Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Dog Days of Summer, Part Two

We are currently in the heart of the long, hot summer. There were six weeks between our trip to Cyprus right when the kids got out of school and our trip to Paris and back to the States to see the grandparents right before school starts back up, and three of those weeks have past. Three more to go.

Summer camp options in Amman are few and far between. The ones that may sound appealing (i.e. a horseback riding camp) are prohibitively expensive. My office offers a summer camp, but it is run by teenagers who are just this side of being able to take care of themselves, and when they are not playing cards poolside while toddlers struggle to survive in the shallow end of the swimming pool unsupervised, chaos reigns. It is also ridiculously expensive and just short of glorified daycare. I don't know about you, but summer camp -- if you're going to subject your child to it -- should be an enriching experience. Not detention.

My mom, a single, working mother, sent us to summer camp, and most times it was glorified daycare and not an enriching experience. I don't have many fond memories of summer camp and I've told stories to the kids about some of my summer camp experiences in hopes they appreciate the herculean lengths Elise goes to to keep them entertained for six weeks. For example there was the milky yellow swimming pool at the YMCA on Burns Rd. Now, thankfully, filled in and most likely yet another gated housing community.

I like, in theory, the idea of them going to a sleep-away camp where they climb mountains, swim across icy-cold lakes, and learn to carve a working combustion engine out of the stump of a 100 year-old pine tree, but, alas, they are perhaps still too young to go to a sleep-away camp. Especially when going to the type of sleep-away camp I am envisioning would require a transatlantic flight to get to and taking out a personal loan.

For the time being, we'll stick with what works. And I am thankful for Elise that she does value wanting to give the kids a fun summer they will look back on fondly.

At the beginning of the summer, she sat them down, and the four of them drew up their summer "bucket list", all the things they wanted to do over the summer, i.e. go to the children's museum, have a water balloon fight, go to Magic Planet, and have breakfast for dinner. They've started crossing a few things of their list, but the truth is they are learning to do very little and be happy with it. Which I also think is an important life skill. It is not realistic for anyone to be expected to be entertained every waking moment of their lives, and despite Elise's efforts, she really isn't trying to run a cruise ship here.

This is the first summer both Elise and I have taken real efforts to combat the so-called "summer slide", the fabled loss of cognitive ability a child suffers while playing Pokemon, going swimming, building legos, and watching hour after hour of cartoons. We bought them each a work book corresponding to the grade they would be entering in the fall, and to our amazement, they actually sit down at the breakfast table and work in their books a couple of days a week. Clementine is the most diligent, but even Sam who was the most resistant initially is getting into the spirit.

Though the kids pretty much cartoons daily, that's what summer is about. They don't have iPads. Mostly because their dad is too cheap to by them for them. When they have moments of Einsteinian  inspiration away from an iPad screen, Elise and I ask ourselves sarcastically, "Why aren't they on their devices?" It's not easy. Moments of Einsteinan inspiration don't happen everyday, and the times their play devolves into WWF-style cage matches are more common than not.

A few days ago, Elise took them all to go jumping at a local trampoline gym called Gravity where there is a indoor ropes course.


Peter trapped in the ropes. 


Sam coming to his rescue. 


A throne of foam.


Foam blocks from sea to shining sea. 

The next week, we  went to Magic Planet, a ginormious Chuck E. Cheese -style arcade, only without the crappy, cardboard pizza (And with bumper cars!!). 



Finally, we checked out the Amman Farmer's Market. The pickings were pretty slim, but we did by a new jar of local honey. Unfortunately, of the 10 or so stalls that had been set up, only two were manned by actual farmers who were selling vegetables, the rest were occupied by craftspeople of varying degrees of skill. Two elderly Armenian women convinced us to try dried, preserved Armenian beef. It took Elise the better part of the afternoon to get the taste out of her mouth. I told her she was lucky she hadn't tried the grey one, literally it was the color of cement, and the flavor wasn't much better. 



No comments: