My five-year-old is starting Kindergarten this year, and my three-year-old is starting nursery school—two big milestones for my little guys!—but I’m neither worried nor stressed about it for either of them. The school and classrooms and routines are familiar to them from observing their brothers and tagging along with me to school for their whole lives. The teachers are the same as the ones their brothers have had. It’s clear to me that they’re ready, and I’m very comfortable in the role of Mom of Kindergartener and Preschooler. I’m also comfortable in the role of Mom of Second Grader and Fourth Grader, as my next two older boys will also be walking a path already forged for them by the brother ahead—same classrooms, same teachers, same expectations. I’m excited for them all, and not concerned in the least.

The one that’s most on my mind is my biggest boy, who himself is headed for something completely and totally new, both for himself and for us as a family: He’s going to middle school, with its new building and new teachers and new routines and new responsibilities.

One of the very first articles I wrote for Saratoga TODAY was about my oldest going to school for the first time. I’ve referred to that piece a few times since, usually in my annual back-to-school column, but this year it has particular poignancy for me because of how similar my thoughts and emotions were back then to how they are now: 

“Thomas was so excited when I woke him up on his first day of school, much earlier than usual, to eat breakfast. He wore a handsome new sweater with a collared shirt underneath. He [started in January and] had his new school sneakers packed in his Thomas the Tank Engine backpack. I’d labeled all his things the night before — snowpants, hat, gloves, coat, backpack. I had ready the bag of juice and crackers each parent was asked to donate. I re-read the preschool “manual” to be sure I knew everything that was expected of Thomas and me. And I tried to ignore the straining in the hollow of my throat — I wasn’t just sad at the end of the Thomas-is-my-baby-at-home-with-me-every-day era and the beginning of a new stage of my motherhood, but I was sad because I was afraid that he would change and become a new little boy because of school — a new boy in ways I wouldn’t want.

“I hated to think that some of his innocence might be lost at school. You know how kids are — the Thomas the Tank Engine backpack that he’d previously loved and was excited to wear to school might very well become the very thing that some other kids … would tease him about, and he’d come home insisting he hated his Thomas the Tank Engine backpack and would never use it again. Or the new sneakers we’d gotten him just for school might be so very un-cool that he’d come home in tears because of being teased (even though we’d tried so hard to find sensible, not-too-expensive-or-trendy sneakers that would still pass muster as acceptable in the eyes of Thomas’ three-year-old classmates). I was totally shredded by imagining such things happening to him, and I prayed some of the most fervent prayers of my life that we were doing the right thing by sending Thomas to school.

“Thankfully, it turned out as well as it possibly could have because Thomas loved school. He loved the other kids, he loved the toys in the classroom, he loved the art projects, he loved playing on the playground and his teachers and the crackers and juice he’d had for snack … and he didn’t once mention not liking his backpack or sneakers or anything else.

“And yes, I cried that afternoon, too, after he got home from school — with relief, with happiness, and still also with a little sadness that he and I had passed such a huge milestone.”

I could have written those words this very day about this middle-school milestone we’re both going through, swapping out “Thomas the Tank Engine backpack” and “crackers and juice” for “big boy backpack” and “big boy snack,” which would likely embarrass him, now that he’s such a big boy, so I won’t. 

He had a morning-long Orientation at his new school before school officially started, which I was to attend with him, and while he seemed just the normal amount of nervous, I was an absolute wreck—I had trouble sleeping the night before, and couldn’t eat breakfast before we left, so knotted was my stomach. And for what? It’s a community we’re not unfamiliar with, and many of his elementary school classmates will be with him in the new school. I think it’s just the fact that it’s concrete evidence of how short the years are, despite the sometimes unending days.

I’m trying to remember that this is the whole point of being a mom—pointing your kids in the right direction and then walking forward, first with them in your arms, then holding their hand and pulling them along, then walking together until they’re ready to plot their own course. But it’s all forward motion, small steps and big steps, passing milestone after milestone, even if encountering a detour or two. There’s no stopping or going back. Until becoming a mom, I didn’t realize growing up was harder on the mom than it is on the child.

Whew! On that sobby note, I hope all your back-to-schools have been wonderful and that you’re settling into the new school year well! 

