7 Quick Takes about Not Being Jealous, A Place Where All the Cords Can Be Hidden, and the Irony of Having Little Helpers

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

Phillip's been out of town for a while, so I'm running on fumes (because I don't go to bed when left to my own devices) and starting to figure out how to logistically do everything solo.

At first, I relied on sheer memory and ended up forgetting a child's practice or appointment or school open house every day. (Of course, there were 100 other things I did remember each day so frankly, I was still impressed with myself.)

Recently, I've started setting 10-15 alarms per day on my phone to remind me of literally every single time-sensitive thing I have to do in the next 24 hours. It's weird, but it works.

—2—

Phillip went kayaking and camping on some island with a group of guys from church.

I assume he had fun on his manventure, but we didn't really get to talk about it because he came home for just long enough to make dinner, do his laundry, and take out the trash before he left again for a work trip.

He didn't mean to schedule the trips back-to-back like that, but it just kind of happened.

Usually I feel sort of jealous when he travels because he eats out at fancy restaurants and stays in nice places, but then he texted me from his hotel in Norway and I was like, "You know what? I'm good."

His legs didn't even fit on the mattress.

—3—

I've been on the hunt for a place to charge all of our devices.

Theoretically, there is a designated space for them in an upper kitchen cupboard, but it's really a terrible solution. It quickly gets so disorganized in there that no one wants to use it, so they just dangle cords down to the counter and hook them up to a tangled heap of phones and smartwatches that I have to look at all day.

About a year ago I got so sick of looking at it I threw everything in a trash bag, and while it felt therapeutic the devices came creeping back out and are once again driving me crazy.

I see charging stations online, but I want a solution that doesn't require me to look at any cords! I want that mess hidden.

Recently some friends were getting rid of old furniture and asked if I wanted anything. I looked in their garage and knew I'd found my solution when I saw this:

It's smaller than it looks in the picture, only two feet tall. The small drawers are perfect for devices, all we need to do is drill some holes in the back and it will be a sweet charging station with NO VISIBLE CORDS.

After some paint and new knobs, it looks pretty good:

I'm still not 100% sure where we're going to put it, but whatever happens it will be better than the devices on the counter. Or the trash bag.

—4—

The little kids were obsessed with helping me paint. Bless their hearts, but I was obsessed with doing it myself after they were asleep precisely so they couldn't "help."

I let them put on some primer (for about as long as it takes to take a picture and say "Stop waving that around, you're going to get paint everywhere! Put the paint can lid down. Don't wipe your hands on your- stop! I said don't wipe your hands on your shirt! Or your pants! STOP!")

One of the cruelest ironies of motherhood is that the times kids are the most excited to help you is when they're too little to actually be helpful.

—5—

In other painting news, I finished the deck! 

You have no idea how excited I am about this. All by ourselves, we sanded and put two coats of stain on every inch of that huge old deck and all 96 of its railings!

Painting railings, as you know, was invented by the devil and takes forever. Especially when there are 96 of them.

Figure 1a: a child enough to be helpful.

The deck looks fantastic now; my only regret is that I didn't remember to take a picture of how terrible it looked before we started sanding.

—6—

A friend needed someone to drive her to surgery and back, so I volunteered.

I panicked when I realized I'd committed to a 6-hour day away from home when Phillip was out of town, but it happened to be a half-day from school so my 15-year-old took over for me and it was a seamless transition.

My friend's procedure started around lunchtime, so I walked a few blocks to get Mediterranean food and ate it in the park while reading a book. Totally uninterrupted.

It was really weird, knowing for a fact that no one was going to ask me to get up and take them to the bathroom three times or demand a bite of my food and then tell me it tasted gross.

After lunch I seriously took a nap on a bench like a hobo and loved every minute of it.

—7—

One of my responsibilities at church is to help organize and run weekly youth activities for the young women in the ward.

This week I taught them some hairstyle hacks (I used to do my girls' hair all the time when they were little, and I brought my little book with pictures of all the hairstyles for the youth to look at.)

