Sometimes working from home doesn’t exactly work.

For me, my best productive work is done when all three kids are at school and I am sitting in my yoga pants and a tank top in the hallway in front of my iMac with a giant cup of coffee beside me.

It is NOT done while sitting in my bed beside a child who wants to watch Spongebob and wants to eat breakfast and wants a drink and needs help wiping and wants to get dressed and can’t find her favorite dress and needs help turning her underwear the right way and needs a snack and wants to watch another Spongebob and needs another drink and wants me to draw her a butterfly and needs me to get her some more paper and wants some cherries and needs me to wash her hands after she has cherries and needs help finding the marker she dropped behind the bed and needs help wiping again and wants another Spongebob and wants help wiping up the drink she just spilled and needs help getting a new dress.

(And the chewing. OH MY GOD, the chewing. When a child sits beside you, practically draped on your person, and she’s eating popcorn out of one of those plastic bag things and every single crunch and hand dive into the bag makes this bag crackling noise that makes typing coherently almost entirely impossible? Yeah. I hate that.)

But this is my life post-preschool graduation and pre-camp starting. Three weeks.

Three weeks of, well, not being very productive.

So, I’m giving up on productivity.

And I’m trading it in.

For mornings spent at the pool.

For conversations about how much more awesome it would be if Spongebob lived in a big giant piece of swiss cheese instead of a pineapple.

For trips to the zoo.

For discussions about what she wants to be when she grows up…”a butterfly…or a doctor”

For arguments about whether or not pop-tarts are considered healthy snacks.

For afternoons spent at the pool.

For chalk masterpieces.

For drawing butterflies while wearing a bikini.

For eating popsicles in the backyard.

For riding the bikes at Target.

For explaining, for the 847th time, that NO, I do NOT have a baby in my tummy and no, I do not need Proactiv.

For watching the Food Network.

For evenings spent at the pool.

And as long as she stops chewing in my ear, it’s going to be great.