By Andrea Lavinthal, a Greenwich Mom of two who is the Style & Beauty Director at PEOPLE. Like many families, Andrea and her husband, Justin Gregory and their kids Saxon, 5, and Vaughn, 3, moved to town from Manhattan at the beginning of the pandemic. Read more about her in her Meet a Mom Interview.
If it feels like yesterday that you were sipping rosé out of a personalized Corkcicle tumbler at Tod’s Point while contemplating whether to eat your kid’s chicken finger that fell in the sand (who are you kidding? of course you ate it), it’s because it was yesterday. Literally. Summer may not officially end until September 22nd, but if you’re a parent, the season came to a screeching halt when you had to go to not one, not two, but three different stores to fulfill your kids’ school supply lists (WTF are they doing with all those 3×3 Post-it notes?).
Sadly, it’s time to say goodbye to bonfires, bbqs and beach vacations and hello to carpools, committees and scheduling conflicts.
As you Amazon Prime mini star-shaped sandwich cutters, wash your favorite Vuori workout set (for dropoff, not an actual workout) and attempt to enforce a bedtime after months of letting your kids stay up so late it’s like you moved to Spain, here are a few more things to add to your fall to-do list.
1. Resist the urge to tell everyone fall is your favorite season. It’s everyone’s favorite season.
2. Also resist the urge to tell everyone you’re still drinking iced coffee. No one cares.
3. Spend $342 on decorative gourds, a faux wheat door wreath and a “It’s Fall, Y’all” doormat at Target.
4. Unfollow anyone who captions their Instagram post “sweater weather.”
5. Feel personally attacked by the display of holiday decorations at CVS.
6. Get home from CVS and order holiday decorations online.
7. Take your kids apple picking in 82 degree weather yet somehow still miss “all the good ones.” Leave with two pounds of apples that you “picked” from off the ground, a dozen apple cider donuts that your kids eat on the car ride home and a jar of pumpkin butter which you’ll never open.
8. Book a blowout for back to school night and when another mom compliments you on your hair, tell her you just came from the gym.
9. Venmo Lindsey R. for soccer tots, Venmo Lindsey T. for the Lego set you split for Noah G.’s birthday present, Venmo Rachel for the Dunkin Munchkins she picked up for the PTA meet and greet and Venmo Allison for the weed gummies she’s bringing to the kindergarten mom’s night out.
10. Force your family to wear matching outfits then schlep them to a park/beach/lake/wooded area/patch of grass for your holiday card photos and scream at everyone to throw leaves in the air and LOOK LIKE YOU LOVE EACH OTHER GODDAMMIT.
11. Pretend that you compost at home.
12. Stay up until 3am watching TikTok videos of lunch prep hacks. Make your kids peanut butter (sorry, I mean SUN butter) and jelly sandwiches every day for the rest of the week.
13. Let your colorist talk you into going a little darker for fall. Spoiler alert: You’re going to need a new colorist.
14. Tell three different sets of couples that you should plan a long weekend upstate. Never go upstate with anyone.
15. Buy shearling lined clogs.
16. Return shearling lined clogs.
17. Switch your polish from Clambake to Chinchilly.
18. Spend three hours creating a color-coded shared family Google calendar. Bask in the glory of its beauty for all of 30 seconds before realizing you somehow scheduled Max’s flag football, Emma’s karate and Ethan speech therapy on the same day at the same time. Oh, and you already missed the first PTA meeting.
19. Send your husband an article on how an unequal division of emotional labor can lead to resentment and discord in a marriage.
20. Start freaking out about spring break.
