Cousins Maine Lobster. My 12-year-old and I have been stalking the Cousins Maine Lobster truck that comes to a mall parking lot 20 minutes from us every few weeks. So imagine how thrilled we were to find an outpost — an actual restaurant, which couldn’t disappear! — in Asbury Park. We wound up eating lobster rolls three times. I also developed a taste for their Maine Root blueberry soda. A lovely thing to sip while walking down the boardwalk.

Days Ice Cream. A family tradition now. Someone from our crew went every single night. They had a reasonable number of dairy free ice creams, and they weren’t bad. I almost forgot I was eating ice cream made out of oats…

The Silverball Arcade. There were red flags on the water for two days. We did go in up to our knees on those days but the morning it was also chilly we decided to skip the beach to head to this pinball arcade on the Asbury Park boardwalk. The 12-year-old set a new “Under 13” record twice on one machine. He set the record and then beat it himself. (He was offended when I mused that perhaps this was an underplayed machine…)

Having four sea-worthy children. The 7-year-old has really stepped up his swimming game and was able to keep his own in the waves. So I was able to mostly focus my attention on the 2-year-old, who is much less of a daredevil. This made beach trips marginally more relaxing. With five kids I will take what I can get!

Boardwalk runs. My husband and I are training for a half-marathon in September, so we both needed to get some long runs in. I ran three times in the morning. Twice I did 60 minute runs, and then on Friday morning I ran 9.7 miles. I guess I should have gone the full 10 but that’s when I looped back to the house and it was getting hot and I felt done. Running 9.7 miles isn’t bad, though, right? It was beautiful to see the sand and the water and do a little people watching.

Family dinners on the porch. The house we rent has a huge front porch with a giant table. So we ate dinner there every night, enjoying the view of the water.

One on one walks with the kids. The beach and the town and the boardwalk present lots of walking opportunities. I particularly enjoyed chatting with the 15-year-old on the pier at night.

Sleeping with the windows open. The house has air conditioning, but we were able to sleep most nights with the windows open. Feeling the ocean breeze and occasionally waking up to see the sunrise over the ocean was such a treat, as was going back to sleep after 6 a.m.! The toddler mostly cooperated on the sleep front, including taking naps. He was in his own room this year and we all slept better.

Potty training. Speaking of the toddler…I packed a lot of wipes and then only needed to use them once. He is really figuring it out!

Buying a copy of the NY Times with my column in it. I wrote about working on vacation. And yep, did some work on vacation. Probably about an hour a day. I feel less like I’m coming back to a mess.

The kids getting to play card games…without me having to play them. My mother-in-law came with us and she is such a trooper — playing Hearts or Five Crowns with the big kids every night after I put the toddler to sleep. I used the time to read and relax.

Now I’m looking forward to hopefully going back next year! We like to travel lots of different places but it is fun to come back to the same one again and again too.

What I’ve wound up doing the last two weekends is splitting my long run into two parts. This past Saturday, for instance, I ran in my neighborhood from 7 a.m. to 8:25 a.m. I then took my 7-year-old to his 9 a.m. karate class. After getting him situated, I ran around that neighborhood for another 20 minutes. The weekend before I had run an hour with a friend in the morning, and then ran 30 minutes later in the morning with my 15-year-old.

Is it as good as running 90 minutes or 105 minutes consecutively? Possibly not. But in terms of training I assume it’s better than not adding on the second run.

I’ve been doing the same as I practice my new speech. With a new book out this fall, it’s time to switch up my material. Running through the whole speech requires 40 uninterrupted minutes when my voice isn’t tired. I’ve done that a few times, but I’ve increased the volume of my practicing by viewing the six chunks of the speech as separate entities. I practiced two before bed the other night (which was about all I could muster). I did another section in the car on the way to my audiobook recording yesterday. And so on.

Long, uninterrupted chunks of time are great when we can get them. Unfortunately, for various reasons, those chunks might not always be available. When that’s the case, it’s tempting to think that we can’t get anything done. But life is seldom either/or, and perfect doesn’t need to be the enemy of the good. It might be possible to get things done in little pieces. Little pieces, over time, add up.

But, as someone once said, people are a good use of time. The kids have actually had more limited ambitions than the full day-at-the-amusement-park extravaganzas we’ve done in previous years. So I figured I could at least do a Mommy Few Hours.

My 12-year-old and I seized some time yesterday. I had to pick him up early at camp because of my call + virtual meeting schedule but when I finished at 3:30, he and I took off to go find the Cousins Maine Lobster truck. He got a Connecticut roll and I got a Maine roll (and a blueberry soda!). Then we went to Dave & Busters and played games. I managed to make the leaderboard on the piano keys game (several times, in fact…) and I got a 500 ticket jackpot on one of the spin-the-wheel games.

Of course, that is just about enough for a single piece of candy in the prize area, but my kids are absolutely obsessed with trading in their tickets. I gave my son my tickets and he selected a handful of treasures. All in all, he was happy with the experience.

Next, I’ll be doing a spa day (well, few hours) with the 10-year-old. Then I just have to figure out how to fit in two more requests. The 7-year-old isn’t sure what he wants to do, but I have a sneaky suspicion it might involve something similar to Dave & Busters…

I love being in my own space. I sleep best in my own bed! But traveling is definitely still a priority for me. That’s true even though traveling with kids, particularly little ones, is not easy. Years ago, when I had three kids ages 4 and under, I told myself it was OK if I wasn’t traveling all that much because they would all be out of the house by the time I was 50. I could spend my 50s traveling like a young person, only I wouldn’t have to stay in hostels!

Then, of course, I proceeded to have two more babies, pushing that everyone-out-of-the-house moment close to 60. My husband will be 70! So yes, we’re beholden to the school schedule for a while. And while we both travel for work and have traveled some together, most likely a lot of our trips will involve young people. But while travel with kids may not be easy, it’s still doable. I realized that I don’t need to wait until they’re gone, nor do I particularly want to, since my oldest kids shouldn’t miss out on experiences just because they have a baby brother. And so I’ve been devising some ambitious travel plans for the next few years. Possibly Europe, Hawaii, another national park or two…

Alas, so has everyone else in this summer of “revenge travel.” Some of the places I’m looking for 2023 travel are already starting to book up! I’m a fan of planning ahead, but I’m not sure I like that everyone else is planning ahead if they have the same travel desires as me…

Anyway, I’m reminded of a quote from the first year of Best of Both Worlds, when travel expert Henley Vazquez talked about adventurous family travel. I asked if there was a way to make traveling with toddlers more pleasant and she basically said “I wish there was!” And yet she’s traveled with kids over and over again. The point is that it is going to be rough at times but it is worth it to see the world, and have your kids see the world.

To be sure, they won’t necessarily remember the world if they’re really little, which is one reason I have traveled with just the big kids to Paris, Yellowstone in the fall (and Disney! Which is honestly best for big kids, whatever impression people might have). But as my little guy crosses three this winter he might start to remember these adventures. And given that my oldest three will indeed all be gone by the time I’m 50, we don’t actually have that much more time to enjoy adventures with them. And hey, my husband has racked up a lot of frequent flyer miles that need to get used at some point…

What’s on your family travel bucket list?

In the not-travel category: We’ve been having fun watching the fireflies in our new yard. For some reason they seem far more numerous here than in the old yard!

I finally bought a new MacBook Pro. This one I’m typing on now made it six years, which I think is reasonable for heavy daily use. I wrote several books on this laptop — Off the Clock, Juliet’s School of Possibilities, Tranquility by Tuesday. I’m curious what I’ll write on the next one! I put this off for a long time. I’m cheap and I have a strong tendency to just make do. But a few of my frequent-use programs could no longer update on my current Mac and my machine didn’t have the capacity for upgrading to the current Mac operating systems (I mean, maybe with a lot of add-on memory? But that seems really inefficient). The good news is that since I bought a new machine this time BEFORE my current one died I will be able to slowly make the transition.

I have been making progress on another Summer Fun List item: morning runs. During much of the year my during-the-week runs happen in early-to-mid afternoon. In winter it’s warmer then. I tend to need a break, and we have childcare. Morning seems cold or dark and if we have to be moving at 6:30 a.m., it’s harder to get out and do anything. But! Summer changes all that. The camp schedule doesn’t require anyone to be up until 7:45 or so, and we’re definitely up by then anyway. On the days my husband is around I can set the alarm for 6:40, run from 6:55-7:35 or so. It’s a nice way to start the day. I don’t do it every day by any means, but I have been doing two weekdays per week and I’d like to get to three. Though my eldest has decreed that when he gets home from camp he wants to start running with me three times a week and he is not going to want to do it in the morning. So maybe I will be both a morning and an evening runner. We shall see…

I have two Medium columns up since the last time I posted about them. One is “Jealous of your kids’ camps? Make your own this summer” and then yesterday I posted “The best way to kick your screen time habit.”