Kate Towne Sherwin lives in Saratoga Springs with her husband and their sons ages 10, 9, 7, 5, 3, and 1. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

I know you’ll know what I mean when I say that there were certain things I was convicted of about raising kids before I became a parent. Before I had my own children, I was full of what was the right way to do things and what was the wrong way to do things, and all that’s fine and important—I think you need to have a game plan, or at least a rough idea of childrearing—but there were so many things that changed when I actually had a real baby of my very own to take care of.

Some things took longer than others to realize, though, and I would put swimming/water fun in the took-longer-than-it-should-have category.

As a new mom, I was very opposed to any kind of flotation-device “crutch,” as I saw it. I was sure that using swimmies (what I call any sort of life jacket/inflatable arm band/puddle jumper type of thing) would inhibit my children from learning how to swim. I imagined that if I let them wear swimmies in the water as tiny boys, then they’d end up having to turn down invitations to swim with friends when they were teenagers because they’d be embarrassed at still needing to use swimmies. “Once you start on swimmies, you can kiss actual swimming goodbye” was my mindset.

I was very severe about this. We didn’t own a swimmy of any kind for the first eight years of our parenthood. We brought our three oldest boys to pools and lakes during the summers and tried to enjoy it but it was never what we hoped it would be and I was sort of beside myself with wondering what was wrong with our kids? My memories of growing up were full of swimming—my siblings and I loved to swim, loved the water, and I wanted that so much for my kids, and they were just not cooperating. 

I’ll admit I was a little opposed even to swimming lessons, because in all my memories of swimming fun from growing up, I don’t have one memory of taking swimming lessons. So therefore, swimming lessons were unnecessary. 

Thank goodness my husband felt differently.

I’ve written before about the swimming lessons at Skidmore that my boys have taken for the last several years—I really think starting those was the first turning point for our family. Finally we had a boy or two (etc.) who knew how to swim. 

But honest-to-goodness, bringing the kids swimming continued to be an absolute nightmare—one of those things that has one of the parents looking at the other with the “Remind me why we’re doing this again?” face.

That is, until we discovered swimmies.

I remember the day vividly. My brother, who has competed twice in the IronMan triathlon as well as many other triathlons, marathons, and athletic races and competitions of all kinds (he knows what he’s doing regarding swimming), brought his son swimming with my boys. His son, my nephew, was two—younger than my four oldest—and I watched my brother strap a swimmy on his little boy and off my nephew went into the water. He was fearless, he was safe, he had a ball. 

By that time, my oldest two boys were very proficient in the water, and my number three was nearly there, but my fourth—who’s a year older than my nephew—hadn’t taken lessons yet and was still at that scary stage where he loved to run into the lake and just … keep going. If we didn’t grab him before it was over his head, he’d just go right under. Every trip to the beach was stressful and panicky as we tried to keep an eye on our three-year-old daredevil (never mind his older brothers, who still needed supervision as they swam, and the baby, who needed supervision as he played on the beach).

I watched my nephew in awe. I saw how relaxed my brother was, how much fun he was having. I got a good look at that swimmy. And when my nephew was done swimming and my brother offered to let us use it for a little while if we wanted to, I said, “Yes please,” and strapped it on my boy, and I can’t even tell you how enjoyable the rest of the afternoon was. My boy, who’d been so eager to be out in the water with his brothers, was able to do so safely. He floated and kicked and jumped and yelled, “Mommy! I’m swimming!” and I thought I would just die of happiness right there.

Fast forward two summers: I brought my boys to the lake just this week. My older three bubble around like big fish without swimmies, and my fourth and fifth bubble around like little fish with swimmies. (My sixth is wary enough of the sand and the water that until last week he wouldn’t let me put him down. But he’s making strides! He now likes to sit on the sand and dig with a shovel.) The difference between the summers of my early parenthood and this summer is huge: We’re not constantly worried that someone’s going to drown. We don’t have to cut swim trips short because we’ve absolutely had it with the stress. My husband and I enjoy our trips to the pools and beaches more than I thought was possible for parents of little ones.

Maybe ten years from now you’ll find me writing that, yes, wearing the swimmies have now rendered my teenagers unable to swim without them and they’re the laughingstock of their peers. But I’m finding it really hard to worry about it too much, as I watch them confident and free in the water, enjoying the summer as only kids can.

