A Pattern of Words

Orange vegetables always bring out the kids’ “Co-op Food Explorer’s Notebook.” I guess nothing says “Ew, gross” like the impulse to scratch another vegetable off on the official record.

This particular photograph can almost make me smell wet ground, melting snow, and that distinct chicken coop odor. It’s days like this that leave tracks all over my back entrance floor and require load after load of laundry.

Sometimes they tug along next to me all day long, whining about how they just “don’t know what to doooo” and fights pepper their dialog every. five. seconds. Then other days? They magically disappear for hours, reappearing around dinner with a Lego mouth that can open or close, or a structure with a trap door and a button that shoots arrows, or an entire caravan of monster trucks with spinning tops. Those are the days their conversations are happy and playful and no arguing happens and I think to myself, “Wow, now this feels easy! I can do this.”

Deep in his tooth losing era. Unfortunately our tooth fairy isn’t the most reliable sprite around. First the tooth didn’t get collected, then a dollar less than last time was left. Oops.

They braved the chilly and relentlessly falling sleet to get a little bit of outdoor time. We went from 48 hours of snowfall to endless rain, which led to massive power outages and flooding all within the span of days. And then after that came the wind.

I’ll be glad to not accidentally walk into a metal beam anymore, but it’ll take me a hot minute to get used to having a shelf here.

My rude interruption caused an immediate hush and disruption of thoughts. For all I know, I was the cause of a mini Minecraft village never seeing its most important gate built.

Bathroom is finished, which means our wonderful handyman, Mark, can finally build the bookshelves to cover up the support beam placed in the entryway. Elena decided to join in on the action and pulled out all her own tools. I had to dissuade her from banging on all the newly fixed plaster and settled for her hammering away repeatedly on the metal pole, instead. Mark vastly preferred this to her showing off her favorite Superkitty action figure that repeatedly sings “KITTY CAT KITTY CAT” in a loud, robotic voice.

Another meal spent debating how gross Mama’s food is and whether adding weird amounts of sour cream would help.

Children, children, everywhere: coming or going, building Legos in remote corners of a bedroom, blocking my stairs with Nugget pieces, or having an elicit sword fight on my couch (strictly forbidden behavior): I never know who’s in my house and usually call whichever children are there by the wrong name. Random socks I know I didn’t buy are forever littering the bottoms of my laundry hampers and our new winter pattern is to send children home with glow bracelets to make sure cars see their trotting forms. But somehow all of the dozen glow bracelets are always at my house. How does that happen?