Happy first week of summer break to you! It has been a ride. Not at all what I expected it to be. I anticipated that we might experience some of the difficulties we did last summer (Jack wanting too much of me and getting ragey). But that has not been the case at all. Jack has been lovely and we've had some really sweet times together. Alice is old enough to play with him more, and I've made some changes around our house/schedule that have really set us up for success this summer.
The difficulty so far has been with the neighborhood friends. On the first day of summer they were knocking at our door and ringing our doorbell constantly. We got back from the park and 2 minutes later there were kids at our door. I told Jack he could play with them for 20 minutes before we needed to eat lunch and have nap time/quiet time. He did so and then came back in. But the neighbor kids were back knocking within minutes. "Can Jack play at 2:00? We are going to blow up water balloons then and have a water fight!" That was going to cut both of our quiet times short, but it was the first day of summer and I'm not a monster so I said yes. Jack finished lunch and I got the kids upstairs. It wasn't long before I started hearing screaming on our porch. I peeked out our window and saw 3 neighbor kids playing on our porch, pushing each other on the baby swing and screaming/laughing. I figured they'd go away soon since Jack was gone. They did not. The yelling got louder and soon I started hearing thuds against our house as they thwacked the swing against the wall. NOPE. I went out and told them that Alice was trying to sleep and they'd need to go home until Jack was done, and then I'd send him over to their house. They left, but 5 minutes later I was hearing the same sounds, and lo and behold the same kids were back with two more kids from the neighborhood.
I spent the rest of the quiet time and day policing the neighbor kids and teaching Jack about play etiquette, as one time one of his "second-tier" friends came over and asked to play. He said yes, but 4 minutes later a "first-tier" friend came over and so he ditched the initial friend to go play with the other friend, and the first friend looked so sad and dejected and asked if she could play with me and Alice and it was just a long day. At one point a kid barged into our house, without knocking, when Jack wasn't even there. One of Jack's friends is a 30-year-old woman with disabilities who is about 7 years old mentally. She's really sweet and I don't mind them playing together outside in our front yard, but she can get attached to me and Alice and Savvy too and it just adds another level of complexity. I feel like I can't enjoy our front porch this summer because if any of us are spotted, the peace will be gone for the next several hours. I took Alice's swing off the front porch and it's being stored in the guest room because I don't want it drawing in neighbor kids during quiet time anymore, especially when they aren't respectful of our property or of my requests to come back later.
The other part of the "neighbor kid" problem is that Jack's favorite friends in the neighborhood are a really rough little bunch. Not great influences. It's a 5-year-old boy and his 9-year-old uncle who carries his phone with him everywhere and will show Jack videos on youtube (big red flag). They are mean, get physically violent when upset, name call and swear every time they open their mouths. But they are the friends that live closest and the friends that like to do the same things as Jack (active games and sports). They are always outside or knocking on our door, so they're constantly on his mind. I've been tweaking our schedule every evening this last week to try and put up boundaries to protect my boy and to protect my own peace and happiness this summer. Our new schedule includes a relaxed breakfast, doing some chores, leaving the house, then coming home for lunch, quiet time, and computer time. No friends until after computer time, and even then . . . I'm going to do my best to keep Jack out of the neighborhood as much as possible. Our day just goes so well until the neighbor friends come into the picture.
I want to be able to just send my kid out in the neighborhood to play with friends all summer. I'm really pretty laid-back and loved my own childhood summers playing tag with friends all day. But the kids on our particular street are rough, they disturb my peace, and there's a level 2 child sex offender who lives 4 doors down from us. Combine all that with getting rejected from our last viable prospect for a Utah job last week . . . I've just been feeling stuck and discouraged. I ordered an open/closed sign to put outside our front door to try and train the neighbor kids that they can only knock during the very limited times each day when the sign will be flipped to "open." And I'm jumping back into the research phase of job hunting to see if we can get any other options on the table. Jared talked to his intermountain contact last week and they said there won't be any new family physician openings in or around Utah Valley until 2026. So we're expanding the radius to, likely, the entire state of Utah. I am dying to be closer to family/Jack's cousins, and to be able to move to a safer neighborhood. Pray for us! And now, some pictures from our week:
