Movie day from hell, featuring 3 children and a husband

I’m just going to come right out and say it: I’m not a fan of kiddy movies. To me they’re something going on in the background whilst I’m busy doing something else. I miss being able to go to the movies by myself, hog all the popcorn and not having to speak to anyone for 2 hours. An added bonus is if I can squeeze in a proper ugly cry, that’s good value for money.

Don’t get me wrong, I comprehend that taking your kids to the movies is a treat for them in the name of family time and there’s no way either Etienne or myself can attempt to take more than one child at a time yet, but there’s always something.

Take today for example.

We took the kids to see the new Smurfs movie.

(At this point I should add that getting all 3 to the same movie today was an exercise in negotiation that would have put the UN to shame. One wanted to watch Turbo, one didn’t want to watch in 3D and the other didn’t want to go with her brother)

It started with buying the tickets when my brand spanking new debit card didn’t work, I had to redo the transaction and the machine gave me completely different tickets than I asked for which meant climbing over 3 people to get to our seats. Never a good idea with children.

The whole cool drink-popcorn-buying thing also fills me with anxiety. I have a quiet little scream every time a child waves around their plastic cup and straw whilst clutching popcorn under other arm. This is because I’m notorious for knocking over popcorn and drinks in movies, so I’m nervous to see who got the clumsy gene.

We climb over the 3 people and sit down.

Isabel demands one of those loose seats.

I get up to and look for one, climbing over the 3 people.

Not a seat in sight.

I come back climb over the same 3 people and say that I can’t find one.

Isabel is unhappy.

Etienne decides to go and look for the seat, climbing over 3 of us and the other 3 people.

Whilst he is gone I take the 3D glasses out of my bag and hand them out. Daniel shuffles closer and before I can say ‘please could someone stick pens in my eyes’ he politely kicks over Etienne’s popcorn because he has his eyes glued to the big screen.

Etienne returns with a seat for Isabel, climbs over the 3 people and 3 of us and I break the popcorn news to him. He is not happy.

I ask Isabel to get up so I can slip the seat under her bum, only she gets up too quickly, bumps into my arm and snaps her 3D glasses. I do what any self-respecting parent does that hates a scene: I get up to buy another pair, climbing over the 3 people.

Of course there’s a huge queue at the ticket counter, so there I wait patiently, grinding my teeth, so I can buy a pair of 3D glasses.

Eventually, shortly before the end of the movie, I get back and climb over the 3 people and hand over Isabel’s glasses.

We watch 5 minutes and Isabel reaches to take out her cool drink. She promptly drops it on the floor. Cream soda everywhere. At least most of it got sucked up by Etienne’s popcorn already on the floor.

I also had the largest of the 3 people sitting next to me, so every time I went to pick up my drink my hand would brush their thigh. Awesome.

The movie? It was cool, but I struggle to sit in one place for so long with nothing else to do.

At least I managed to write most of this post in my head by the end of it.

I have a split personality

Our children are rather vivacious little creatures as a rule. This means that they are giggly, talkative, silly and loud. Oh so very loud. All the time.

They are also terribly inappropriate at times.

For example:

Every evening we make sure there’s a ‘jammerlappie’ (small wet cloth) at the table so everyone can wipe their hands if/when they have to use their hands to eat as I really don’t enjoy running my hands over my furniture only to find some old, hard rice or fatty hand imprints stuck on the side of a chair. Not that it helps much of course, but we do try.

Tonight we are all sitting at the table, politely encouraging (threatening) children to eat their broccoli when Daniel very politely points out that he wiped his snot on the ‘jammerlappie’.

Chaos ensued. Adults shuddered and vomited a little in their mouths. Children screamed and laughed like maniacs.

Things rapidly went downhill from there.

It dawned on me that I must have a split personality. On the one hand I’m this grown-up person that manages to hold down a job. On the other hand I come home and discuss snot on jammerlappies and who farted the loudest and the longest.

And I had this moment of sheer terror that I would forget one day which personality is which and completely misbehave at work.