The woman who helps me with these activities also has a big family, although I think she actually knows what she's doing because her kids are older than mine.

We didn't have our kids with us at the activity, of course, but at one point I looked over and randomly realized that between the two of us, she and I have fifteen children.

Good thing they're all so awesome.

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This Is What Happens to Parents When the Village Looks Away

For parents of my age, the idea of the hypothetical village it takes to raise a child is quaint and vague, more of a pie-in-the-sky ideal than anything.

Yet, even without really knowing what the village looks or feels like, its absence still makes me sad.

This summer, my kids and I went on a boat tour. Our guide showed us how a canal lock works and taught us about the local history of the area, but what I really learned that day is why modern motherhood is so hard: it's because the village has vanished.

On the boat tour, sitting beside us was a little boy and his mother — let's call her Beth. 

Beth looked like she was about my age, her son about the same age as my son. On the other side of the boat were Grandma and Beth's sister, who also had a child in tow.

At one point during the boat ride my 3-year-old wanted to see the water better, so he stood up on the seat and leaned over the side. When I turned around to tell him to sit down, I caught the following exchange out of the corner of my eye:

Grandma, worried that my son would fall, was frantically gesturing to Beth and mouthing "Grab him!" Beth, meanwhile, was shaking her head and avoiding eye contact. Exasperated, Grandma threw up her hands and angrily whispered something to her other daughter, who sighed and said, "You can't just grab someone's kid, Mom."

This took place in only a few seconds, but it filled me with a deep sense of loss. What happened to the village? And have we really become so isolationist we'd rather let someone's preschooler fall in the river than interfere?

Clearly, something happened over the last 20 or 30 years to dissolve our villages. Why else would the divide have fallen so neatly across generational lines?

To Grandma and most other parents of her generation, it was a given that you just grabbed the kid who needed to be grabbed, no matter who he belonged to. She was furious at both Beth and her sister for their refusal to get involved when the village was called for.

Today we lament that we can't send our kids running from yard to yard until the sun goes down like our mothers could, but we're forgetting that our mothers had a village.

They knew no matter which backyard we were in, there was some other mother glancing through the kitchen window, keeping an eye on us to make sure we were okay, and if we were misbehaving she wouldn't hesitate to yell at any of us.

After all, our mothers would've done the same for her.

Unfortunately, modern parenthood doesn't come with an unspoken agreement that we're all in this together.

If I were to send my children to roam the neighborhood, there might be a parent watching out the window. Or there might not be.

There just as well could be a parent who looks away because "It's not my job to watch her kids," "It's not my place to discipline someone else's child," or even worse, "Someone's got to call Child Protective Services."

And do you know what happens when the village looks away?

We. Go. Crazy.

Parenting is simply too hard to do it alone. You cannot be everything to your children all the time. In fact, you shouldn't be.

It's not good for any child to learn that rules are only rules if mom and dad are around to enforce them, or that no one else really cares whether they become decent members of society.

Kids of all ages thrive when they have a network of grown-up mentors, not when they're kept in a bubble designed to protect them from other adults' correction or influence.

After witnessing the exchange between Beth and her family on the boat tour, I didn't want to just let it go without saying anything. So I turned to her and said, "Hey, if my kid is going to fall overboard, by all means, please grab him!"

She smiled and said, "Okay, you just never know. I did that once on a whale watching tour and got screamed at."

Now, I don't know all the details about the whale watching incident. Maybe Beth mistakenly thought the child was in danger and the other mom got defensive. That's what happens when society says that you alone are 100% responsible for every aspect of your child's physical and emotional well-being: someone jumping in to help feels like an affront to your parenting.

So today, let's all be a little less defensive. Let's take baby steps back toward the village.

Offer to carpool with another parent on your kid's soccer team. Let people know you're willing to help lighten their load, and even more importantly, ask them to help lighten yours — even if you theoretically could do it by yourself.

Don't just walk by a toddler having a meltdown in the cereal aisle like you can't see it. Tell mom she's doing a good job, and play peek-a-boo with the fussy baby in her cart while she's dealing with it. Maybe even say hello to the kid (when strangers talk to mine it always scares them into silence.)

