I haven’t even clocked a week since I’ve been home full time with my kids, and I know it’s time to get a plan. A plan that will ensure we are alive by the time school starts. Alive, barely, but alive. I’ve stumbled across some plans that I think are genius. While everyone is encouraging you to get a big calendar and block out your hours with reading time, chores, naps, and cooking lessons, I’ve found a much better and dare I say fool proof plan.

My grand master plan to surviving summer with kids is:

• let them live off the land
  • I found my son eating a marshmallow covered in bark from the previous night’s festivities. He  had the white rim around his mouth as evidence. I scolded him but was also impressed with his wilderness-like abilities. Then I asked myself, “does this count as breakfast? Is he a hunter/gatherer?” Well done, me. He is one with the earth. No need to differentiate berries to be eaten when there are marshmallows and other goodies to be discovered. He has sniffed out his surroundings to last through the parched PNW summer.

• give them knives
  • My sweet boy wants so badly to cut up his own food. We are happy to give him a table knife when everyone else has one and he hacks away at his dinner like a velociraptor. He now thinks it suitable to cut up e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. He used a toy knife that came with his wooden play cake set, but that wasn’t “cutting” it. He wanted to roll with the big boys. I saw no problem with this. Enter the lettuce knife. What I failed to realize is that it actually cuts more than lettuce, but I can’t turn back now. Cut your brother’s hair, sure. Cut the TV, why not?

• leave them unattended
  • Mama needs a MINUTE every once in awhile, and I’ve found that it makes sense to leave my little rascal unattended. Why, you ask? I would never know the hell he can raise unless I give him a little wiggle room. How else would he have time to empty out the powder of  my vitamin capsules and mix them with water to make a soup?  Or better yet, try to unlock my phone so many times that it resets it to the factory settings in German? You see, I would never have the mural that is on my kitchen table with a sharpie unless he had ample time alone.

Mamas, let your little ones live the summer of their dreams complete with knives, day old food, and time unattended by any mature adult. It only seems right.