It is summer vacation. The first two weeks of my vacation I have my children on the floor. Enjoying their presence. It also helps me to stay in my rhythm. Rhythm is important for me to remain stable, but it also provides clarity and structure for the children.

In vacation mode

But everything always turn out differently during the holidays. First, the children are with me for a longer time. “Normally” they are with me for a weekend. And now for two weeks. And two weeks is a while longer than usual. But I enjoy it to the full. Of course it requires the necessary adjustments on my side. My own structure is quite different from what the children are used to. But on the other hand it is a structure that I can adapt to quickly because of their presence.

When the children are there I try to stick to the meal times that I have received from home. So lunch at 12:00 and dinner at 6:00 pm. I also cook more than when I am alone. Of course you should cook every day, but I don’t like cooking for just myself. So I don’t do that enough. But with them, I want to put something healthy on the table every day. And that actually works wonderfully well. For someone who does not cook regularly, I think it is an achievement to put something healthy on the table almost every day.

Of course, the vacation is also a time to sin occasionally. So also occasional fries or pizza are on the menu.

A different time sense

During the holidays time runs differently than usual. This post as an example; it took me several days to write this. While otherwise I actually take much shorter. It is vacation; things are slower and I take more time for it. Normally it doesn’t take me a lot of energy or time to put together a blog post, but during the holidays now with the children over it takes me several days.

I also notice that my time awareness goes differently with them than when I am alone. Now I keep an eye on time. Also, because I know I don’t have an internal clock for this that tells me it’s time to do something. So I often check what time it is and how much time things are going to cost me. With that I try to stay in line so that we eat, play, clean and get to bed on time. I don’t have to worry about getting up; the children often get up earlier than me.

Vacation plans

After this week I have another week of vacation myself. What I am going to do I do not know exactly yet, I actually do not plan anything and I will see what will come my way.

I do have planned to be seeing Jitse of Gewoon Autastisch IRL! This will happen at the end of August. I am really looking forward to this! It is also a bit exciting, but we have had good contact via Twitter for some time. All in all a very nice summer!