I really wonder what’s going on in Kaylee’s head when she hears a statement like that.  Is she imagining eating a bunch of food and magically flattening into a Kaylee-shaped piece of paper, capable of sliding under doors?  In that case, maybe she thinks becoming flat sounds pretty awesome.

Amusing preschooler translation mistakes aside, it hurt my heart a little bit to hear Kaylee say that she’s already receiving the message not to eat too much.

Fine, ok, obesity is an epidemic and blah blah fucking blah.

But Kaylee is four years old.

Can we wait a little longer before I have to worry about other people promoting an unrealistic body image for my child?  Can we wait a little longer before she starts thinking she needs to be stick-thin to be accepted?  Can we wait a little longer before my underweight child starts watching her figure?

I kind of want to rant now about the society we live in that values beauty over substance, and about the indoctrination of children into a cult of superficial bullshit that turns them into judgmental little bullies.

But I just … I just can’t today.  I don’t have the energy to pull all that frustration into a coherent blog post.

Instead I’ll take a deep breath and remind Kaylee that she’s beautiful, no matter what. And then I’ll try to get her to eat another chicken nugget.  (And some vegetables.  Sheesh, calm down.)

1.  Ginny Weasley probably doesn’t wash her hands often enough.  I know, right?  Who would have thought?  I mean, she seems like a tough girl, but she looks like she practices good hygiene.

No, I have not gone crazy. We did mock urinalysis testing in my microbiology lab this week, and all of the samples were given names of Harry Potter characters.  My partner and I got Ginny Weasley, and she has a UTI from Streptococcus pyogenes, which indicates poor personal hygiene.

Next week we’re doing stool samples from Lord of the Rings characters.

I love school.

2.  My baby boy has been so, so sick this week.  Monday night through Wednesday night, Robbie had temperatures ranging from 99 degrees to 103.3.  He was … not happy.  He was also diagnosed with Herpangina – a disease name that might have freaked me out if I weren’t smack in the middle of my microbiology class.

His fever is gone, but his misery is still around and he hasn’t been able to be in daycare, which means a lot of missed work, shuttling kids to grandparents’ houses and the like.  I finally took him back to daycare this morning and he clung to my legs, screaming.  My parents picked him up early.

So here’s the no-duh statement of the day: Having a sick kid sucks ass.  They’re miserable, they don’t understand why and you can’t explain it to them.  You just have to snuggle them and buy a lot of Tylenol.

3.  I’ve made myself feel like a little bit of a badass.  Last week I had four tests, all fairly major parts of my grades in those classes, and I was feeling a little fried.  Without getting into too much detail, I’ll just say that I did pretty well and I’m kind of proud of myself.

4.  Rob and I are reminding ourselves that we have to be parents.  You know that thing with kids, where you give them their way a couple of times and then they push and push and push to always get their way forever and ever?  Yeah.  That’s been happening with Kaylee’s sleep habits, and she’s been sleeping in our bed a lot.  When you have to study for four tests and all you want your daughter to do is sleeeeeeeeep, it’s really easy to give her her way so you can go back to memorizing the Gram stain on thirty species of bacteria.

So as of yesterday, that’s ended.  We’re forcing her to sleep in her room and refusing to stay in there until she falls asleep, no matter how many tears are shed.  We will perform monster checks, arm her with monster spray, kiss away the bad dreams and whatever else needs to be done as long as she sleeps in her own damn room.

She wasn’t thrilled with the idea.

This morning, as Robbie was wailing because I wouldn’t let him watch Thomas the Train in the 30 seconds we had left to leave the house so I could be on time to class, Kaylee looked at me and said, in all seriousness, “Mommy, you need to learn to stop saying ‘no’ to us.”

Ha.

Ha.

Ha.

5.  Speaking of Thomas the Train, I often find myself wondering whether there are hypnotic rays shooting out of the TV screen whenever that train is on it.  Rays that only affect toddlers.  And make them obsessed.  And kind of crazy.

Robbie owns three pairs of Thomas pajamas, two Thomas shirts and a ridiculous number of Thomas toys.  He screams when we try to change him out of any of the clothing, and carries the toys around wherever he’s allowed to. At school, every time I carry him out of his classroom, he points and reminds me that there’s a Thomas pillow sitting high on a shelf in the pre-school class.

He is, of course, going to be Thomas the Train for Halloween.  Except, get this: The little shit refused to put on the costume when I offered.  He was cool with wearing the hat, but the train part?  Big fat no.