But then I got sucked in by the vortex of love and laugh at home and I knew that it didn’t matter at all, because if I can hold on to the love I feel at home 24/7 no-one would notice the odd mention of a fart at work.

Do you also sometimes feel like you’re two completely separate people?

Too long for FB contd

Just a quick update on my post earlier this week about The Coughing Child and some random stuff.

We decided to take Isabel back to our normal GP we love this morning and thank goodness we did. The poor gal actually has bronchitis. That other after-hours doctor won’t be seeing anyone in this house again in a hurry.

At least she is on the mend, thank goodness. Thank you for all the kind comments and tweets, much appreciated.

Then.

Every night the kids have 30 minutes to play on an electronic device and only after I get home. Some nights I get home and they are huddled around the computer, some nights they are drawing up a storm and other nights I arrive to the sounds of musical statutes in the kitchen. Like last night.

The only thing that is consistent is that the first thing Daniel asks me is whether he can have the iPad. The very minute I walk in the door. He knows he is not allowed to have it before he has had a conversation with me about his day. Sometimes I make him tell me repeatedly how much he loves me. Sometimes I even demand numerous kisses and hugs, just to torture him. I’m *such* a terrible person.

The other night, much to our amusement, I am accosted by Isabel, not Daniel, and we promptly gave her the same terrible treatment of demanding conversation and affection. She humored us for a while, then excused herself and sent in her wingman, that we also sent on his merry way.

We could hear Daniel whisper from the lounge ‘Isabel, it’s your turn, go ask Mom for the iPad’.

And so it starts, the ganging up on the parentals.

Because this is too long for FB (and by default twitter). Parenting post alert.

I’m shamelessly crowd-sourcing advice.

Picture this: the girls were both coughing up a storm from early last week. By Thursday Mignon’s cough had cleared up, but Isabel’s got worse.

It’s that I’m-going-to-hack-up-a-lung cough. It is 24/7 and it is driving us insane. Well, more Etienne than me because he is a terribly light sleeper and I’m an insomniac that sleeps through almost everything once I’m actually asleep.

I took her to a GP we don’t normally see as ours wasn’t available on Saturday and SURPRIZE! left with a script for AB’s and some fancy cough medicine. It was one of those surreal conversations with the doctor:

Me: I’m worried about her chest and I had some Pulmicort, so I nebbed her last night
GP: ‘listens to chest’ Her chest is fine. (Said in that ‘you terrible Mother how dare you neb the child that clearly has nothing wrong with her chest’ voice)
Me: Er. She doesn’t feel warm, but she was looking pale and listless when I came home last night.
GP: ‘takes temperature’ She doesn’t have a temperature.
Me: I’m really worried about that cough, we’ve even tried a cough suppressant at night and that doesn’t seem to help
GP: At this point she is giving me the serious side-eye and takes out a picture of sinuses. When doctors start taking out pictures of body parts I tend to start rocking and humming in the corner. She launches into a long explanation about getting the phlegm loose and how terrible it is for them to have the cough suppressed. Which made perfect sense at the time, but all I could think of was how we (Etienne) were going to sleep until the child is better. I’m selfish that way you know, I enjoy sleeping on occasion.
Me: (yup, at this stage I was only opening my mouth to swap feet) It’s probably a good thing to dry things up too?
GP: (horror stricken) You do NOT want to dry the sinuses up! Otherwise the ‘insert big doctor words for snot here’ stays there and she doesn’t get better.

So, I did what any self-respecting Mother would do: I sucked it up and diligently bought the AB’s and fancy cough medicine.

That was on Saturday, 3 days ago. In my vast (!!) experience of dispensing AB’s I know that they tend to work between 24-48 hours. Which this hasn’t. At all. In fact, her cough is getting worse.

It has been suggested (by the ever-helpful folk on twitter) that children could cough like that because of, and brace yourself, worms. I’ll be buying the Vermox tomorrow, but I’m so over this now.

I’m not quite sure where to from here. Our regular GP? Stuff the other doctor and give the cough suppressant anyway?

What do you think?

Oh, and I nebbed her tonight. Just because I can. Judge me, I don’t care.

Sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong

I have a terrible habit: I tend to stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong.