Kate Towne Sherwin lives in Saratoga Springs with her husband and their sons ages 10, 9, 7, 5, 3, and 1. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

I don’t think it’s unusual for parents to dread summer to some degree, whether just a little frazzle or actual full-out panic that the kids will be out of school and home all day, every day, for more than two months. Any change in lifestyle and the familiar rhythms of one’s days is going to involve some transition time, some stress, some discomfort. Especially when the people you’re trying to meld your days with like to keep things interesting by throwing a screaming fit from time to time (more likely than not because you’ve run out of red freeze pops and can only offer orange, purple, green, blue, or yellow), or trashing the house and then acting oppressed and persecuted (even full-out baffled) at the idea of having to clean it up, or expressing starvation-type hunger every half hour but then declining what’s offered (“But I’m not hungry for Cheerios!” my three-year-old likes to tell me. “I’m hungry for something ELSE! Something brown and crunchy.” “Oh,” I’ll say, because he’s so funny, “like these cookies?” “Yes!” he’ll say, delighted that I figured out just what he needs to survive.)

Even the most well behaved children will cause ripples in the day. I was one such child (according to my memory and my mom), and still I expressed my undying love for the neighbor boy by writing it all over the white siding of our porch with a rock when I was about seven. We couldn’t get it off.

In our house, up until a few years ago, summers bumped along pretty similarly to the rest of the year. Though I had one or two boys in school, they were still only in the lower grades, and the majority of my boys weren’t in school yet, so summer basically only meant we didn’t have to stop what we were doing to do the school run in the morning and afternoon.

But then, three summers ago I wrote about the daily schedule I’d instituted for the summer, borne of the fact that, for the first time in my experience as a mom with kids in school, within hours of arriving home from the last day at school I had anarchy and chaos in the house and I was in danger of losing my mind. We need structure, I told the boys, and I explained what that structure would be: Mornings outside, afternoons inside, chores every day, quiet time every day, reading time every day.

Three years later, we’re still operating under the same summer schedule, and it’s been nothing short of perfection (or as near as possible).

Certainly we have our hiccups and meltdowns and time outs. (We’re still working on learning that one’s rights are not being violated every time one’s brother looks in one’s direction, or walks too close to one’s pile of dirt, and that the one swing cannot be occupied by the same boy all morning. Etc.)

My oldest boy is now old enough to not always have to follow the same schedule as the other brothers, which is a new development this summer. (“If you don’t want to be outside or you can’t be outside without driving everyone crazy, you can come inside, but if you’re inside, you must either read your book or clean,” I tell him. He’s been 50-50 on what he decides on any given day.)

And of course we have the various odd activities and appointments and trips that otherwise interfere with our schedule. Like swimming lessons—every summer for the past five years I’ve enrolled whoever was old enough in swimming lessons at Skidmore. Have I mentioned this program before? Because if not, I need to—I LOVE this program. It’s a half hour every day for two weeks. Certainly you can do more than that, but that’s what we do, and it’s been so great. The boys look forward to it all year, and their skills improve so much during those two weeks. 

Otherwise, one of my favorite summer things is our reading time. A couple years ago, wanting to find a book that could appeal to the whole span of my boys’ ages, I read Charlotte’s Web to them, and it was the first time a book actually captivated them all, from the oldest to the youngest. I decided to read it again this summer, and so far we’ve all been loving it. I usually read two chapters, right before quiet time, and it’s not unusual for them to clamor for another. When I read the part about the rotten goose egg exploding, my five-year-old said, “That’s why this chapter is called ‘The Explosion,’” which blew me away because I didn’t think he’d been paying attention to that degree, nor that he would remember a detail like the chapter’s name even several pages later. When we read the part about Wilbur being lonely and wondering if anyone would be his friend, my three-year-old immediately raised his hand, eyes wide, and said, “I will!” (Be still my heart!)

And of course, I’m loving all the chores getting done—extra things, above and beyond their normal chores, like helping me move things and getting long-neglected corners of the house in order. The boys and I have also discussed some goals and hopes for the summer: lots of lake swimming, a week-long trip away, getting ready for the first day of middle school (!), day trips here and there, visiting with friends.

Basically, as long as we keep to a fairly structured day, and have a decent plan for the summer as a whole, I find these weeks off from school to be pretty amazing. We all know what to expect; we all know how long the current thing lasts and what comes next, even while being able to easily move into and out of the schedule as needed; we all have things we’re looking forward to. So if anyone wants advice on how to have a great summer with the ten-and-under set, that’s what I have to offer: Have a structure to your day and a plan for your summer! I hope your summers have all started out well, and that you had a wonderful Fourth of July!