If no one else is saying "no hitting" to the kid in the playground sandbox whacking other children with a plastic shovel, don't be afraid to say it yourself. Maybe the parent is across the park and doesn't see what's going on. Support that mom or dad.

Assume the best of other people, and resist the urge to be offended by someone who parents differently than you do. If a person offers you unsolicited advice, simply thank them for their suggestion and then either take it or leave it.

When a misguided stranger tries to help your child but isn't actually helpful, recognize their (probably) good intentions with a sincere "Thanks, but we're fine/that's not the way our family does it/my child doesn't need help right now."

And for goodness' sake, stop deliberating and just save the 3-year-old from falling out of the boat.

We need the village. This parenting thing is hard enough without having to do it all alone.

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7 Quick Takes about Ways to Wear a Dress, Copious Amounts of Trips to the Hardware Store, and Motherhood in a Nutshell

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

When my daughter picked up my phone, the Pinterest app randomly opened up and the article "12 Ways to Wear 1 Dress" caught her eye.

She was pretty disappointed and a little confused when she clicked through and just saw options for layering clothes on top of it.

"Those aren't ways to wear a dress, That's just wearing different stuff with it!" She complained.

I agreed, the title was maybe a little clickbait-y.

Then we had fun thinking of how we would've written it differently, featuring 12 actually different ways to wear the dress: around your neck like a scarf, as a turban on your head, upside down like a pair of parachute pants...

I never before in my life entertained the idea of being a fashion blogger, but I see now that it could be kind of fun.

—2—

Do you remember when people used to say "Let's not and say we did?"

That's become one of my go-to phrases with the kids lately.

At dinner the other day, my son voiced yet another ridiculous/dangerous idea and I responded, "Let's not and say we did."

Usually he just takes that as a 'no' and moves on, but this time he paused and said, "Well, I'd still get in trouble for it, so that's not a very good idea."

"You should do it and then say you didn't!" the 7-year-old piped up.

"But then you'd get in trouble for lying," the 13-year-old pointed out. "So you should probably just do it and say you did."

WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?

—3—

I was at the hardware store earlier this week picking out some paint for a smallish project I'm working on.

It took me forever to find the right color and when I found a swatch I liked the employee told me it was only available in the super-fancy expensive brand.

I gestured to the promo flyer beside the register and joked, "Maybe I should just come back on Thursday and order it like a pirate."

Arr matey! Be this paint water- or latex-based?

The employee, who was apparently not that into his job, looked at me and deadpanned, "But is two bucks really worth your dignity?"

Okay, first of all, yes.

And second of all, don't you work here?

I laughed and asked, "If someone talks to you like a pirate do you have to answer like one?"

"They don't pay me enough for that," he said, handed me my quart of paint and a stirring stick. "Have a nice day."

—4—

We finally finished sanding the deck! 

Like most things in life, I'm glad I didn't know how much work it was going to be when I started, or I never would have done it.

Now we were ready to stain it.

Phillip picked out some stain at the store. The smallest can they had was a gallon so he bought one, brought it home to test it on a spare board we had in the garage, and saw that it looked like baby poop. I refused to entertain the idea of actually using it.

"Are you sure you want to get a different one?" Phillip asked. "It cost fifty dollars."

Ordinarily, I'm a very cheap person, but in this case I just said, "I will happily pay $50 for my deck not to look like diarrhea. Let's go back to the hardware store."

As we got out of the car in the parking lot, Phillip shook his head and said "They're going to know exactly what's going on here. Second trip to the hardware store in an hour but this time the wife comes marching in?"

Like they don't see that every blessed day of the week. No one even batted an eye at us.

—5—

So we had the stain, and on the way home it started to rain.

Then I started to cry.

Some people flip houses in their spare time, but I think of us as DIY-challenged, and this overwhelming project was not looking very doable.

We'd worked so hard to prepare the deck for staining, and every time it rained we had to wait another few days for it to dry out before we could do anything, and the way the weather was looking it didn't seem like we'd ever finish.

