If we're lucky, summertime means picnics, sitting by water, perhaps hiking through the woods. And with all that time spent in nature comes, well, nature! That includes some up close and personal interaction with our insect friends -- the ones most of us prefer to ignore, swat away, and/or avoid as much as possible.

Occasionally, though, stuff happens. Like you might actually swallow an ant or a gnat or a pesky mosquito. 

First of all, don't freak out. Aside from feeling kinda gross, swallowing a bug is generally not harmful. Here's why:

Swimming season is here, and some of us are getting ready to watch our kids like hawks when we're at the pool or the beach. But do we really know what we're looking for? Here's something I read recently in Slate that scared the bejeezus out of me: Drowning doesn't look like drowning.

No joke -- I had no idea. When we picture someone drowning, we imagine them splashing around noisily, but nope. It's silent and deadly. Drowning is the number two cause of accidental death for children. Even scarier, over half of the children who die from drowning will do so within 25 yards of a parent. So! Wouldn't you like to know what drowning DOES look like?

We’re officially in the single-digit countdown to the last day of school. <Insert complete denial here.> Fortunately, my kids will all be headed to day camp in a few weeks, which is a blessing for all of us. But we are still left with several weeks at the beginning and end of the summer with endless days to fill. To help me keep my sanity, and maybe save yours as well, I’ve put together this list of 10 things to fully stock up on. Let’s hope it helps ...

Call me an overgrown kid, but it doesn't seem to matter how old I get. When the temperature starts to rise, I love nothing more than going out in the backyard to play a summer game with a kid where we both end up soaking wet. The wetter, the better, actually.

With schools letting out around the country, and the mercury on the rise, it's time to dive in ... and get wet!

It's the stuff movies are made of. Everyone piled into the family station wagon with the optimistic notion of seeing new sights and spending time together without the daily distractions and preferred electronic devices to turn to. However, if your family is anything like mine, after about an hour, the snacks are gone -- isn't it amazing how hungry you get when you start a drive? -- and the "When are we going to be there?" begins.

Since you know this scenario is inevitable, don't fight it. Simply prepare for the vortex of boredom the same way you would pack your guide books, water, and extra clothes. If you have a range of games at your disposal -- some short term, some that can last for days -- you will all make it out of the car in one piece.

Here are a few options to keep everyone engaged and amused until you get to your next destination.

As the school year winds down, I am finding that it's not just the kids who are insanely excited for the final day of school -- and for the many long hot days of summer that will soon follow. But the kids do take year-end very seriously. It seems like all kids keep a countdown, and in our house, my kids not only keep a verbal countdown that is discussed every hour on the hour, at the table during every meal, on the way TO and FROM the bus stop each day, but they also keep a written version of the countdown on a paper calendar. I can only assume that is meant as a “double check” to break up any sort of sibling end-of-school-year-countdown discrepancies. Oh, and they also mention it as their final thought each night as I tuck them into bed -- because I may have forgotten how few days of school are now left, don't you know.

Playgrounds can bring out the worst behavior...screaming, not sharing, aggressive behavior on the playground equipment...ugh, it's the worst. And I am not even talking about the kids. Moms (and dads) can sometimes be the ones showing really horrible behavior.

Randall (of "Honey Badger" fame) tracks some mothers to the playground with their children and narrates their behavior in this latest episode of Moms in the Wild. It's funny how the playground types are exactly the same, everywhere: the mom yammering on her phone while she bounces her kid on one of those spring mounted ponies, the hovering mom who goes down the slide with her eight-year-old, and the severely overdressed mom who looks more like she's cruising the park for hot dads than taking her kids out to play.

But there's one secret about moms at the park that Randall doesn't know, but I bet all of us do:

Something happened the other day that I wished I'd experienced during the first week of summer. It was a gorgeous sunny day, and I rushed through my work in order to take the kids out for a festive, let's-make-the-most-of-August extravaganza. I drove them to parks and playgrounds, we rode bikes, I bought them drippy cones at a gourmet ice cream shop, we went to a pool. And here's how they reacted to our Super Summer Day of Amazing Childhood Memories: they whined.

The sun's too hot. The pool's too cold. There's nothing to do in this park. Can we just go home and watch cartoons?