That is one Thomas-obsessed, short little enigma.

6.  That is all.

That’s the sort of thing I say about Kaylee whenever she comes home from school and can’t not yell at me for any indiscretion.  You know, like breathing and offering her apple juice when I should know that she’s not in the mood for apple juice right now, Jesus mom, could you just stop talking for a second?

“Kaylee’s having a bit of a day,” I say quietly to Robbie as we crouch under the dining room table and adjust our pith helmets.

But today it’s me.  Today I want to crawl under my desk and whimper and eat chocolate and not be bothered by anyone until I can get my shit together.

It started with Thomas the Train, who up until now I’ve considered a friend. (A mildly annoying friend who’s sort of a dick to his coworkers, but still, the kind of friend who will distract my toddler when he’s being whiny.)

This morning I was in a hurry, trying desperately to herd my cats get my children ready for school and out the door. I was carrying both of them, because when Kaylee’s tired her legs don’t work, and Robbie can’t be trusted to walk from Point A to Point B without getting distracted by a toy car or a piece of lint.  Unfortunately, carrying two children and a bookbag also blocks my view of the floor.

I think Thomas may have intentionally rolled himself in front of me, too.  Because as I mentioned before, he can be a dick sometimes.

It was Robbie’s ride-on Thomas, which is a big toy, and which caught both of my feet and kept me from recovering in a graceful manner, or at all. So all of us fell.  Kaylee hit her head on the couch and floor and I banged the shit out of my shin on Thomas himself.  Robbie was ok.  He just had a look on his face that said, “What just happened?”  I barely managed not to land completely on the kids and crush their little legs.

So that’s how day started.

By the way, that’s less than 24 hours after I cried in my car on the way home from a work/school combo day that didn’t go very well either.

See, I’ve been working.  I’ve been studenting.  I’ve been mommying.  I’ve been wifeing.  I haven’t been blogging (obviously).  I’ve had a couple of tests and quizzes that haven’t gone as well as I wanted, my daughter’s been having little breakdowns every day that make me feel guilty about putting her in daycare all the time, and I feel like I only barely see my husband (Rob?  Who’s that again?).

I’ve been bummed about all of this for a few days, and then I got an e-mail from the BlogHer ad network yesterday letting me know that they’re pulling their ad from my site because I haven’t updated my blog in a month. 

It’s totally fair.  That’s part of the agreement when you sign on with them.

But it was just one more thing. It made me cry, because it was just one more role I wasn’t filling right.

After the Thomas incident this morning, I went to class and spent an hour feeling really, really stupid because the teacher asked a bunch of questions I had no idea how to answer, even though I’d spent last night studying the exact topic she was asking about. 

And also my shin hurts.  (This is one of those moments when I kind of wish I bruised easier, because my shin injury is largely invisible. Any complaints I have can’t be corroborated by physical evidence, so it just seems like I’m whining.)

Anyway, I don’t have anything witty to end with.  I’m tired, I’m frustrated and I feel kind of really dumb.  I could use some tequila.  And also a microchip in my brain that helps me memorize the random, rambling things my microbiology professor says. Does anyone have one of those?  (Preferably unused, but I’m willing to negotiate as long as it’s been well sterilized.)

Because no one can sit through a two-hour-and-40-minute class without falling asleep, the instructor gives us a couple of breaks to stretch our legs and pee. During one of those breaks last week, I found myself talking to the young woman sitting next to me.

She’s a sophomore, I learned, and plans to study nursing, like me. Throughout our conversation, she wore a carefully arranged, disaffected expression.  This class is so boring, she seemed to be thinking. This professor is so dumb. These classmates are so uninteresting.  I would rather be elsewhere. 

But we were both there, so we talked.

She told me that she was switching from a different major, and I told her I already have a bachelor’s degree in journalism.

“Why aren’t you going to do the accelerated nursing program?” she asked.

And so I told her about the informational meeting I’d attended, where the student panel advised prospective students to say goodbye to their families and friends for 16 months, because they wouldn’t see their loved ones until they’d come out the other side of the program. I told her I have two kids, and I didn’t want to do that.  I didn’t tell her about the one panelist who was almost in tears because she never got to see her three children anymore because she was always at school or studying.  I didn’t tell her how I sobbed on the way home from that meeting, because the thought of rarely seeing Kaylee was too much of a sacrifice. (Robbie wasn’t even in our thoughts yet.)  I didn’t tell her how it threw my head into disarray because this whole nursing school thing was my entire plan after losing my job, and now I didn’t know what to do.  I didn’t tell her that deciding not to apply for that program was a Very Big Deal at the time.

