So I’m trying to get back into blogging. Look at me. This is the 3rd one in a week! No, seriously. This is one of those exercises whereby I hope to pull my creativity and energy up by their bootstraps. Sitting down to write about stuff channels a different part of my brain and allows me to remember things that might not have seemed important at the time, but were nonetheless.
I want to go back in time a bit, to the darker days of COVID. No, I’m not going to bitch this time. I want to talk about some stuff I did with my kids that I’m pretty proud of. I went back and read my posts from the past couple of years (not that it took that long), and while I briefly touched on this topic, I never really went into it in any great detail. What is it? Themes. During the first summer, we did theme weeks. We had more time. Last summer, we did theme days, as we had less time.
I had desperately wanted to keep my kids from becoming too “screen feral” during COVID. Y’all know what I mean. When kids sit in front of screens all day – especially YouTube – they turn into complete and total assholes. When you’re quarantining, it’s a bit harder to plan outings and such to break up the long, hot summer days. Ironically enough, our first “theme week” started because of YouTube. Stella somehow stumbled upon some videos where they looked at all the crazy vending machines they have in Japan. As such, “Japan Week” was born. One day we did bento box carryout. I ordered a JapanCrate. We watched some Godzilla movies. We watched anime. And we tried like hell to find some f’ing vending machines. Of course, everything was closed. We tried the zoo – a place we could go during the pandemic because it was outside – but the 2 whole Coke machines we found were out of order.
We did “tropical week.” I ordered tiki glasses and drink umbrellas. We watched Lilo & Stitch, Finding Ohana, and Moana. They wore Hawaiian shirts and waved around inflatable palm trees. And we couldn’t let it go without Spam. I made Spam puffs. I’m not sure we’d repeat that.
We had Christmas in July in 2020, which I wrote about – a week where we had a small tree, made cookies, watched Christmas Vacation, and did some other holiday-esque stuff. We had to quarantine from camp last year, and I didn’t want to repeat that theme, so we did Halloween in July instead. They dressed up in some costumes we had around (geisha and astronaut). We watched Halloween episodes of Spongebob. We even tried to make Jack-o’-lanterns out of watermelons.
What makes me happy is that my kids are always asking to do more theme weeks. They seem to focus more on that when they think and talk about the last 2 summers. I feel proud of that. We’ll do some theme days this summer for sure. That might be a new summer tradition that came out of 2 years during which all traditions were thrown out the window.
Dramatic Momologue 
Thank you for sharing!