What I’ll remember about summer 2021

Happy Labor Day, friends! To mark summer’s unofficial end, I thought I’d record a few things I want to remember from this season, inspired by one of my favorite bloggers. It would be easy to just remember the bigger events (ahem, someone’s birth! someone’s injury!) or to focus on what this summer didn’t include (a trip to the Maine, for the first time ever), so I like the idea of capturing the little pleasures and particulars to look back on. Here’s some of what we’ll remember from summer 2021…

Listening: Leading up to Annie’s birth, I started to crave the worship of strong female voices. (A different kind of pregnancy craving, ha!) I put together this playlist, mostly of Mission House and FAITHFUL songs, and it’s what we ended up listening to in the delivery room. It’s been a calming and strengthening companion after her birth, too.

Eating: All the Meal Train meals, thank you Jesus and friends! Highlights included this casserole (thank you, Libby!) and a picnic meal with this chicken salad, this potato salad, fruit salad, and Garden Salsa Sun Chips (thank you, Ginna!). I hadn’t eaten Sun Chips in years and it turns out they are SO GOOD.

Visiting: We opted out of a neighborhood pool membership last year with all the COVID uncertainty, so it was a delight to get back to it this summer! Even with John’s injury and my very-pregnant self and then a newborn, we made it to the pool several times a week and the kids LOVED it. Our favorite time to go was after dinner – there was something about the cooler temps, the emptier pool, and the proximity to bedtime that made our visits a bit magical.

Wearing: My nap dress was worn 2-3 times a week, I kid you not. The perfect late-pregnancy, post-partum, easy-breezy outfit. I’m glad it was permanently memorialized in Annie’s newborn photos because it was definitely the outfit of the moment.

I was also influenced into a pair of fauxm (faux, foam, haha) Birks for all those pool trips. Two thumbs up.

Enjoying: The company of my parents. Though I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen to have them stay with us for several weeks leading up to and including Annie’s birth, we are so grateful to have had their help and their companionship. Living far apart makes our time together precious, and I did my best to soak it up.

Learning: With all our time at the pool, June’s swimming improved leaps and bounds! She completely ditched her floatie, gained so much confidence in swimming underwater, and even bought these dive rings with her own money :) Lessons with a neighborhood college student were the highlight of her weeks.

Attending: Physical therapy appointments! John’s been going twice a week since he graduated from crutches, right around when Annie was born. His at-home exercises were as much a part of our evening routine as a plate of juicy peach slices.

Watching: Parental leave was the perfect opportunity to indulge in the Tokyo Olympics full force and we certainly did. July also brought the return of Ted Lasso – season two has been SO GOOD so far! (Rom-communism, anyone?!)

Reading: With our other two children, the last feeding before bed was accompanied by total darkness and rustling the sheets under pain of death so as not to disturb their settling. For whatever reason, Annie is tolerant of even a bedside lamp being on as she falls back asleep, and so I’ve been able to sneak in a few pages of reading each night (a HUGE gift to this mama, as my nightly bedtime reading routine is one of the hardest things to give up in seasons with a tiny baby). The first book I read after she was born was The Self-Driven Child, and aside from LOVING it, it was perfect for the moment: engrossing, but not so interesting that I was tempted to stay up for hours :)

What will you remember from summer 2021? I’d love to hear!

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