertain themselves!” “When I was a kid, my mom just locked us out of the house all day and told us not to get back until dinner!”

OK, first of all, your mama did not lock you out of the house when you were 4 and 2, which is how old half of my children are. Second of all, do you know how quickly kids get bored? 5 minutes. They’re bored all the time. They live in a constant cycle of dragging their poor, neglected bodies between horrible available options including millions of legos, dozens of ride-on toys outside, the sprinkler, unlimited Netflix, fort-building supplies, and their playing with the siblings I have generously grown with my own body as friends and companions.

Our summer calendar includes a lot of scheduled activities. I’m constantly watching Facebook for community stuff or checking the library calendar to see if there’s something at least one of my kids could go to. We do daytrips, late nights, meals on the go, ice cream for dinner.

I refuse to feel bad about any of it. No, I don’t *have* to fill their summer because I’m a stay at home mom (and judging people who do heavily schedule their kids during summer because they need childcare is some privileged nonsense – I’m VERY lucky “doing nothing” and “being bored” are even options). No, Caroline probably doesn’t NEED to go to 4 different kinds of camp. No, I don’t hate my kids and want to get away from them. We’re just trying to find a balance that works for us. So yeah, it probably does look like we’re ALWAYS doing something and ALWAYS going somewhere and my kids are NEVER bored.  But literally right now while I write this I’ve taken away their tablets, left them on the floor with a box of My Little Ponies and a bin of Magnatiles and told them to amuse themselves. It’s been 2 hours since they woke up and so far no one is fighting. I just know that won’t last forever, so pretty soon we’re headed out to the library.

NOTHING is as exhausting as refereeing bickering children all day, so yes please sign us up for some more stuff. When we need a stay-home-day, we’ll stay home. When people on Facebook feel bad about their own summer schedule, it’s about them, not me. I’m not raising or lowering a bar for anyone else (except for that trip to Disney World, because every month we’re not at Disney World is another month I disappoint my children).

So to be clear, the following options are ALL allowed:

Doing all the things
Doing none of the things
Making a long elaborate bucket list of must-do activities for the whole summer
Abandoning a long elaborate bucket list completely
Doing some of the bucket list but then taking time off
Going to no camps
Going to all the camps
Fulling intending to sign your kids up for camp but forgetting
Taking tons of pictures of everything
Taking no pictures at all
Letting the kids watch Netflix all day
Throwing out the remote and the tablets and declaring all technology off limits
Feeling like whatever you’re doing is wrong
Feeling like maybe your life would be better if you were just doing it the way that one Facebook friend is doing it
Giving up and not caring what other people are doing

And because I am the mom who chooses take all the pictures and do lots of things, here is some of our summer so far:

Happy Easter! I didn’t take pictures of the bazillion eggs the bunny left all over the house – or the mess the kids made ripping apart their baskets – because I prefer to just remember the adorable, photogenic parts of our holidays. Even so, you will notice a distinct lack of pictures that include all four children. Did you know four children is a lot of children? It seems like even more than usual when you’re running around a busy farm full of old buildings, tempting mud puddles and tons of baby goats. Plus that’s an exhausting way to spend the morning if you’re a baby, so Finn slept through most of dinner.

But yay for baby goats at Beltane Farm! They also did an egg hunt, and Evan found the golden egg that said “winner” inside. He won the cheese of his choice from the store and picked something called “Duchess”, which was super delicious and not at all what you would expect an 8-year-old to be excited about. My kid is pretty cool.

That last face is Caroline trying the lemon meringue pie we made yesterday. She’s a fan.

We had 6 inches of snow on Saturday, which was beautiful but incredibly inconvenient. It ruined my long-planned styled photo shoot with a whole bunch of very cold children, and then the roads were terrifying when Caroline and I attended the Nutcracker. I hate driving in the snow, even after a decade in New England. But we made it and had a lovely time. The boys stayed home with a babysitter – Evan was so excited to “get babysitted”, for some reason he thinks that’s the coolest – and she reported they were great. I guess I’ll know if she’s telling the truth if the next time I text her she’s unavailable forever. The roads were clear and the snow was still on the trees on Sunday, so we went back out to get a photo for the back of the Christmas card.The kids are hoping this is the start of a very snowy winter, which I am totally ok with as long as from now on I don’t have to leave the house during the storm.

Here’s an update in photos of what we’ve been up to in the past few weeks.

Poor Finnegan had his regular check-up this week, and what I thought was just a baby cold had turned into a double ear infection. You’d think a baby in that much pain would complain, but he’s just been a boogery ball of sunshine (except when you put him outside in the snow)(he haaaates the snow).

Caroline does not hate the snow.