Summer of Forts

There are a couple of things that always let me know that summer is here: oppressive heat (after all they don't call it Hot-lanta for nothing), miraculous popsicles that can produce a smile, no matter what the circumstances, injury or indignity and forts.  Fort building is a cherished pastime by my children.

Every summer, king-sized bedsheets are pulled out of the linen closet and every binder clip in the house is commandeered for fort building.  No more mere draping a sheet over a chair and crawling under.  No, we create tent cities that last for weeks.  My son especially likes to sleep in his fort creations. Last summer he slept on the floor of his room in his fort for over a month.

As the school year ended this year, things were in turmoil.  After all, we were embarking on a whole new endeavor...homeschooling.  Would we ever see these school friends again?  How were things going to work?  What is it going to be like to have Mom for a teacher?  (The kids seemed to be filled with equal parts of trepidation and excitement on that one.)

The moment school let out, I was in a frenzy trying to get all the kids uniforms cleaned and tagged for the school's Used Uniform Sale.  Camps started for the kids.  Everyone was up late.  "Ahh Mom, who needs a bedtime when it is summer?"  Things were starting out kind of chaotically, but in a good way.

The other morning, I was checking my email when my seven year old son came in and gathered all the pillows off my bed.  It is quite an amusing sight since a king-sized pillow is just about as big as he is.  My curiosity was piqued. "Where are you going with all our pillows?"  Silly me, I should have known the response.  "I'm building a fort in the living room Mommy."  Oh my, how could I have forgotten the siren call of fort building?

I ventured downstairs and found the living room completely blocked off by all of the dining room chairs.  He had dragged in barstools from the kitchen. Pillows were strewn about the whole room.  In each nook and cranny a stuffed animal could be found.  There were Gronkels, Deadly Nadders and of course a Night Fury lounging by the fireplace on those aforementioned pillows dragged from my bed.  (For those of you who missed How to Train Your Dragon, those are dragon stuffies from the movie.)  There were pillows, a sleeping bag, flashlight and the specially beloved stuffies laid out ready for sleeping.  There was a DS corner for electronics accompanied by stuffed chaperones. Everywhere you looked he had put one of his stuffed friends.

That night as I tucked him in downstairs in his entire living room fort, he decided it might be a bit too scary to sleep all alone with no one else on the ground floor.  So we moved him back upstairs with a few key stuffed friends and put him in his own bed with promises to make a fort in his room the next day.

So it is officially summer.  My living room is a fort and my son is sleeping on the floor of his room in another fort.  I think my heart will break a little when my little man is too old for forts.  Even though it is a little difficult (both physically and to one's personal dignity) to crawl in and out of the forts for goodnight kisses, there really isn't anything sweeter than to tuck him into his sleeping bag surrounded by a stuffy army.