Phillip is a problem-solver, though, so he went back to the hardware store and got a huge tarp. Once the deck dried out from this rain, he explained, we'd cover it until the next sunny day so we could stain no matter what.

I was deep in a pit of existential despair by then, so trying to cheer me up, Phillip showed me the tarp's product label: "Look, it says right here that it's good for covering houses, trees, and giant cow turds."

It did make me feel a little better, if you're wondering how mature I am.

—6—

True to Phillip's word, on the next nice day we started staining.

Because we have about a million after-school activities every night of the week we didn't get started nearly as early as we'd like, and when we did start working the four oldest kids who could've actually been helpful were gone at various practices and appointments.

The only ones home were the 3- and 5-year-olds, who of course were very eager to "help."

But I can hardly take decorating the Christmas tree with them, letalone watch them slinging deck stain all over the place, so all I can say is thank goodness for YouTube and Shaun the Sheep.

—7—

People sometimes ask me to share my awesome parenting routines so I'll tell you how my 3-year old's naptime routine usually goes.

First, we read a book and then dim the lights and rock in the rocking chair. I tell him to be quiet while he talks to himself and wiggles around and knees me in the groin ten times until I yell and then we're both mad. Then I put him in his crib and tell him to go to sleep, and after I leave he crawls out and plays with toys for 45 minutes.

But on one particular day this week he was really tired, so he just snuggled his tiny body up against me in the rocking chair and went to sleep.

I was smelling his precious little head and thinking, "I love being a mom so much, this is the best job in the wor-" and then he farted in my lap.

Which is probably the most accurate description of motherhood that has ever been written.

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7 Quick Takes about Stealing Furniture, Blatantly Ignoring a Driveway Full of Caution Tape, and What to Wear When You Don't Know What to Wear

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

My 3-year-old asked what we were going to do today, so I told him we were (1) eating breakfast, (2) getting ready, and (3) getting a dresser at the Hendricksons, who are some friends of ours.

He looked at me and said, "Well, that's mean."

To clarify, the Hendricksons are giving away a dresser they don't want anymore. We're not going to crawl in their bedroom window and steal one, which is apparently something we do so often it's naturally what my son assumed I had planned.

—2—

Earlier this week we had our driveway sealcoated, and I relished every minute of the two days when it was a roped-off unblemished sea of perfect inky blackness that everyone was forbidden to use. It was almost as thrilling as that time we got the carpets in the kids' rooms shampooed.

The day before, the kids had written a message for their dad in sidewalk chalk, and I wondered if the driveway guys felt bad spraying black gunky stuff over the colorful, crooked bubble letters that spelled out "WELCOME HOME DADDY."

I know I would have.

After they were finished with the driveway I had to leave for a doctor's appointment and wouldn't be there when my 11- and 13-year-old came home from school. I could just see them obliviously walking right past the caution tape and over the driveway on their way to the door, so I decided to leave them the world's biggest note.

Thank goodness for those campaign signs I kept from last November. They proved useful, after all.

I was actually worried the kids would still just walk right past this sign, if you're wondering how spacey they can be.

—3—

The next morning, I went out to retrieve a package and noticed a MAN'S FOOTPRINTS ACROSS THE DRIVEWAY.

I asked Phillip if it was him and he said no, which means it was most likely the delivery guy.

Which is fine. I get it, you've got a hundred deliveries to make and you're on a tight schedule, so maybe you don't have time to notice 15 feet of caution tape and the three neon orange traffic cones at the head of the driveway. Whatever. I'm not mad.

But here's the weird thing: if he'd walked across the driveway to put the packages on the doorstep, why were they lying in the grass on the opposite side?

It's a mystery.

Since there was no return set of footprints, I can only conclude that he brought the packages to the door, realized he'd messed up the driveway, and tried to cover his tracks by walking allllll the way around to leave the packages on the grass so I wouldn't suspect it was him.

So... maybe I should have left up the big 'DO NOT WALK ON DRIVEWAY' sign??

