—1—
I usually wear socks to bed at night, but wake up with them on the floor so apparently I get hot during the night and take them off.
The other night, I went to bed in socks like always, and woke up in the morning clutching them in my hand, with the elastic of one sock rolled over the other like before you put them in the drawer.
I was folding my socks in my sleep, you guys.
—2—
My 10-year-old needed specific family pictures for a school project, so we were looking through our photo library and stumbled across an old video I took when he was a toddler.
We'd gone running at the school track, where each lane is painted with a big, bold number. The toddler was hopping from number to number, first pointing his chubby finger at each one and asking, "Which one is that?"
That went on for a while until he clumsily flung himself into Lane 5 and asked, "Where is four?"
"Right there," I said, pointing at the next lane.
He pointed waaaay in front of him. "There??"
"No, right in front of you."
With a face of abject confusion, he waddled in a circle and looked behind him. With some direction, he found Lane 4 and continued hopping all the way to Lane 1, where he misjudged the last hop and fell over.
It's hard to put into words exactly how much I loved being a stay-at-home mom and being able to dedicate my life to those ordinary, magical moments, but that video did a pretty excellent job of showing it. That period of my life was an absolute privilege.
—3—
My 8-year-old tells me he wants to be corn for Halloween. As in, a corn on the cob.
I'm a little bit at a loss for how to DIY a costume, but I'm trying to think of some way we can create the general idea of corn by spraypainting bubble wrap yellow and using a green hoodie somehow. Ideas??
—4—
Our pet parakeet Pringles got a new mirror, after having pecked at the hanger of her old one and destroying it. Recently I mentioned this to my animal-loving friend Bev and she gave me her former cockatiel's mirror, which she's kept for years and hasn't been able to part with.
Pringles LOVES it. She spends half her day with her forehead literally touching the mirror and singing to herself.
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| What would life be like with so much self-confidence that your favorite activity is point-blank staring at yourself? |
—5—
My 10-year-old came home with a "fun" math worksheet that they can work on at their leisure throughout the school year to see how much they can get done.
The assignment is to make 100 equations that equal 1 through 100, using only the number four exactly four times. I asked him to show me an example and he showed me the one that equals 7:
√4 + 4 +4 ⁄4 = 7
Apparently, fifth grade has gotten a lot harder since I was a kid.
He worked on it obsessively all night, even through dinner, and is about 2/3 of the way done on the first day. And now that I think about it, this was the same kid in the video who had such a hard time identifying the number 4 on the track. So parents, take heart.
—6—
As a stay-at-home mom, the house is my office and I'm free to declutter the living areas of the house as I like. But Phillip's workshop area in the basement is "his" and it's a nightmare.
Usually I'm okay with closing the door and letting him merrily do his packrat thing, but lately I've had to go searching for a can of touch-up paint or a tool and I can hardly walk in there. See this video for a good explanation of his thought process:
One day my patience snapped, and I rage cleaned his workshop for an hour or so, vacuuming up sawdust and throwing away obvious trash and putting away some of the 37 pencils he was stashing down there because he grabs a new one for every project.
When he came home from work I was having a backyard bonfire with one (not all, just one) of his bins of scrap wood. Technically, could I have asked him to drop it off at the dump? Yes, and he would've gotten around to it eventually. But it was faster and way more therapeutic to haul it out into the yard and cackle as it goes up in flames.
—7—
Having older kids is wild. When you go out, they're old enough to stay home by themselves so when you get home you never know what they'll be doing. They could be playing or fighting or reading a book or waiting by the door to scare the crap out of you like this:
3 comments:
What screen limits does your family have? When I need to leave kids at home, they just want to watch shows!
Okay firstly I bought that mini bath tub because that is just perfect thank you so much for helping along my Christmas shopping. Secondly your story of your husband's workshop is so very relatable. Recently my husband was helping his friend fix his car and the shop was closed on a Sunday to get a part they needed. He was so ecstatic and triumphant when he could come home rummage in his shop and find the needed partready to go.
Anonymous: We have a love-hate relationship with screens in our house. The kids love them, I hate them.
Our TV is in the basement and is just for "special occasions" as my 12yo puts it, like family movie nights. The daily screen time battle is over computer games. Officially they each get 20 minutes per day, but unless I'm there the turn is inevitably longer, plus they watch their siblings' turns so I feel like they're always staring at a screen and it drives me crazy.
Every now and then I'll declare it a screen-free day/week/month, usually with the explanation that they haven't been earning the privilege by making their expected contributions to the household or that they haven't been following the 20-min rule. So the short answer to your question is that it's No-Screen September.
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