She listened to my abbreviated explanation and said, with her eyebrows raised, “Are you single?”

“No, I’m married,” I answered.

Her eyebrows went higher.

“It’s only a year,” she said, her disdain for my decision hanging like a cloud in the air between us.

I mumbled something about it being a tough decision, but she didn’t hear me because she went back to playing with her cell phone.

It’s only a year.

Sixteen months, actually.

If I’d applied and been accepted to the accelerated nursing program, I’d already be an RN.  I would have started school in 2009 and graduated in 2010, and I’d be doing nursey things as we speak.

It’s only a year.

Nothing important happens in a year, right?

It’s possible probable that this 20-something woman doesn’t have any children, because I can’t imagine a mom being so dismissive of the idea of spending a year away from her children.  I can’t imagine being so dismissive of turning my partner into a single parent for sixteen months, of missing all the tiny details of watching my kids discover who they are.  I already miss some of those things, but at least I get a little bit of time every day to watch them be themselves.  At least I get to have dinner with them every night and get them ready for school in the morning.  At least I’m around.

It was only a year.

But it was a year in which this happened.  And this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

If a 20-year-old’s disdain is the price I pay for refusing to miss those things, well, I guess I’m all right with that. Bring it on, kid.

That's what Kaylee told me today, on the way home from school. Karen, of course, is not the child's real name. No one names their kids Karen anymore.

"What?" I asked, surprised to learn that these things start so young.

"Karen told me I'm ugly."

How do I react to this? I wondered.

I wanted to kick this Karen kid's ass. How dare she make my little girl sad? How dare she tell my beautiful child that she's anything less than perfection incarnate?

Maybe I should talk to Karen's mom about her child's bratty behavior, I thought.

Should I fight this battle for Kaylee? Should I pump her head full of declarations of her beauty? Should I tell her that Karen is an evil little shit who's just jealous of Kaylee's shining awesomeness? Should I make things worse?

"Did that make you feel sad?" I asked. Because you never know with four-year-olds. Sometimes they speak in code. Sometimes "ugly" means "rad," or whatever the kids say these days.

But Kaylee nodded. Yes, she was sad. Damn that Karen.

"Well, it's really not very nice to tell someone they're ugly, is it?"

Kaylee agreed.

"Next time Karen says something like that, you tell her that's a mean thing to say, and you don't play with mean kids."

"Ok," she said.

"She said I was ugly."

"I'm sorry."

"So I said she's ugly."

"Oh. ... But that's not nice, is it?"

"No. Tomorrow I'll tell her I'm sorry."

"Ok."

I first heard of BlogHer a few years ago, shortly after I started following Dooce, Fussy and Finslippy, plus a bunch of other blogs that I’ve lost track of since then. One August, this weird thing happened where they all got together and had fun and drank and laughed and enjoyed each other’s company at BlogHer, and I was all “What the fuck, y’all?  Why didn’t you invite me?” This was, of course, a stupid thought.  I don’t personally know any of those women, even though I feel like I do because I read their blogs.

I’ve wanted to go ever since, so I could be part of the club.

I’ve been blogging with limited success – for I am lazy and unwilling to seek out creative revenue streams – since 2003. Lisa has been blogging, with much more success because she is awesome, for two years.  She wanted to go to BlogHer to find ways to expand her online presence.  I wanted to go to BlogHer to see if I could meet The Bloggess.  Thus, a plan was born.

(I also wanted to meet this awesome lady but she couldn’t make it.)

So Lisa and I packed our bags and went to San Diego for a few days.

Can I just tell you guys something?  I’d never been to San Diego before.  I’ve been to Los Angeles and been stuck in traffic there for hours just because I wanted to see the damn Hollywood sign, but I’d never been to San Diego.  After four days there, I want to pack up my whole family and move to California.  I don’t care if San Diego is going to be the first place to fall into the ocean next year while John Cusack’s charging across the world to rescue his kids from certain demise, I still want to live there.  I have never, never in my life felt such a strong pull toward a place.  People, yes. Place, no.

Fortunately, my dad has a friend who’s selling a beautiful house in San Diego.  So we’ll be moving there as soon as I come up with $700,000 and also, like, a job or something.

Anyway, this was the view from our hotel window:

The conference was … big.  There were 3,600 people there, and there’s pretty much no way I would have enjoyed any of it if I hadn’t had a friend there with me.  Most of the time it was fine, but occasionally I felt overwhelmed and wanted to go back to the hotel room and crawl under the covers. (I did that once.)