In my defense, I’m never malicious, my intentions are always pure and 99% of the time it is to the benefit of someone else.

Point in case: the kids’ aftercare at school.

Recently I collected Daniel from aftercare and his top lip was red. When I had a closer look I realised that it was something that he drank and I cast my eye over the drinks available to the kids. There, lurking in the shadows, was a large container with red cool drink that made my skin crawl. Being the OCD I am (and proud of it) I promptly snapped a pic of my child’s stained face and smartly emailed it to the aftercare manager with the suggestion that, if my son’s face looks like that, it would be interesting to see what it does to his stomach. There were vague mumblings of ‘we’ll look into it’ and I got sidetracked with life and promptly forgot about it.

Then the kids came home during the holidays with a bag of sweets that made our hair stand on end. Before we even had a chance to complain our new Au Pair mentioned that they were getting liquid chocolate and sherbet thingies (that are absolutely forbidden in our house) as a treat at aftercare. If you have ever read those food labels, when and if they bother to have them, you would have seen that those things are tantamount to poison for children.

So, I called and was poo-pood with more vague promises to look into it. At which point I thought, nah, I’m escalating this. Which I did. They were very good about it and no longer do kids at aftercare get cool drink that stains their faces and sweets that are potentially harmful to their health. I do suspect they grind their teeth when they see an incoming email/call from me, but not only do they now save money, they can control the kids at aftercare better because they aren’t pickled in sugar, Tartrazine, MSG and additives.

Yes. I am THAT Mother. If your child no longer gets cool drink and shitty sweets at aftercare and only water and fruit, you’re most welcome. It’s a pleasure.

But wait. There’s more. (I’m on a roll, can you tell?)

When I arrived home this evening Etienne tells me that our Au Pair was waiting for the girls to finish ballet and had Daniel with her. She then saw 2 little boys, the same age as the girls, approach a very shy little boy and tell him how they were “going to come to his house, slap him through the face the whole time and then kill him’.

I’ll let that sink in for a minute.

Daniel apparently heard this, went over to the boys and told them to leave the little boy alone, they were very nasty. And they did. (My son, he’s a hero)

The Au Pair then reported this to the aftercare teacher who apparently dealt with it.

This would be acceptable to most people, yes? Well, not me. Oh no, not me, because clearly I stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong.

We know who the boy is that was being bullied (and who was doing the bullying), he is in class with the girls, so I had a choice: I could assume that something was said to that parent or I could call the Mom to check.

Yup. You guessed it. I called the Mom. Nothing was said to her when she collected him, so even though she knows that, because he is quite shy he is an easy target, she would have had no idea what happened or to deal with it.

I may be way out of line here, but if my child was being bullied I damnwell want to know about it. Even more importantly: if my child was bullying another child I would want to know about it and there would be some serious re-thinking of how we were parenting our child to act in such a way.

What do you think?

Catching up – on spending time with children and sport

treeWe planned nothing this past weekend, except for spending time with the kids, and it was SO worth it. Puzzles were built, movie was seen, Spur was eaten, trampoline jumped, tickles were tickled, copious kisses and hugs were dispensed and walks were taken. We literally love-bombed them this weekend and it was awesome.

The week before last I was away in Gauteng for 3 days for work (loved it there by the way, lovely people, great weather!), then came back on the Friday night and off we went for an adults only night away to Riebeeck Kasteel with 3 other couples on Saturday night that was arranged ages ago. I felt really guilty about leaving the kids, but it was great to spend time with Etienne, we both needed it. Hence the weekend of kids only this past weekend.

The only pre-arranged thing we had this weekend was taking Daniel to a rugby match in Paarl on Saturday morning. I say ‘take Daniel to a rugby match’, as we didn’t really get to watch him play because he refused to once the game started. He didn’t even break into a run once during his match, it was painful to watch. I conveniently went off to buy coffee, so I was saved the worst of it.

There were plenty tears afterward, so we decided to withdraw him from the last 2 games, it really is not worth the heartache for him.

But hear me out before you start judging.

