The kids have been into “experimenting” these days. We even have science journals with which to record our results. (Yes, we can thank Sid the Science Kid for that brilliant idea).
It started with freezing stuff.
I overheard my son tell his sister with a hushed voice of excitement, “Sis, you watch…we’ll put this cup of water into the freezer and then later when we come back it will be ice.
I am a home body. Truth be told, I can go a good four days of staying at home before I go stir crazy and need to get out and about. And as a home body, I love, LOVE days where we go no where and just stay home all day. These days don’t happen all too often, maybe about once a week. Because, my kids LOVE to go out. Even if it is grocery shopping.
My little man loves to look spiffy for church on Sunday. He’s been asking for “shiny church shoes” for months now. But penny loafers are expensive and I hadn’t been able to find any at the consignment shop. Until this week when I went on a consignment store quest hoping to find some cool looking picture frames for a fun idea I had for my dining room. No luck with the picture frames but we did score a cooler and a pair of “shiny church shoes” in size 11.
My son is quite the little entrepreneur. The other night after dinner my husband was reading the girls a book and I sat on the couch to read a little myself. I looked over to see what my son was up to and discovered he had put all the dishes in the sink, and was scrubbing the dining room table. He even asked where the sandwich bags where so he could bag up the leftovers and put them in the fridge.
The relationship between siblings is a funny thing. I once read a Times magazine article about siblings that really struck me. It’s funny, 3 years later and I still remember this one line “Our spouses arrive comparatively late in our lives; our parents eventually leave us. Our siblings may be the only people we’ll ever know who truly qualify as partners for life.”
Being the mother of three children, I think a lot about the bonds of siblings.
I am done!
Whew! What a week at the circus! This was not one of those stay in your pjs all day and relax by the pool kinda weeks. Not at all. Rather it was one of those, get the kids up, fed, dressed, in shoes (no small feat for the circus crew) and to the soccer field by 9 am every.single.morning. Hello? Even during the school year, it was only M-W-F for us.
Life on the sidelines can be rough. I know, I’ve been there. Sat the bench for 4 years of high school lacrosse. But unlike her mother, my little girl sits on the side because she is too young, not because she isn’t good enough.
[
](https://latc.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/IMG_8358.jpg)
My daughter is dying to play like her brother. It is so cute and yet so painful to watch her on the sidelines. When the coach calls the team to line up at the bench during practice, she is right there with the rest of them.
Sometimes a mother’s ability to multitask isn’t a good thing… as I attempt to juggle one to many balls, I find that I can accidentally drop one and not even realize it for several hours.
Last week while I was talking on the phone and cleaning up the living room, I noticed the kids sitting on the floor with some stuffed animals and scissors.
I keenly observed that something looked amiss, so I grabbed the scissors from my sons hands, quickly told him that they needed to be used only at the table, and went to the other room.
I knew being a mom wouldn’t be easy. And I’ve survived the middle of the night feedings, the tantrums of the terrible twos, the struggle for independence…but that all feels like child play compared to the task of this week.
This week I was reminded of the fact that sometimes there is very little a mom can do to protect her young from getting hurt. Sending your children off into the world, is like sending your heart out there, exposed for the world to trample on.
There is something alluring, almost magical about the buttons on an elevator. My kids enthusiastically clamor for the opportunity to press the shiny buttons both outside and inside of the elevator. We have a routine when entering elevators which typically works flawlessly. One child pushes the button on the outside. The second child then pushes the same button. Once inside they each get a turn pushing the button for the floor we want to go on.