We went to a couple of parties, and I achieved my goal of meeting Jenny, of The Bloggess, and she gave me a sticker.  At the notorious Sparklecorn party, I met Amy of Amalah and I’m pretty sure I made a total ass of myself, as I had consumed six free drink tickets’ worth of chardonnay by then.  Then I had some of this cake:

I know, right?  That is actually a cake.

I went to three informational sessions while at BlogHer, one of which was particularly pertinent to my blog, and I spent a bunch of time wandering around the Expo Hall collecting free samples of random stuff.  Fortunately, Lisa told me to bring an extra bag for all the swag, and most of the samples made it home unharmed.  (Except the cotton candy. That shit doesn’t travel well.)

We made a point to leave the hotel a couple of times and explore a little bit of San Diego, because what’s the point of going to California if you don’t take a minute to stick your feet in the ocean?

We ate fresh seafood at a restaurant on the water:

We rode a ferry:

We saw some fireworks:

We stuck our feet in the ocean:

Throughout the touristy stuff, I texted Rob pictures like this one:

And this one:

And he would occasionally respond with, “You ARE going to come home from there, right?”

I did come home, of course. I am not dangling my feet off the end of a pier while typing this post.  But maybe, just maybe, I’m plotting my return to San Diego.

So, now that I’ve been to BlogHer, do I feel like I’m part of the club?

Yes and no. 

I didn’t make a bunch of meaningful new friendships.  I did learn a couple of things. I did collect a crapload of business cards that I still haven’t sorted through. I didn’t always feel comfortable.  I did give my hastily designed business card to two of my favorite bloggers.  I did not hope they would visit my site and tell all their readers how wonderful my blog is.  (That one’s a lie.)  I did not shed my shyness and dance with abandon at Sparklecorn.  I did feel incredibly stupid more than once.  I did see my first flashmob.  I did decide I would like to attend BlogHer again someday.

I did love San Diego.

I do want to go back. 

I want to show my family this:

And this:

And maybe this:

I want to convince my husband that San Diego is the place to be.  (And then convince the rest of our family, too, because babysitters ain’t cheap.)  And maybe once he’s on board, we can find, like, jobs and stuff.

This time last month, I was worried about the two of you. We were preparing to start you in a new daycare, and I thought you might not handle the transition well.  I thought you would be stressed out, crying, missing your old daycares.

I should really start giving you guys more credit.

The whole experience has been nothing short of wonderful. In fact, Kaylee, once in a while you worriedly turn to me and remind me to take you to your new school in the morning, not your old one. You love your new teacher, Mr. C, even more than your old one – perhaps because he doesn’t coddle you.  While it took you weeks to slowly poke your way out of your shell at the last school, you’ve burst out of your shell, arms flailing, at the new one.  You can now write your name, you keep a little drawing journal and you sometimes beg me to get you to school in time to eat breakfast there.  You are thriving, my beautiful girl, and it makes me so happy.

The transition was a little tougher for you, Robbie. For the first week, you cried every morning when I pulled the car into the parking lot. But on Monday, you didn’t even want to come home with me because you were too fascinated by all the toys in the preschool room. You know which classrooms have Thomas the Train toys stashed in them, and your teachers claim that you eat your fruits and vegetables every day. (This is the one thing that gives me pause about your school, because your teachers MUST be damn dirty liars to say something like that.) This morning, I handed you off to your teacher and you smiled, laying your head on her shoulder – and action I usually only see you take with your beloved Papa.

Monday starts another new chapter – for me more than you – and I hope I don’t turn into Insane Mommy on you as I’m loaded down with homework and tests and etc., etc.  I think it’ll be all right.  But if I get a little crazy, I want you to know that you can always calm me down by holding my face in your little hands and giving me a kiss. Both of you do this sometimes, and it never fails to make me feel all warm and squishy.

I don’t have much else to say right now because my brain has decided to take a vacation on me.  But know this, little monkeys: I love you.  More than anything.

Love,
Mommy

Kaylee's eyes light up while mine show only terror. What she hears is a song of pure joy, holding promises of wonderful treats. What I hear is a toddler siren song, one that will inevitably leave our almost-happy evening dashed upon the rocks of disappointment.

I glance in my rearview mirror as the garage door descends behind the car, just in time to see the neighborhood ice cream truck go by.

"Fuck," I think. "This is going to suck."