Friend-of-the-blog Lori Mihalich-Levin, who was a guest on Best of Both Worlds a few years ago, recently released two new guided meditations that are designed to be used while pumping: short version and long version. If that sounds like you, please check them out!

Longtime readers (and podcast listeners) know that my husband planned this trip. I planned the summer camp schedule; he planned the summer vacation. This came together fairly last minute (in May). We chatted with the kids and learned that they wanted to do a resort. I said it needed to be a direct flight, and my preference was to not travel internationally, given all the Covid testing rigamarole for international travel — though that was dropped in early June. All this is ironic since it turned out the U.S. Virgin Islands still had a testing protocol for everyone until early June as well, including US visitors, so choosing a “domestic” destination didn’t matter on that front (though fortunately that was dropped by the time we went), AND we turned out to sort of need our passports (you go through customs at the St. Thomas airport on the return flight to the mainland — apparently you don’t absolutely need a passport but it goes fastest with something showing citizenship, and how often do you travel with your children’s birth certificates?).

My husband searched the usual spots. We’d had the Westin St. John on our radar for a while but it was always booked up. But then, lo and behold, when he searched in early May, there was a 3-bedroom villa available for our dates. So we took it. The price was actually reasonable vs. many of the other resorts and there was a direct flight from Newark to St. Thomas with seats for 8 people (our nanny came with us, which was good since it turned out the kids club was mostly closed). Ferry service from St. Thomas to St. John is fairly frequent.

Anyway, we had a good time. There were some rough moments. Flying with a toddler is painful. I wound up nursing him for reasonable chunks of both flights, and he would then sleep while half-nursing. Perhaps the AAP should have included this in their recent guidelines about breastfeeding for two years — forget the nutrition, it’s about making plane flights bearable for your fellow passengers…He also slept in a crib in the room with my husband and me and the close quarters didn’t make for great sleep, though it was better than last summer during our resort trip when the longest stretch of sleep I got for the entire week was 3 hours. No kids got sick, which is great, but my husband got an ear infection from diving and wound up experiencing the finest of St. John’s urgent care facilities. We all got sunburned (except the toddler) despite our best efforts.

My goal (from the Summer Fun List) was to have at a few enjoyable moments, and that definitely happened. We did some great snorkeling — I liked Trunk Bay in particular (we rented a Jeep and my husband braved island driving — on the left side — to bring us to a few cool beaches). We rented a sail boat for a day. My husband and I went on a sunset cruise and saw a double rainbow over St. John. The certified divers in our group did several dives. I went on a night kayak trip with my oldest kid and we saw tons of tarpons under our clear-bottom boat. My husband and I ate dinner at Zozo’s, which is a cool beach front restaurant in the remains of a resort that was mostly destroyed in the double hurricanes a few years ago. That was an experience — parking, and having the shuttle take you through the ruins, which are crawling with deer. I enjoyed the Westin’s frozen margaritas and my kids really got into their smoothies sipped pool side. I read for 30 minutes on the beach hammock one afternoon. I developed a taste for the resort deli’s curry chicken salad sandwiches.

The trip home was long, but we made it, getting back to the house at 12:10 a.m. early Sunday morning. Then my husband and oldest kid left at 9 a.m. to go to the airport to get a flight to camp. Fortunately, we’d packed one duffle full of the dorm stuff before we left on vacation, and did the 15-year-old’s laundry in our villa, so we just had to add a few more cooler-weather items and he was ready to go. He seems to be enjoying himself. I was on a flight to Las Vegas that evening. Flying business class, solo, is a very different experience than flying in economy with a toddler!

In other news: Speaking of vacation, my Medium column this week looks at “The Question that Reveals if a Habit is Right for You.” Namely, would you do this habit on vacation? I did read my Shakespeare! I did not try to run five miles daily or anything like that. One habit is sustainable in my life and one just…isn’t.

Photo: Turquoise waters…I don’t know who this person is floating in the water but this was the closest I could get to a no-people shot…

But life is never typical, and there were some good things too. I went to the 15-year-old’s high school choir concert. He looked very handsome in his tux! And the kids sounded good. He and I went to Princeton Reunions over the weekend (he stayed with my parents for the party part and then came with me for the “P-rade” — which he really wanted to go see). And we found out he got into the summer precollege program he was applying to. Summer planning for him has been a source of some stress as another thing had fallen through, but I think this will be a good choice, if going away for several weeks will be a new adventure.

