boundaries.

August

Today is August first, meaning it’s back to nonstop living for us. Any other year, I’m over the moon excited about August. The kids going back to school, the end of the single worst season of the year is upon us (Fall officially begins for me on September 1), the beginning of the most magical season of the year (September 1 – December 25)…it’s pure magic.

Except not this year. Yes, I’m thrilled that the best months of the year are a scant month away. Yes, I’m counting down the days until my husband sweetly pulls all of my fall and Halloween décor from the attic so I can transform our home. Yes, I’m thrilled the summer months are coming to an end. It’s not a big secret around here that I find summer entirely useless. It’s hot, moist, miserable…I’m a Floridian. I don’t enjoy 17 hours of sunlight, damp air all the time, bugs everywhere the moment I step outdoors. Our swimming pool is almost ten feet deep, which theoretically means it should be absolutely refreshing…but it’s not. It’s tepid and warm. Nothing is enjoyable in the summer. It’s too hot to be outdoors. It’s too hot to go places. It’s too hot to enjoy life. Give me cool evenings, shorter days, 75-degree highs, and holiday charm.

This year, I am excited about college football Saturdays in orange and blue and pumpkins and holidays and shorter days and all the magic that comes when summer is blessedly over, but I’m not excited to send the kids back to school…for several reasons.

First and foremost, the Raiford kids are my favorite people in the world. They are growing into such cool people, and I really enjoy spending time with them. I’ll miss them. The house will feel lonely and empty despite the fact that Craig is in the house in his office all day long and despite the fact that I won’t spend my days cleaning incessantly behind the kids because they don’t do it correctly, and my OCD always wins. Am I excited about being able to have quiet lunch dates with my husband again? Yes, I am. But I’ll miss the kids.

Coming in as a close second is the simple fact that I am not ready to go back to the overwhelming grind that returns on August 1. Four kids, four sports, six to seven days a week of sports/school obligations…it’s an unpopular opinion, I know, but I don’t enjoy my children’s sports. Don’t misconstrue my words. I absolutely adore watching them play sports. I love that they love what they do, whether it’s cheerleading, football, golf, whatever. I love that athletics make them so happy, and I love watching them – I have never missed a game, and I will never miss a game – but I don’t enjoy children’s sports. They’re all-consuming, and they’re not like they were.

There’s no longer a ‘season’ for anything. Everything – with the exception of school sports – lasts all year. And even school sports don’t give us much of a break any longer. For example, Addison’s cheer season began at tryouts in April and went through to the end of June, she has July off, and she picks right back up five days a week in August. Carter’s flag football season began in March and lasted through the last week in June. We’ve had July. Only July. That has been our break. Aside from two weeks at Christmas, a week at Thanksgiving, and a week at Spring Break, July is it.

One. Month.

That is all. Call me old-fashioned, but what happened to giving kids a chance to be kids? What happened to giving families time to spend together? We certainly don’t get to sit down at the dinner table together during the school year because we are running between this practice, that practice, this game, that game, five nights a week, and golf lessons on Sundays. Is it really too much to ask to simply have our summer so that we can sit down and have family dinners or plan vacations in advance? Because I can assure you that we cannot book a single summer vacation until our daughter tries out for cheer in April because we don’t know when their fundraiser camp is being held, when their mandatory sleep-away cheer camp is, and when they have to practice to come up with routines for their fundraiser camp. And it’s not just cheer. It’s volleyball, football, basketball…it’s every sport, and it’s all the kids.

Perhaps it’s a first-world problem, but we have only so much time with our children before they grow up, move out of our homes, start families of their own, and begin new traditions. And, quite frankly, we’d like to have the freedom to enjoy our lives rather than constantly saying, “While we’d love to plan this lovely summer vacation with you friend/family members, we cannot do so until April, so please don’t count us in because we cannot,” and that is that.

So, when people ask me why I’m not excited about the kids going back to school, it’s because our family had to cram an ENTIRE summer into four weeks of July. Every trip, every activity, every vacation, and then we had to also include back-to-school shopping and school preparation activities into those 31 days, and we are exhausted. We didn’t have a chance to become UN-exhausted after 11 months of nonstop sports and activities before we crammed a full summer’s worth of vacations and trips into one month, and now we are all beginning the new school year already exhausted from cramming summer into four weeks, and we get to start over with six-days-a-week of sports.

Yes, I know we can remedy this by telling the children they cannot play sports any longer, but who wins? No one. This is what they love. We love that they love it. We love that they enjoy what they’re doing, and we support them and love it and want to be there to watch every game like we have always done, but we do miss the simplicity of sports from our own youth.