This made me think long and hard about the decisions we made at the beginning of the winter sports season. First Daniel wanted to play rugby and couldn’t wait to start, then not. Then there were lots of conversations about how much fun it is to play with your friends. Then he wanted to rather play hockey because one of his mates changed over early in the second term. We stuck to our guns, we really wanted him to see the season through as we felt there was a lesson in it for him about completing what you start. We (to be perfectly honest) also felt that maybe, just maybe, he was a tad lazy.

After Saturday we realised that he’s not lazy (mostly), he just really doesn’t enjoy team sports. Etienne asked him what he wanted to do in summer: not cricket, tennis please. Maybe hockey next year, but we aren’t going to push him. He is also keen to do gymnastics, so we’ll investigate that. He doesn’t enjoy physical contact of a competitive nature if that makes sense.  It’s hard to explain, as he is a very affectionate little guy.

It is really important for us to have our kids play a team sport, but after seeing what it does to our normally vivacious child are we really going to compromise his sense of self and his confidence?

I think not. We would rather find him something to do that doesn’t entail him sitting on his backside, builds his confidence and he absolutely loves and we will keep trying until we find out what it is.

Does this mean that we are going to let him change his mind every 5 minutes? Absolutely not. But I am no Tiger Mother, I have precious little time with my children, I would rather make it count.

Sometimes, as parents, we need to re-examine our own principles and the things we feel are important as they aren’t necessarily valid or applicable to our own children. And sometimes, just sometimes, our own shit gets in the way of raising happy, adjusted kids that will actually want to spend time with us when they’re all grown up in about 5 minutes’ time.

Edit to add: the other thing we did this weekend was to purge all the clothes from the cupboards in our room we don’t wear anymore and never would.  I went to drop off several black bags and a box of kitchen stuff at The Haven Night Shelter in Bellville.  I swear it looks like we have been burgled, we now only have the things we actually wear in our cupboards and I feel 10 times lighter not holding on to those size 8 pants I’ll never fit into again.  Hopefully there are a couple of people out there that are warmer tonight.

On Friendship

friendshipI’ve been thinking about friendship for a while now and thought it apt to publish a post today, on International Friendship Day.   I haven’t been thinking about friendship in the I-want-to-stab-my-friends kind of way, more in a how-lucky-am-I kind of way.

Friendship is a little like dating, you know how it goes:

You meet someone.

You hit it off.

You spend a ridiculous amount of time together in the initial throes of this AWESOME relationship.  You want to know every minute detail of their life which, at the age of 40, is A LOT of catching up to do.

You may or may not gossip about people, but you might forget odds are that, if this new friend gossips about her longstanding friends to you in a slightly malicious way she’s guaranteed to eventually do the same to you.

You introduce this new-found love to your family, just as you would a new bo. If you’re lucky everyone might hit it off.  If not, well, it’s a little awkward.

Once you pass the “honeymoon” phase of a friendship it gets a little tougher. You may have a difference of opinion about how to raise children, your friend’s husband (or yours) might be a douche or her (or your) children might be insufferable brats.  Almost like fighting over which way the loo-paper goes or squeezing the toothpaste tube differently. You grind your teeth and keep quiet.

At this point in time you may back off a little and re-evaluate.  Maybe you even say how busy you are (yes, we are ALL very busy ALL the time, myself included) and cool things down a little.  Or lose your phone, depending how badly you want that toilet-roll to roll over the top and not from the bottom.

When you go through the break-up of a friendship it can also be considerably harder than that of a relationship because you often don’t have an official “break-up”, there’s maybe the quiet FB unfriend, a little bitchiness on twitter and the hurt and confusion that goes along with it. That hurt lingers a long time, it’s often a lot more personal, because we all have the Bitchy Gene. Yes, ALL of us.

You may also decide that you are in this relationship for the long haul, so you suck up the things that leave you a little uneasy, nobody is perfect after all.

Either way, us women generally gain different things from different friendships.  I say “us women” because, lets face it, our friendships are much more complex than those of guys.  Guys are more about beer/sport and women are more about other women/food/wine/politics (between women)/lengthy discussions on sex, parenting and marriage.

It’s hard work!