Kate Towne Sherwin lives in Saratoga Springs with her husband and their sons ages 10, 8, 7, 5, 3, and 1. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

When my older boys were very small and home with me all day, I looked forward to our grocery store outings as if they were puffs of pure, clean air, and indeed they were —getting out of the house, going to a place where other adults were, being able to buy a cup of coffee to sip while choosing tasty things to put in our cart, all while my little boys happily steered the steering wheel in the truck part of the shopping cart and ate their free-for-kids cookies, it was all such a lovely hour (most of the time), and I looked forward to each and every grocery store run.

One of the other things I loved was going to the store early on a Friday morning so I could get the new People magazine. No matter what else was going on that week or how many other times I went to the grocery store, I made sure to go on Friday mornings for my magazine. I might also plan to swing by Dunkin Donuts on the way home for a big “fancy” coffee, and maybe also a small something delicious just for me, but it was all centered on the magazine and my plan to settle on the couch with it, my coffee, and my treat after the little ones went down for their naps.

But one Friday, the magazines hadn’t been put out on the racks yet. I pushed my cart up and down the row of checkout lanes hoping to find that they’d started stocking them on the other end and hadn’t gotten to the open registers yet, but all I found was the previous week’s issue still in its spot. 

I know it’s silly, but I felt a little bit of a mounting panic, because I knew how very disappointed I would be if I left the store without my magazine, and disappointment is just the worst, isn’t it? 

I finally saw all the new issues with the other publications that had just arrived, bundled in big stacks in carts and on the register belt of the last register near the service desk. It wasn’t possible for me to just slip one out, so seeing them there was like a tease—“Here I am! But you can’t have me!”

I am not a confrontational person. I hate feeling like a burden. I have no wish to make a nuisance of myself or otherwise disrupt someone else’s day. But that morning, I felt like I had to prevail upon any help I could get from anyone who could give it to me. I explained the situation to my cashier, feeling like I was blubbering a little too much about how much I look forward to my weekly read, hoping she could just discreetly ask one of the baggers to cut open a bundle and retrieve one copy for me. Instead, the lovely, accommodating cashier threw discretion to the wind and took up my cause as her own.

“Oh don’t you worry,” she soothed. “Someone can definitely do that for you.” Then, “Can someone help this young lady?!” she started shouting to the shift leaders. “She comes here every Friday morning to get her magazine and it’s not out yet this morning!” I was mortified at being the center of attention for such a silly thing, but so so grateful. Not two minutes later I had my magazine, and my day was salvaged.

Such was the day-to-day of a mom with only very small children.

I was at the grocery store after dropping the older boys off at school on a recent Friday morning when I had this flash of memory, which I haven’t thought of in years. Even typing “in years” emphasized for me as much as the memory did that life has moved on. Nowadays, my Friday morning grocery runs still involve two very small boys, but instead of shoring up my sanity with a magazine and a fancy coffee, I’m buying dinner and picking up a Redbox video for our Friday Family Movie Night. I’m still delighted to see friends at the store to chat with, but it’s not such a life raft, since I’m surrounded by other adults at school pickup and meetings and sporting events, and my older boys are turning into really great conversationalists.

Our Movie Night is as much evidence of life moving on as anything. Until very recently, my husband and I didn’t feel like we had anything left to put into a family event like game night or movie night, despite our agreement that such a thing would be a great idea. Every evening we counted the minutes until it was time to put the kids to bed, and adding anything more into the routine would have just broken us.

But a couple months ago we became aware that things had changed. Bedtime isn’t such a set thing anymore—the little ones still go up at the same time every night, but the older ones hang out a bit more. We’re able to do some of the things while they’re up that we used to have to wait for them to go to bed for, whether working on the computer or doing exercises or folding laundry. So we don’t feel as much need to focus exclusively on the process of dinner and bedtime during the 6 to 8 p.m. time period. Does that make any sense? All I can say is, we’re a different family and we’re different parents, now that we have older boys, even while still having little ones.

It’s always so bittersweet to me, the passage of time, as I know it is to all of you, and I’ll likely be writing a lot more about it in the next few months, because my oldest is graduating from elementary school next week and I have no idea what happened to his little boyhood. I hope you all bound as happily into summer as we will, and happy Father’s Day to all the papas!

Kate Towne Sherwin lives in Saratoga Springs with her husband and their sons ages 10, 8, 6, 5, 3, and 1. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..