The first week of the girls’ summer vacation went well.  It started a little like a school week, in that their mom was at work and they woke up too early.  But, we stayed busy and then my wife had Thursday and Friday off.  Being off for the summer is different than having a week or so off, like at Spring or Winter Break.  Having a short vacation, knowing that it will end is basically just enough to catch your breath.  But, being on summer vacation allows enough time to shed all of the previous schoolyear, leave it behind, then grow new skin.  The new skin will take all summer to grow and we don’t know what it’ll look like until we’re covered in it.  But, we have all summer to work on the process.  The first week was just the beginning. 

On Monday, I took Dee Dee and Audio to a park nearby that has a lake and a bridge that leads to an island in the lake.  Audio chose to wear her rubber Cracks (generic Crocs that she renamed to give them some character) and needed to stop every few steps to dump out the dried grass, sticks, rocks, and small insects that were bugging her.  By the end of the week, I had her convinced that any of her other shoes are better to wear for pretty much anything. 

Dee Dee had baseball on Tuesday and Thursday evenings.  I’ve enjoyed the experience of coaching her team, for the most part.  But, I’ll be relieved when the season is over.  Having had my dad as my baseball coach makes it seem natural for me to coach her.  I think she has liked having me as her coach.  She’s said as much.  There’s a lot of things she won’t know if she liked or not until she’s grown up.  So, maybe I’ll never find out.  One thing I do know is that coaching has shown me that a lot of parents are pretty horrible at being parents.  I’m surprised at how easy it is for some parents to dump their kid out of the car and say, “Here’s my kid.  I’ll be back later, probably.”  I know that I err on the side of being too involved.  But, when I see parents lean the other way I wonder what sort of adult their kid is going to be.  And, it doesn’t appear to be tough-love, teach them to sink or swim mentality.  It seems to be more of an out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach.  I think a lot of people become parents before they are ready. 

On Wednesday night we celebrated the solstice with a dance party.  Mid-week celebrations are a fun way to break up a week, but they make for a long, slow drag to the weekend.  My wife was off on Thursday, so all of us staying up late on Wednesday wasn’t so bad.  But, by the time it got to Dee Dee’s baseball practice on Thursday evening, I was pretty exhausted.  At practice, Dee Dee went to catch a ball that smacked her on the chin.  It really made an ugly noise as it hit her.  But, the ball wasn’t a real, hard baseball and she got over it.  She didn’t even end up with a bruise.  She felt bad because it hurt and because she didn’t catch the ball.  But, I pointed out to her that all the boys who were working on the same thing had a tendency to try to catch the ball off to the side instead of getting in front of it.  I didn’t point this out to the boys, though. 

At some point during the week, Audio started beginning every sentence with “Dude!”  “Dude!  Look how big it is.”  “Dude!  We should eat some candy!”  “Dude!  Change the channel.”  It was a little funny, at first.  But, it got old pretty fast.  Luckily, by the end of the first week she’d forgotten how much she enjoyed saying “Dude” and we made sure not to remind her. 

The weekend was pretty typical.  There was a birthday party at a park where there is a wading pool.  A storm whipped up about an hour into the party.  It wasn’t raining much, but the wind was blowing branches out of trees, making waves in the wading pool, and causing the parents at the party to hold onto the poles of the canopy that was set up over the picnic tables to keep it from blowing away.  It didn’t take long for the decision to be made to just take down the canopy and move the party indoors.  We took the opportunity to leave.  As we were getting ready to go, the birthday girl asked if Dee Dee could go to her house.  Since it was mostly close family at the party, we told the girl that it would be better to do on a different day.  The birthday girl said that she was moving to Fergus Falls in three days.  So, the girls said good-bye and we went home.  Too bad.  She seemed like a nice girl with nice parents.