For ten weeks I faithfully documented our quarantine. I published week 10 just after Thomas’s birthday, and after that I started wondering how long I’d keep this up. See, when I started, I thought the quarantine would be temporary. And I thought that it would end with us flinging open the doors and returning to
If you’d like a quick lesson on the lunacy of Confederate monuments, you should explain them to kids. Pare it down as much as possible, don’t let your bias cloud the water. There was a war — the north versus the south. The south lost. These statues are to commemorate the soldiers that fought for the
I’ve mentioned before that Thomas doesn’t know colors. Actually, let me rephrase. Thomas refuses to conform to the names society has given colors. Instead of using the names of the colors that you and I use, he came up with his own. For example, instead of red, green, blue, and yellow, Thomas would say David
On the morning of Thomas’s preschool field trip to the pumpkin patch, I was in the bathroom frantically getting ready. Because she never strays farther than six inches from my heels, Anna joined me in the bathroom. She insisted, INSISTED on using my blush (I tried to just hand her the blush brush but baby
Next fall Thomas will start kindergarten. This fall he is conducting experiments in our yard with the garden hose. One afternoon I was watering the garden and Thomas started digging in our mulch. I was using the hose attached to our irrigation, so he got the hose that’s attached to the front of our house
Yesterday Anna, my 22-month old, was throwing a tantrum. She threw herself onto the floor, curled her body over her knees with her forehead pressed to the carpet, and wailed. “Look!” Mary exclaimed. “Anna is doing a lockdown drill!” David and Mary laughed and laughed at the absurdity of a lockdown drill! At home! Ha!
A week after the big kids started back to school, Thomas started preschool. He didn’t want to hold his bag like I asked; he wanted to hold this plane instead. FOUR! What a difference a year makes. Thomas went to school wearing the same shirt David wore to the first grade, and hand-me-down Crocs with
Our school district starts late — after nine — so we never have to wake them up and we don’t have to rush. The kids have plenty of time to play, eat breakfast, get dressed, and hold down a part-time job. As he does every morning, David curled up on the couch with a book.
A few weeks before the end of school I started packing little treats in the kids’ lunches. Nothing too over-the-top — just things I don’t normally pack, like fruit snacks or cookies. I also started a very lazy alphabet countdown. In the morning I’d announce, “Today is O day! What should we do?” Then the
I feel like I’m in a weird in-between stage of parenting. I’ve got two big kids who are in full-day elementary school, and I’ve got two little ones at home with me. This one-foot-in-each-world is not unique to me, I know. But it’s tough on the sentimental side of me that wants to mark