Out loud I say, "Maybe if we hurry and get your ice cream money, we can catch the ice cream truck."

I quickly free the kids from their car seats, narrowly avoiding a full-fledged Robbie meltdown by promising ice cream in lieu of a half hour sitting in the driver seat turning the headlights on and off -- an activity he'd been pining for all day. I get the kids inside and urge Kaylee to hurry, hurry, hurry and find the Dora backpack where she'd stashed her $5 bill. (Gone are the days when you could simply raid the piggy bank for ice cream money. These days, the cheapest treat is as much as $2.)

"I'm hurrying!" she shouts, right before getting distracted by a plastic bag, then a broach, then a shoe.

While she hunts, I locate a different $5 and an additional $1, and shove Kaylee out the front door, giving up on the backpack. But we're too late. The ice cream lady is gone.

The first time this happened, the kids and I walked down the street and managed to catch the ice cream lady as she meandered through the neighborhood. Thus, every time we miss her now, we are required to go for a walk in search of the ice cream truck.

We don't find it this time. Kaylee takes it well -- right up until I tell her we need to go inside the house. Now she makes it clear that her world has ended, her spirit is crushed and she will never recover from the trauma of being denied a watermelon snow cone.

Later, I take Robbie with me to run an errand and pick up dinner, leaving Kaylee and Rob keeping vigil at the front window, watching for that damn truck.

When Robbie and I return and pull into the driveway, I look in the rearview mirror and AGAIN see the ice cream truck drive by -- this time the music is turned off and she's driving like she's fleeing a bank heist. As I get out of the car, Kaylee and Rob appear in the driveway, and Kaylee's tears are already flowing. We tell Kaylee the ice cream lady must be going home for the night, right before that motherfucking music starts up again a couple blocks away. In the singular stroke of luck we experience that evening, Kaylee doesn't notice.

We convince Kaylee to eat dinner only because it's a Happy Meal -- why yes, we are the best parents ever -- and she knows she'll get a toy out of it if she cooperates. Afterward, Rob takes off to do some prep work for the next day's yard sale, and I agree to take the kids for another walk. I'm convinced the ice cream truck has moved on to other territory and is finished its cruel teasing.

I am, of course, totally wrong.

We get about two blocks from home, and there she is, like a desert oasis, sitting at a stop sign. Oh sweet merciful Jesus, I'm about to get my kid some goddamn ice cream and stop the screeching that's been going on for the last two hours.

And then.

Then, the ice cream truck turns away from us. We yell, we wave our arms in the air, we jump up and down and will her to check her rearview mirror and see the ravenous preschooler trying desperately to get her attention.

But no.

She keeps going.

We walk a little more, and occasionally I hear a phantom note floating in the air, mocking us. Pointing out that the ice cream truck is once again several blocks away, out of our reach.

When we finally gave up for the night, Kaylee was forced to settle for ice cream from our own freezer, which carries none of the excitement of ice cream bought from the side window of a questionably maintained motor vehicle.

I remember a time in my life when the merry tinkle of an ice cream truck filled me with joy. I could buy a popsicle! Or a nutty buddy! The choices were endless!

And nowadays that noise just fills me with dread and kind of makes me want to hit the ice cream lady. Or at least tell her to slow the fuck down.

It’s time to admit defeat here and give Robbie another reason to have a complex about being the second child. Just 18 months in to writing these letters for each of you, I’ve decided this is something you’re just going to have to share.  No more individual letters, because Mommy just isn’t getting it done.  And Kaylee, I don’t want to hear any dramatic soliloquies about how you don’t want Robbie to share your letter and how now you’ll never get a letter of your own again and how I obviously just don’t like you anymore.  And Robbie, for god’s sake, please don’t hit your sister because she’s trying to share your letter, either.

If you couldn’t tell from that introductory paragraph, the volume of the shrieking in our household has gone up significantly in the last month or so.  Robbie, you’ve finally realized that you’re almost your sister’s physical equal now – in power, if not height,– and you have learned to wield it.  You will attempt to push her off her chair at breakfast in your never-ending pursuit of Things Other People Have, and you’re willing to fight back when she tries to play the Big Sister card and take things away from you.  Kaylee, you haven’t yet figured out that your brother has learned to push your buttons. Here’s a hint, sweetie: If you yell “STOP!” every time he screams at you in the car, he’ll just keep screaming because he thinks it’s funny.  The sooner you learn these sorts of tips for dealing with an obnoxious brother, the better.