—4—

One of the things in my delivery was this toilet paper, which I'd ordered to meet the free shipping threshold:

The fact that it ripped as I was removing it from the box does not bode well for the "ultra strong" claim on the packaging.

—5—

As the mother of multiple children involved in multiple activities, you come to depend on two things: carpooling and sheer good luck.

We've always relied on both, but this season there seems to be an unusual amount of serendipity.

For example, having three kids with 6 PM activities on Monday night would ordinarily be cause for panic, but they all happen to be 3 minutes away from each other so it's actually super-convenient.

From 5:45-6, I just drive around like a school bus, making stops and letting kids off at orchestra, robotics club, and soccer practice.

No, seriously, it's like an actual school bus. I drive carpool to soccer.

—6—

Yesterday was a killer day. By dinnertime I couldn't even see any of the kitchen counter. It was too littered with dirty dishes waiting for the dishwasher to be unloaded, onion peels and celery ends waiting for the trash to be emptied, and laundry waiting for someone to get his/her act together and put it away.

There was also a random extension cord in the middle of the floor, I don't know why.

Phillip came home from work to a war zone, and by 'war zone' I mean a very angry 37-year-old woman yelling to no one in particular, "If this stupid inflatable toy isn't put away in exactly one minute I'm going to POP IT WITH SCISSORS!!"

Turning to Phillip, I said through gritted teeth, "There's a Relief Society activity at church tonight and I am going."

"Sounds like fun," he said in the soft, reassuring voice you'd use when cornered by a rabid timberwolf. "What's the activity?"

"I DON'T CARE."

I just needed to get out of the house, preferably somewhere with food and other adults where I wasn't responsible for cleaning anything or keeping anybody alive.

Luckily, the Relief Society activity (that's the name of the women's organization at my church) fit all of those criteria and I was in a much better mood when I came home.

—7—

I don't really know or understand anything about fashion, as you well know if you've been following this blog for any length of time.

For instance, my 13-year-old likes to tease me about a list I wrote when I was in elementary school titled "Jenny's Fashion Rules." (Rule #3 was "always make sure your socks match your shirt," so clearly I've been this way practically since birth.)

But this article makes me feel a little less alone, and also gives me some great ideas for what to do when I have no clue what to wear. Because that happens a lot, actually.

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Back-to-School Spells and Incantations to Avoid Head Lice

Back-to-school season is one of the most nervewracking times of the year, and not just because you're putting your baby on a bus with kids who look like Paul Bunyan and sport facial hair.

IT'S BECAUSE OF HEAD LICE.

They could be lurking on any head in your child's class right now, and just like with the Black Death that swept 14th-century Europe, you never know who's going to fall victim next.

So what did our Medieval forefathers do in the face of such a mysterious scourge? They tried to ward it off with folk magic. To be honest, that's how desperate you are during prime-time head lice season, too.

If you have a child between the ages of 4 and 11 and you'd do literally anything  to avoid:

• spending hours picking nits
• washing everything you own
• quarantining your child's 1,247 stuffed animals in trash bags
• becoming a social pariah

then these magical charms and enchantments adapted from Medieval times are for you!

When an email comes from school notifying you of a case of lice in your child's class:

On a parchment of goatskin, write the names of thy children and get ye to a body of running water — a river or a brook will suffice. Remove the same number of stones as ye have children, and return home. Heat the stones over a fire or open flame whilst chanting:

3, 2, 1

1, 2, 3

Keep thy lice 

Away from these

Once the stones are red hot, remove them with tongs and bury them at thy children's bus stop. At sunrise, dig up the stones with a silver spade and immerse each in a vessel of pure, cool water.

When you send off your kids on the first day of school:

On the eve of a new school year, gather ye chrysanthemums of an even number from a field or garden that thou ownest. Bind them with a ponytail belonging to thy child and boil in water for 10 minutes.

With the reed of a nearby marsh or the golden flax from an ear of corn, brush the magick liquid on the doorposts through which thy children pass on their way to school. Sprinkle thou the remainder on their backpacks.

