Accepting Our Family’s Current Season of Life

Every summer I have plans for my family. They are never very grandiose or over the top. They are always the simplest of plans; to sit on the back porch while my son plays outside, go to the beach or pool here and there, visit some parks, walk to get ice cream as a family and wake up later than usual. It really is the most basic of plans and that’s the way I like it. We live the majority of our year buried under feet of frozen snow, so we’re going to slop on some sunscreen and bug spray and spend our summer outside.

However, at the beginning of this summer, this guy came along and things were a little different.

Instead of time on the back porch each day, I spent the majority of my summer planted on the couch with a cluster feeding newborn while my son played games on my phone and watched a show or played with his toys on the living room floor, occasionally running laps around the house (very similar to the dog). I forgot that weather in the near 100s is too hot for a newborn and postpartum hormones aren’t exactly a good match for summer humidity.

Instead of trips to the zoo or daily walks to the park, we worked through all the big feelings that come with being a new big brother and a new mother and father to a newborn again. Because we all know that moodiness and sleep deprivation and all the tears that come with both of those have a way of planting us at home more often than not.

Some days I had plans and made it out the door.

Others we did not.

One day we managed to get on an airplane and take a trip.

Another we went up north.

And others just going to Target felt like a big trip.

I had daily reminders on social media that my friends were doing something different with their days. Countdowns and bucket lists and sunscreen at the pool. I sighed each time I saw what “the others” were up to. That was some of the greenest grass I’d ever seen. Then I remembered that I didn’t even have a bathing suit I could fit in right now and I cozied up in my amazingly comfortable maternity stretch pants and sent my son to the little blow-up pool in the backyard.

Even that was hard to manage some days.

Newborn survival mode isn’t exactly my favorite place, but I know it’s a very necessary place to be.

We did do some traveling out east to see family and to say goodbye to our family lake home a few hours away. Beyond that, there were no bucket lists or family goals more than spending time together in the way that made sense to us. This year, things were different and that was exactly what we needed. But in order to let this summer be special and enjoyable, I had to let go of my expectations of what summer should be.

I had to remind myself that I have nothing to prove to anyone by pushing my family to look like we’re doing amazing things each day. Because, let’s be honest, the amazing this year was really just the fact that we were together, building a new family and learning to love it.

Some days that was hard, and other days quite easy.

Some friends of mine are going through some serious health problems with their newborn and they recently shared similar sentiments about how this summer wasn’t at all what they expected. The usual for their family was swiftly shoved aside by a new normal. For different and more difficult reasons than ours. It’s a reminder that some seasons of our families’ lives are predictable and some are not, but seasons occur nonetheless and that requires flexibility and deep, deep breathes to accept a slightly different way.

The nice thing about seasons is they aren’t permanent and we will get through.

That’s not as easy to remember, though, when we have an instantaneous window to the outside world at our fingertips, always able to see what everyone else is up to.

Ahh, but it’s not everyone else.

We all have seasons.

We all must be flexible.

Our yards are different shades of green.

And that is more than okay. We’re all doing the best we can. There’s a special kind of sweetness mixed into the uncommon, spontaneity of new seasons.

And that, I can accept.

I often have to remind myself that my kids aren’t looking at what everyone else is up to like I am, at least not at the young age they are now. And they certainly won’t remember this summer as a disappointment. This was the fastest summer, but the longest and I wouldn’t change it for anything. And as I come across the bikes still hung in the garage collecting summer cobwebs, I can’t help but wonder if fall might be our season to emerge.

I’ve always had a preference for cool weather anyways.