As we gear up for the beginning of school, I am prepping myself for the first big milestone of the school year. Picture day. Yes siree, I know on picture day two things are SURE to happen:
1) Exactly one day prior, a child will lose a tooth and/or get a bad haircut, thereby making them look like they have just stumbled in from a bar fight. (Fortunately, and I kid you not, our school photographer now offers “retouching” for a $10 fee.)
2) I will forget it’s picture day. Write it on the calendar, read the reminder notes from school, tie a string around every finger—and I will still forget.
Now this second inevitability has several ripple effects… Since I will have forgotten picture day, I will also have forgotten to do laundry. This means my children will have to go to school in grocery bags, leaving our outfit choices at paper or plastic. (Read more…)
We are not a “sports” household. Neither husband J. nor I played a sport in high school, and neither of us follows a sport on television. Such is the depth of my sports ignorance that, until recently, I thought that Brett Favre was a hockey player.
Sometimes I think I’d like to watch baseball (back in the misty-mists of youth I played softball, so I at least understand the rules), but the mood soon passes when I realize I will have to commit to sitting for many hours before a game in which—quite often—nothing happens. If that’s the case, I might as well be fishing. At least I’d be outdoors.
This may have to change, because we now have a child who more closely resembles a monkey than a girl. At 14 months, she climbed out of her crib. True, she used a stuffed animal as firm footing, and she had the incentive of a dropped nuk lying on the floor in front of the crib (no doubt whispering her name seductively). But still. (Read more…)