When you catch your kids sharing hats or dress-up clothes with the neighborhood children:

Bid the neighbor children thither, then use a straw broom to thoroughly sweep all negative energy from thy house.

Shutter all thy windows in an east-to-west direction and with slowly increasing speed, wave a jar of mayonnaise clockwise and a bottle of distilled vinegar counterclockwise around thy child's head seven times.

When you learn that a friend's children have lice:

The correct magick doth depend on the contact betwixt their children and thine in the last fortnight.

If thy children have had no significant contact, toss the thigh bones of a chicken into a circle drawn in the dirt with a sycamore branch. If the bones fall in parallel lines, diagonal lines, or a T then all will be well with thy children; if they fall in an X, a triangle, or a horseshoe, 'tis a poor omen.

If thy children have had a playdate, inscribe the words "please oh please oh please do not let us have lice" on a small tablet of wax or lead and sew it into thy child's pillowcase.

If thy children have attended a sleepover together, thou must tie a length of hemp around thy child's birthstone to make a protective amulet for wearing round the neck. If the birthstone be hard to locate (diamonds and rubies art expensive,) then thou mayest substitute a wooden circle upon which their likeness has been carved with a steel blade by moonlight.

When you pass the medicated lice shampoo at CVS:

Halt thy shopping cart and hie to the first aid aisle, where the bandages art located. Use them to construct a five-pointed star on the floor with the topmost point facing the shampoo. Stand ye in the center and recite the following:

Rid and Nix, Nix and Rid,

Let no nits hatch upon my kid.

Itchy scalp and fine-toothed comb,

Let no lice infest our home.

When the recitation hath ended, spit over thy left shoulder and exit the aisle in the exact way that thou camest.

When reading an article (like this one) on head lice:

Pour ye lavender, rosemary, and tea tree oil into a glass decanter that may be stopped up securely. Store this in a dark place beside a hat or hair accessory that belongest to thy child.

After the sun has risen and set thrice, retrieve the item and instruct thy child to wear it as a talisman to guard him or her until the school year hast ended, or at least until thou hast forgotten about the article that afrightened thee so.

—    —    —    —

As they say, desperate times call for desperate measures, and there's nothing that makes a parent more desperate than the fear of head lice. So this back-to-school season, you might as well give these Medieval spells a try!

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7 Quick Takes about Inevitable Change, Futuristic Things I Don't Particularly Care For, and What My Preschooler Hears When I Say "Get in the Car"

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

I wrote in my previous post on church callings that when you feel comfortable in one calling you inevitably get released and given a different one, right?

So that happened.

I was honest to goodness in the middle of writing about how much I enjoyed my current calling as nursery leader when I was asked to accept a new calling as a counselor to the president over the Young Women's (i.e: teenage girls) organization.

It's bittersweet to say goodbye to nursery, which was a much-needed breather for me. It involved little prep work and was completely inside my comfort zone because taking care of little kids is the most natural thing in the world to me.

But I look forward to a calling that stretches me, and more importantly gives me a reason to get to know and love the Young Women in our congregation.

The older my kids have gotten, the more thankful I've gotten that it's not just Phillip and I looking out for them.

At church, there are so many people thinking about them, praying for them, teaching them good values, and trying to help them see the worth they have in God's eyes.

It's pretty humbling and kind of awesome to think that this is my opportunity to be one of those people for the other families at church, whose teen daughters need a network of people who love them every bit as much as mine do.

So as I was sitting in the bishop's office with the rest of the Young Women's presidency waiting to be set apart (given a priesthood blessing to help me in my new calling,) I was feeling okay — maybe even good — about this new change.

Only briefly did I reconsider when the Young Women's president leaned over and asked, "Can we have a presidency meeting tomorrow at 7:30?"

I realize now that the correct response wasn't spitting out my drink and gasping, "in the MORNING?!?"

—2—

Luckily, the 7:30 meeting (to which I was late, and I wasn't even surprised) isn't a regular thing and we're meeting at a much more sensible hour going forward.