Guys (and by “guys” I mean my long-suffering husband) also don’t understand the intense feelings that go with feeling hurt or snubbed or lied to, especially by a friend you thought held you dear. Which is why you need other friends so you can analyse ad nauseam, preferably over some wine.

But every once in a while you fall completely in love with a friend and end up in a committed relationship. You may not get to see them as often as you would want to, but it doesn’t matter, because you feel safe and treasured in that friendship.

These are the friends you want to keep.  When the shit hits the fan they will always be there for you and they will whack you on the head when you’re being an idiot or give you the number of their therapist when no amount of w(h)ine helps. And they will bug you until you call. They will come over with soup when you’re sick in bed and send you a message to tell you that they are thinking about you when they know you are having a tough day. They will take your child off your hands when you need some time with your husband.

That is the kind of friend I strive to be, not because I need to have those acts of love reciprocated, but because they are simply that: Acts of love. I often get it wrong, I’m terrible with remembering birthdays and buying gifts, I’m too blunt (but am luckily blessed with equally blunt friends). I often don’t answer messages and I often don’t listen because of all the other noise in my head.

But I love my friends.  I am so blessed, you know who you are and I love you all stukkend.

Thank you for being in my life, just in case I forgot to tell you recently.

And I’ll try to remember to not fuck up the toothpaste.

 

 

The Beauty of Boys

Daniel1Today is Bible day at school, or as Daniel calls it: Egyptian day. He was really excited about putting on his Egyptian outfit, but was very cross that he had to wear ‘normal’ clothes underneath.

The first 6 months of the year were a little rough on our boy, I think getting his head around Grade 1 was a lot tougher than we gave him credit for. I know it was tough for Etienne and myself.

But, he is mostly back to his generous, affectionate, gentle, happy self. He’s never been a rough and tumble kind of boy, even as a baby he never used to like being handled too roughly. (in a playful manner, for the Parenting Police)

He’s also never going to be a Springbok Rugby player, which is completely fine by me as I think Isabel is the only of our children that got the Sporty Gene from their Dad. The other night we were lying in bed chatting and he asked me about being in the C Team.  “Mom, is the A Team and B Team better than the C Team?”.*

What a tough question to answer without making your child feel like a complete loser! So, I just said that we don’t care what team he is in as long as he gives his best, always.  At which point he promised to. Mostly.

Last night at the dinner table he also declared that he wanted to be a policeman, not just any policeman: a Secret Agent.  Bless.

I’m often reminded these days, looking at the fabulous little people in our house, that as long as a child feels loved, hugged, heard and accepted at home they can take most of the knocks the outside world gives them. As long as they feel safe at home life won’t be so very scary.

wordsLastly: I have been wanting to paint a family mission statement on wood for ages now and even made a friend make me a ‘slab’ to paint on which has been floating around the house for months now. I was sure I could do it free-hand, but the thought of actually putting paint brush to wood scared the living crap out of me.  I finally pulled myself toward myself on Sunday and did it.  All I can see are the mistakes, but the words are important to us as a family and life isn’t perfect, so whatever. If we can try to live by these words I think we’re good.

* His school is that big that there are 3 rugby teams.  True story. It amuses and terrifies me that some parents already pressurise their kids to be in the A Team.  At age 7.

The HPV Vaccination

Before I start with what I’m about to say be warned: this post is pro-vaccination.  If you don’t believe in vaccinating your children you may want to stop reading, although I’m hoping to bring you around to my way of thinking. I respect your right to not vaccinate at all and hope you never have to regret it. For you I have 2 words though: Herd. Immunity.

Moving right along.

One of the things I love most about my group of Whine Club* girls is the frankness of our conversations. I’m not sure if it is because we’re older and really couldn’t give two hoots or whether we feel safe in our group to talk and not feel judged in any way.  Cheapest therapy ever, at the very least.

One of the things we discussed at our most recent get together was whether we would get the HPV vaccine done for our kids.  (This particular discussion was started by Tertia, who also sent us this link about HPV vaccination rates in the US)

If you are a boy only parent and think you don’t need to worry, keep reading. Trust me.