Also, the hammock I asked for as a Mother’s Day gift arrived, and was assembled, and I even got to sit in it for 10 minutes on Sunday (my 12-year-old somehow got to sit in it for a lot longer…but hey). I look forward to hopefully sitting in it some more this summer.

Now, on to the TBT Scorecard! (TBT = Tranquility by Tuesday, my next book, which will be out October 11).

Give yourself a bedtime. Mostly. I was in my bed around 11 p.m. (or within 15 minutes) 6 out of 7 nights. On Friday night Reunions meant I went to bed at 1 a.m. But at least I slept until 8 a.m. the next morning!

Plan on Fridays. Always. This week felt somewhat unproductive so I actually started the planning on Thursday. I wasn’t doing much else. On Friday I also figured out the activity schedule for the week. Since I normally do this Sunday night, this was a change and I think I am a fan, so we’ll add this to the Friday planning list (even if I can’t do certain things like sign up for individual karate classes until Sunday night).

Move by 3 p.m. Hit or miss. I went for pre-3 p.m. walks outside on M, W, Th, and Fr (I had a doctor appointment Tuesday and it threw everything off). I didn’t do anything on Sunday except chase people around. Saturday I did do a ton of walking prior to 3 p.m. due to Reunions (we parked a ways from campus…) so I suppose that counts.

Three times a week is a habit. I only ran twice, although these were more interesting runs than usual. I did a trail run and also ran with the 15-year-old once. Due to my husband’s absence, we only had two full family meals, though I did eat with all the kids a few times. I sang three times (solo practice, choir practice, and church service). I guess technically I played the piano three times, but that was all on Sunday and it was because I took three small chunks of time to play. It only added up to about 30 minutes total, so that’s not really in keeping with the spirit of this rule. However, I have been getting some new music. I had to exchange the 10-year-old’s trumpet (the valves in the rental got stuck right before her concert…) and while I was in the music store I bought sheet music so that is improving my piano game. In case anyone is curious, I can still play a mean Für Elise.

Create a back-up slot. Friday was mostly open as usual. In more productive news, I had some open time on Monday, and was able to fit in a call with a potential speaking client the day they asked, which is always nice to be able to do.

One big adventure, one little adventure. I’ll call my run along the river with my 15-year-old my “little adventure” for the week. I think we will try to do this more regularly over the summer. And Reunions was definitely the big adventure. I saw some people I hadn’t seen in quite a while! And it’s always fun to see the campus again.

Take one night for you. Choir practice fills this spot, though Thursday was the last practice for the season. We’ll see what I choose to fill its place over the summer…

Batch the little things. Unclear. This week felt like a ton of little things. I was trying to work in 20 minute chunks between home-related woes, so there wasn’t a whole lot of batching.

Effortful before effortless. Because my current assignment in the Shakespeare reading projects is Sonnets 80-154, I did use some bits of time to read these (rather than reading a number of them in a 20-minute chunk, as I would with the plays). But at night it was mostly back to the bad habits, I’m afraid. I didn’t have a book I was reading. Maybe my hammock can become my fun. It takes more effort to go outside than to just pop open my phone, but it would be a lot more pleasant…

Yesterday I went for an afternoon walk. Today I’d use open time to take a nap as last night was just ridiculous. The toddler was up for 2.5 hours or so. My husband took the first hour, and then I took the remainder, being the “closer” for the situation. He (the toddler) was willing to lie in his crib while I sat in the rocking chair, so I added a substantial quantity of screen time to my tally for the day. I can attest that a lot of people are tweeting in the middle of the night.

This morning was subsequently dreary. I’m tired. My 14-year-old forgot his Spanish assignment and I drove it to school (I’m listening to Aaron Copland’s Rodeo in the car now after listening to Appalachian Spring ten times or so). We have an appliance installer here finally putting in our new dishwasher and a beverage station. Will this transform my coffee making? We shall see. My husband and I tend to make and share a pot, but the problem is we get off schedule. Someone makes a pot mid-day and we only drink half and then we leave it there and drink the day old coffee the next morning, but day old coffee is not as good as new coffee.

Some fun family news: My father was just elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. This year’s class also includes Glenn Close and Salman Rushdie, so that’s kind of fun. You can read Notre Dame’s news release here.

In past-podcast-guest news: Kendra Adachi’s new book, The Lazy Genius Kitchen, came out yesterday. She talks about meal planning, kitchen layout, how to create dishes, and so forth. I think my favorite part is the formula for food at a party. You need six “bites” per person per hour, and three choices per ten people. So if you have 20 people over from 7-10 p.m., you need 6 x 20 x 3 bites, which is 360 bites. Since you have 20 people, and you need 3 choices per ten people, this means you need 6 choices. Ergo, you need 60 bites of six items. It’s just math!

