Hey there everybody. I’ve been lying low, and I think you probably all know why. At least I’m pretty sure you do, considering how much stuff you’ve all been posting about May. I don’t need to tell you about May. May is the devil’s month. May is the longest blur of activities and programs and made up holidays. We have three kids in elementary now with another in preschool and I gave up trying to figure out what day they were supposed to be in pink or fuchsia or eighties or fireman hats, or when they were supposed to bring in donuts or bananas or jump ropes or snails or bubble machine guns and liability waivers. But I was present for the Mother’s Day program and the dance festival and the state reports and the graduations and the moon landings, so I think we made out all right this year. They may not hang a Mother of the Year banner over my garage when we’re done but no one ran away from home in tears, and I have been known to do that sort of thing in the past, so I’m going to go ahead and give myself a gold star sticker and call this year a hit (except I really won’t do that because I’ll forget to take it off my shirt and run it through the laundry and forever have a sticky patch ingrained into the fabric to remind me that I have to give myself my own awards and I already have plenty of source material for my therapist).

Except, of course, the only thing more fun than May is the end of May, when I realize that in the whirlwind of activities and madness I forgot that the prize at the end of the rainbow is that all my children are home with me. All day, every day. 24 hours a day. 7 days a week. For 11 weeks. That’s 81 days. 1944 hours. 116,640 minutes. I mean I’m just spitballing here, I definitely have not even looked up what day exactly they go back to school, because I’m thrilled to death to have all this quality time with my children, as all good and loving mothers are, and I will likely be devastated when they have to go back and I have to hang by myself for hours every day. (And by myself, I actually mean with a couple of tiny baby/toddler humans, but after six kids, they are kind of just symbiotic parasites attached to my body at this point. I feed them food and they give me a valid reason not to join the PTA because “I don’t have the time” so it’s a pretty great mutually beneficial relationship.)

So for the next week or two, I’ll probably just let the little minions run wild with the neighborhood gangs, getting sunburned and bumming candy off of kindly grandmother figures while I come up with a game plan to keep them from becoming juvenile delinquents. I’ve come up with some awesome activities so far:

• Go swimming. A lot of people think this can’t be done with multiple toddlers but this is why they invented life jackets and baby floats and lifeguards. You just strap everybody into floatation devices, let them all hang onto your arms for two hours and scream in the middle of the pool, and then take them home to watch movies for the rest of the day because you can totally check “cool mom” off your to-do list for the day and let the screen time guilt fly away.
• Sidewalk chalk. Just head on out to Walmart, buy about 100 buckets of the stuff, and give them a fresh one every 2-3 hours. Easy peasy.
• Playdates at the park. This one is great because you can pretend to get some adult bonding time while your kids come interrupt you every two minutes at some place that isn’t your house. Adult friendships are important, you gotta nurture those suckers. Do a playdate once a month at least to guarantee you don’t forget your friend’s names. Because that’s awkward.
• Family trips and reunions. These are awesome because you will create a lot of precious memories and come home ten times more exhausted than you were before you left. Then you’ll take another vacation to try and relax and recover and come home and realize you have two month’s worth of vacation detritus hiding in every corner of your house and spend the next month of your life trying to catch up on laundry and unpacking and before you know it, school’s back in session! You clever mom you.

Well, that ought to keep us busy for a week or two. Hope you guys all have an awesome summer plan up your sleeves and enjoy the bonding time. I’m going to go spend the last few days of school frantically tying to run every errand I need done for the next three months so we can avoid taking our offspring out in public. Good luck everybody, and may the odds be ever in your favor.