August

We go back to six days a week of sports obligations. That doesn’t include the back-to-school nights (three of them in the next week) or the volunteer meetings for SAEC and PTO or the fall festivals or the family nights at school, or the other things that we do because we love our kids and support their educations. Our entire life is now lived on Saturdays. It’s the only day we are able to do things as a family, to live our lives, to sleep in, to go to bed early, to have family dinners, to socialize, to watch football games, to spend time with friends, to host parties and gatherings, and it’s overwhelming because when you only have one day a week without obligations from 6 am to 8 pm, you don’t want to do anything else.

You don’t want to make plans. You don’t want to leave the house. You don’t want to speak to humans or function. But you also want to do all the things, make all the plans, see all the people, have all the fun, but also sleep in and go to bed early and have movie night or family night or any number of other things you cannot do when no one in your family is home at the same time the rest of the week.

It’s a conundrum of sizable proportions.

It’s exhausting.

Life changes so much and so often, and most of us have no idea it’s even happening. However, this past year has been the single biggest transition year of our lives to date – and we welcomed a set of newborn twins into our lives when we already had six and three-year-olds at home. Nothing about raising newborn twins and two toddlers was ever as exhausting as what we are doing now.

We did not see it coming. We’ve spent the past 15 years seamlessly transitioning from one school year to the next, adding sports and activities to the mix on a regular basis, and functioning well in the process. Dare I say it…we excelled at this whole parenting thing.

I am married to a man who has worked from home for the past eight years and who packs all the lunches, takes the big girls to school and picks them up, picks Addy up from her late practices, cooks, cleans, and takes care of us. I have all the help in the world and four really great kids.

But this past year kicked our asses. It’s changed us (well, that and my amazing therapist). It’s forced us to make changes in our life we didn’t think we’d make. We simply did not see it coming. I am virtually retired at this point because I am doing nothing but running kids to and fro, yet I’m busier than ever? How is this possible? Parenting four children in three schools is exhausting, and our life has changed tremendously. We realize most people don’t understand because they are not in the same place. Most people we know don’t have four kids. Most people don’t have kids in three separate schools.

I know what’s coming now that August is here. I know that we will not have a break again until Christmas, and is that really a break? We don’t get Thanksgiving week to unwind this year because we are traveling all week and missing Thanksgiving because our daughter made the UCA All-American cheer team and performs that week. Christmas is two weeks without school and sports, but it’s also spent celebrating, doing all the Christmas preparations, and traveling. Spring Break is a good week, but it’s also spent traveling. It’s relaxing travel, but it’s not being at home unwinding and enjoying the place we call home relaxing (our choice, I know).

I know that August means we don’t get a real break again for eleven months when it’s July again.

But I am better prepared this season. I wasn’t last year. I simply didn’t know. This year? This year, I know.

This year, I know that I’m going to be saying no to more invitations than ever before. It’s not personal. It’s necessary. We simply cannot be everywhere all the time, and we need rest. When we say no, it’s not always because we don’t want to. We may very much want to do many of the things we graciously turn down, but we also know we need rest. Without rest, there is no peace. We also know that we have to prioritize our time, our energy, and our peace.

This year, I know how to better manage our time so that we don’t feel as overwhelmed as we did last year. This year, I have created tighter boundaries. This year, I will not put the feelings of other people and their needs and wants before mine, my husband’s, or my children’s.

More importantly – and thanks to my therapist – this year, I don’t feel guilty. I don’t feel guilty saying no. I don’t feel guilty setting boundaries. I don’t feel guilty taking breaks and prioritizing what feels most important to us on any given day. I don’t feel guilty about missing out on different events, trips, or activities. Life changes and this simply isn’t a season in which we have the freedom to do as much as we did in the past.

If I have learned one thing in the past year – transition year, as my therapist and I call it – it’s that setting boundaries is a very personal thing, and my only concern is that I (and my husband and kids) feel good about our boundaries. I’ve learned that it is not my concern if others are offended or displeased with our boundaries. As my therapist explained to me on more than one occasion, it requires a great deal of strength and courage to set personal boundaries because not everyone will understand them. However, it’s not our job to make others understand our personal boundaries, nor is it our job to worry about that. If someone is unhappy with my personal boundaries and with me focusing on myself and my own needs rather than their own, that is a them problem and not a me problem. The simple truth that I’ve learned over the past year is that I owe no one any explanations and that it’s my job to make me happy…not to make anyone else happy.

This year, I am prepared.

I’m not excited about it, per se, but I am prepared.