(With seven people in my house, I guess every meal is something of a party. I can tell you that making 12 muffins does not last long. It’s unclear whether everyone can even get a muffin for breakfast the next morning. Guess we need more bites!)

Then…I got a call yesterday from the district letting me know that they’ve decided to cancel all the in-person summer school classes. (Not for Covid reasons — they are just undersubscribed.) He’s taking a virtual health class to fulfill that requirement but I wanted him to have some structure, so I don’t think doing two virtual classes is the answer. But this basically means, for the structured part of his summer, that we’re back to square one.

So…regrouping. I’m hoping he can do a CIT stint at one of the camps where another child is going for a bit. And he wants to do a creative writing camp if I can find that (I asked him to look too). And maybe tennis lessons twice per week. I guess that plus the virtual class should mostly fill the time but we shall see. I wish I had a better sense of the “good” creative writing camps but I honestly don’t. He is not bullish on going away to camp, which is interesting to me, since the summer after my 9th grade year I was thrilled to be going, for the third year, to a 3-week summer camp at Northwestern University (I studied Modern World Literature that summer…).

Plans do not always stay planned. That’s life of course but the more moving pieces there are, the more complicated changing one thing becomes. I guess the upside is theoretically we could switch the vacation week to the July 4 week (when no one else will be in camp) but sometimes it’s better to just stick with something once it’s decided.

How is your summer planning going?

Photo: Random summer shot

So, for instance, Monday morning I drove the teenager to school with the 2-year-old in tow. I woke up the 12- and 10-year-old before leaving. They were in charge, and needed to get themselves ready. I came home, woke up the 7-year-old, and then loaded all of them in the car to drop the 12-year-old at school and the 10-year-old at a before school activity. Then I came home for 20 minutes before driving the 7-year-old to school (with the toddler). Then the toddler and I hung out together until he could go to his care. In the afternoon I picked the 10- and 7-year-old up at school, brought them home, left 30 minutes later with the 12-year-old for fencing (leaving the 14-year-old in charge), dropped him off, drove to get the toddler from his care, drove back to fencing, picked the 12-year-old up and drove home. I put on the Dinosaur Train “Classic in the Jurassic” in the minivan DVD player and we managed to get through the entire DVD on Monday.

The big kids have helped out. For instance, I was able to leave the toddler with the 14-year-old for about 50 minutes so he didn’t have to go to the 10-year-old’s karate belt testing. But the poor little guy has had to go to a lot. He came to the 7-year-old’s parkour class last night (7:15 to 8:15 p.m., a great time for a toddler!) and we colored the picture that is accompanying this post. Drawing each circle and then letting him color it in (I did some of the coloring too, as you can probably guess…) took about 30 seconds apiece, and enough of them fills an hour…

On the work front, I managed to get done what I needed to get done in the compressed hours — but it was very much an intense push. I guess there are just some days where hours need to give whatever you ask of them. I was glad for little things, like that my daughter’s karate class got out early last night, so I was home at 6:20 instead of 6:30, which made cranking out grilled cheese sandwiches for the whole crew a slightly less rushed enterprise before I was back in the car at 6:55.

There’s no real larger point to this post. Potentially we need some more driving and logistical support, but given that the older 2 kids can stay home with younger siblings, it is doable. I did get about 5.75 focused hours each day to do things. And theoretically there shouldn’t be too many days like these. They just aren’t so fun while they’re happening…

Over the weekend my family went to see the cherry blossoms in DC. They were gorgeous, if a few days pre-peak. I was completely satisfied with that trip but…we only get so many springs right?

I looked at the weather, looked at my calendar, and decided to go back by myself yesterday when everything was in full gorgeous blossom. I took the train so I could work both ways. And I spent a few hours wandering around the Tidal Basin, just gawking at the thick canopy of snow-white flowers.

There are several more pictures on my Instagram account (@lvanderkam). As I walked I just couldn’t stop smiling. And since it was a Tuesday, there were plenty of less crowded spots. Just a little mid-week tranquility, and a big adventure for the week…

…which was good because as I was putting the 7-year-old to bed last night he said his stomach hurt and then – yep. Another round of getting vomited on. This morning the 10-year-old was calling for me and it turned out she had it too (though she was old enough to make it to the bathroom — one of the upsides of children growing up…). So, it was good I enjoyed the flowers yesterday as today there’s just a lot of laundry going on at the house!