One night a week, the Young Women have an activity at the church. This week was getting to know your new leaders. Each of us presidency members had 5 minutes to teach the girls a new skill.

I taught them how to be funny.

Allow me to explain. In the writing of this blog, I've dissected humorous stories, memes, and jokes more than any normal human probably should, and asked over and over, "Why is this funny? If it isn't funny, why not? How could it be funnier?"

It may sound like I'm ruining the magic of a perfectly good joke and maybe I am, but to me it's totally fascinating. Read this and this if you don't believe me. There's a science to funniness, and I love that.

—3—

After having been saddled with a broken dishwasher for a month, we finally got a new one. We researched, read reviews, and pored over ratings. We even found a family at church who owns and loves the dishwasher we ultimately bought.

And I don't like it.

For starters, it's too sleek and streamlined. The racks just slide all around with no resistance whatsoever. The door is hard to close properly because there isn't a hard latch you can really feel.

The control buttons aren't actually buttons; they're just touchscreens with no feedback, which means that when it's any of the kids' turns to run the dishwasher they freak out and start punching every button in sight like deranged monkeys yelling, "It's not worrrrrrrrking!"

It's also one of those new high-efficiency machines that takes 3-7 business days to finish a load of dishes, and in conclusion I'm not sure anymore that I am up to the 21^st century.

—4—

School started this week! Everyone seems to be adjusting well, even the kindergartner I was most worried about.

He's always had a hard time separating from us. During swim lessons in August, there were several days when the instructor had to physically pry him from my arms to get him to join the class.

Luckily, he'd gotten to ride the bus once before because there was a kindergarten bus orientation last week (in which the principal did have to pry him from my arms,) and his 7-year-old sister is in the same school so he didn't have to get on alone.

I explained to her ahead of time that he'd probably be scared, so she had to hold his hand and then sit with him once on board. She's a great sister so she was like, "Yeah, I was already planning on it."

Cute even if it was 100% coached.

However, all our worrying was apparently for nothing because he happily skipped onto the bus and then came home and said "school was fun!" So there's that.

—5—

Do you want to know why parents are always late?

While everyone else was at school it was just the 3-year-old and me at home, I thought we'd run some errands. When I told him to get in the van and buckle up while I did one last thing in the house, he headed outside obediently and I thought, This is so easy!

Until I went outside to find the van totally empty. He wasn't even in the garage. He was sitting in the window well playing with a tennis ball.

And that is why we're never on time for anything, ever.

—6—

We have a beautiful deck on the back of our house, but while we were busy having babies it sat neglected for almost a decade, accumulating more weather damage every year.

We prayed the serenity prayer and recognized that fixing it was so low on our priority list we had to just let it go, and so the cardinal rule of our house became "don't walk on the deck barefoot unless you want to end up with an inch-long shard of wood in your foot." It was that bad.

I even entered it in an ugly deck contest once, but lost. I'm not sure if the fact that we didn't win made me feel better or worse.

Anyway, we finally decided to replace the worst boards, sand it down, and paint it. Phillip rented a floor sander from Home Depot and got the floorboards done in pretty good time, but it's taking forever to do the railings. There are just so many surfaces to do.

Luckily we have a couple of hand sanders and a lot of kids, so on a good day we can have two of them going continuously.

Wish I had taken a "before" picture for comparison but I always forget that part. I'm too excited to jump in and get rid of the ugly.

If the weather cooperates this weekend, I think we should be able to get the railings all done. Maybe. 

But as I said to Phillip after surveying our hard work at the end of a long day, this seems like an awful lot of work just to make the deck look slightly less bad. 

—7—

On the way to my 13-year-old's violin lesson, a crazy double rainbow (what does it mean?) appeared in the sky.

The main one was definitely the brightest rainbow I'd ever seen, and when the trees cleared we could see it arcing all the way across the sky from one end to the other.

The real thing was more vivid than this photo, I'd wager it has something to do with our dirty windshield.

And a minute later, the whole huge impressive thing suddenly disappeared and was gone.

I'm sure there's a good metaphor in there somewhere.

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