summer mom guilt (suhm-er mom gilt)
noun
1. How Facebook and other social media sites make me feel from the end of June until the beginning of September.
2. Something I’m losing this year.

My friends’ kids are doing amazing things this summer — they are going to the zoo, going to Canada’s Wonderland, traveling the globe, swimming, beaching, water parking, splash padding, boating, biking, hiking, trampolining, playing baseball, spectating baseball, eating copious amounts of ice cream — and school only *just* ended in Ontario.

Now, the ghosts of summers past could easily tell you that social media has, in the past, made me green with envy and sick with summer mom guilt. After all, we only get 18 summers with these kids of ours and my heart just wants to fill every minute with fun! exciting! entertaining! things. BUT, here’s the thing. At the very same time that I want to fill all those moments with MOMENTS, I also have that little pesky thing called a job that has to take up so many of those moments. (Not to mention the things called laundry and cooking and cleaning)

While, yes, as of this past Thursday I’m now officially and technically unemployed from my social media job at Progressive Waste (I even changed my LinkedIn profile), summer is my busy season over at Ali Martell Photography, and this summer is my busiest yet (Seriously, I’m so ridiculously surprised and shocked and over-the-stinking-moon excited and thankful that my business is booming.) with more than five shoots a week, including graduations and upsherins and parties and bat mitzvahs and family shoots and cake smashes and newborns, that all need to be uploaded and edited and ordered and delivered.

So, it turns out that I cannot make every single minute exciting.

But you know what?

It’s okay.

I’m doing a good job. Nay, a great job. 

Psst. And guess what? SO ARE YOU.

I’m just not going to let social media make me feel the summer mom guilt anymore. And guess what? You shouldn’t either.

My kids are getting to do lots of fun stuff. Last weekend they got to spend a day in their heartfriends’ pool from sunup to sundown, getting out only for sustenance. I took Isabella and her friend strawberry picking. We had some of their cousins from Israel stay with us and go turtle watching at the duck pond.

I am going to slow down this summer and enjoy the sun and the ice cream. For me, and for them. But I’m not going to feel guilty if I have to balance the ice cream trips with some days spent in our jammies all day.

Some days my kids are getting sent to the park to make their own fun. Some days they are spending time watching Full House and Fuller House. Some days they are eating leftovers for lunch.

Some days they are being told: I AM NOT JULIE  YOUR CRUISE DIRECTOR.

Want to know what my biggest summer memory from my childhood is? Biking with my sister until it got dark. There was no parent entertaining me, there was no money spent, no cruise direction of any kind. It was just us and our bikes.

My kids can make these kinds of memories too. Guilt-free.