Despite all the screaming, you two do really like each other. My favorite moments as your mother usually involve watching the two of you chase each other around the living room, laughing uproariously every time one of you almost catches the other. You’ve learned to give each other hugs, which usually causes me to melt into a puddle on the floor.  You give each other goodnight kisses.  You are friends, even when you’re screeching at each other.

Kaylee, you’ve developed an amazing gift for hyperbole over the past month. (I suspect you get it partly from your cousin Hope.)  Whenever you are denied something you want – say, a Happy Meal – you’ll sob and whine and ask, “Why can I never ever have a Happy Meal?” or “Can I never have a Happy Meal again?”  Sometimes you will ask me, completely out of the blue, why I don’t love you.  If I need to accomplish a chore – or, you know, finish peeing – before joining you in yet another re-enactment of “Tangled,” you’ll ask me why I don’t want to be your friend. You know how to take the most innocuous slight and turn it into the end of the world.  It is … not cute.  It’s a little funny, what with all the histrionics involved, but I’d really rather you cut it out.  It’s not an adorable way to get what you want.

Robbie, you are now the proud owner of a t-shirt that says “stuntman” across the front, and it is a truly accurate garment.  I cannot believe the level of your fearlessness.  If I weren’t afraid of the looks I’d get in public, I’d probably dress you in bubble wrap.  A couple of weeks ago, Daddy and I made the mistake of lying in bed for half an hour and allowing you and Kaylee to wander the upstairs freely while we drifted in and out of naps. Once we decided to get up and assess the damage your freedom had wrought, we discovered that you’ve learned to climb up onto your dresser and get back down without any help.  That’s the only explanation for the fact that all of the belongings that usually live on top of the dresser had made their way to the floor during those 30 minutes. You also rifled through my desk drawers, climbed into my desk chair and banged on my computer.  Your other nifty trick is standing on the seat of the giraffe bike and balancing precariously while you reach for things on top of your bookshelf.  I hope you make it to your next birthday concussion-free.

Next week starts a new chapter in our family, one that’s causing me a significant amount of maternal guilt.  You’re both going to start daycare full-time on Monday, in an effort to get everything in place before I start school.  I think this is the best thing for us all, because in the long run we’ll be better off after I get the new degree and start the new career.  But in the short run, I’m a little panicky about how much I’m going to miss seeing my babies all the time.  Our current schedule allows me to spend Mondays with you and to hang out with you much of the morning on Wednesdays and Fridays. Much of the time we just putz around, but the point is that we putz around together.  Starting next week, I’ll only see you in the mornings, at night and on weekends. Today was your last day at your current daycares, and every time I remembered that fact throughout the day I’d feel anxiety flooding in, as if Monday is the day I start missing out on your childhoods.

I’ve fretted over this decision so much, particularly regarding you, Kaylee. As I’ve documented many, many times, you can be a pretty darn shy child. You often hide your face in my shoulder at the mere suggestion that you might need to speak to another person sometime in the next hour. But then there are the moments when your personality shines. Yesterday you and Robbie spent the day with Grandma and Uncle Tim, who set about spoiling you with a Chuck E. Cheese visit because you won’t be spending Wednesdays at Grandma’s house anymore, and when I arrived to pick you up I saw a wonderful thing. You and Grandma were sitting on a garden wall in front of the neighbor’s house, and you were watching the neighbor’s 4-year-old boy ride his tricycle up and down the sidewalk. Every time he passed you’d yell, “What’s your name?” until his older brother finally answered you. Within half an hour, you were playing with the trio of brothers, running up and down the sidewalk and venturing into their garage to see the dog.  You may be shy sometimes, but you know how to charm the masses when it suits you.  I think you’ll do just fine in your new school.

Before I ever became a parent, I would never have guessed that I’d still be so fascinated by my children four years into the adventure. Every single day – and I do mean every one – I stare at each of you with wonder and amazement. How did you get so freakin’ cute? How did I have a role in creating two such wonderful people?  How did I get so lucky?

Love,

Mommy

The kid did not, of course, have any idea when use of finger quotes is appropriate or that they often connote sarcasm, so she used them whenever it popped into her head to do so.

Rob thinks this is hilarious, given the way inappropriately placed quote marks make me all itchy.

By the end of dinner, we were all using finger quotes just to play along – Kaylee being sincere and Rob and I just trying to make each other laugh.

I’m not sure Kaylee realizes that when I said I’d “buy” her a “cat” “someday,” that I mean I’ll probably adopt a used hamster from the Humane Society for her – after she’s grown and moved out.