I have subsequently chatted to our GP, Discovery and Dischem about the vaccine and here is the down-low:

  • The vaccine used in SA is Gardasil.
  • The vaccine is a course, administered over 3 separate occasions in a 6 month period. (0, 2 and 6 months)
  • Each injection is priced at around R1 000. (so, about R3 000 in total per person, R9 000 for a family of 3 children like mine)
  • It is not available at Government Clinics (I called and asked)
  • It’s not just for girls, boys are at risk of throat and anal cancer (think about what guys do with their mouths too!)
  • Discovery doesn’t pay for the vaccination at all, unless it comes out of MSA (which we don’t have) and they don’t cover it in their screening and prevention benefit, but I have lodged a query about this.

Australia has a FREE vaccination program, click here for some wonderful statistics on the decline of certain cancers due to their vaccination campaign. I’ve only just scratched the surface of what is written about it, but I can only see good news. And really? A vaccine against cancer? I would totally scrape the money together for it seeing as how SA hasn’t woken up to the benefits yet.

The one thing I’ve always wondered was how I was going to explain the vaccine to my kids as I used to think that it kind of gave kids a license to have sex from a young age.  Now I’m rather going to explain that it is so that they don’t get certain cancers, sex aside. There’s plenty of stuff we do that doesn’t entail actual, er, penetration.

For those of you that don’t vaccinate and still kept reading: would you, knowing that you could prevent certain types of cancer STILL not vaccinate against HPV?

How do you feel about the HPV vaccine, would you have it done?

ps: on a lighter note, I joked to Etienne the other day after his mancation about how they probably talked about sex the whole time.  He claims that once guys are serious about a girl they stop discussing sex with other guys, which I find very hard to believe, but ja. If you’re a guy and you’re wondering whether girls talk about sex you should know that we talk about sex A LOT, regardless of whether we are married, single, divorced, straight or gay.  It is our favourite thing to talk about.  Just so you know.

pps: I see I wrote about the HPV vaccine back in 2010 as well when I was still blogging on the 24.com platform.  I also see I was a lot more tactful and careful about what people thought then. Whatever.

*Whine Club used to be Book Club, but we gave up talking about books.  There are six of us, we don’t live in each other’s pockets and we gather once a month for a catch-up and, you guessed it, wine.  Or gin, if it’s been a bad month. Or bubbles, if it’s been a good month, not that we need an excuse

Of guilt and responsibility and pressure

Before I start I would like to say 2 things:
1. I haven’t blogged in 16 days*. In my almost 5 years of blogging this is the longest I’ve ever gone without publishing a post. This doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about writing, I spend my life composing blog posts in my head, but somehow I just haven’t been able to put them down here. I’m a little meh and a lot busy. Nothing bad, just meh.
2. My husband is fabulous. What follows is in NO way to critizise him. As husbands go he is amazing. He plans our weekly menu, he sorts out our bills, he diffuses my temper and he generally puts up with all my shit without losing his own.

Here’s the scenario:
At the beginning of winter I was going to buy long-sleeved school shirts for Daniel and Etienne said they never wore long-sleeved shirts as kids as they used to ruin them (he has 2 older brothers), let’s get the school rain-jacket, the sleeveless jersey and we’ll get a long-sleeve jersey for really cold days. We never ended up buying a long-sleeve jersey. Because we’re terrible parents, obviously. This meant that Daniel, who doesn’t ever feel the cold anyway*, had his warm jacket and short-sleeves for the rest.

One morning this week we are getting dressed and the jacket is missing. And Etienne and I look at each other with that Oh Fuck look. It dawned on us that the child was going to go to school in short sleeves on the coldest and wettest day of the year. I was hugely upset and a couple of “I told you so’s” may or may not have been muttered.

This episode serves as an example of how I, and after subsequent conversations, my (female) friends, perceive this:
1. It is always our fault.
2. Regardless of whether someone (read: your husband) else didn’t do what they were meant to and this affects your child it is still your fault. Because clearly you should have gone all OCD on their ass or just have done it yourself in the first place.
3. We really are a little afraid of being judged my other Mothers (Look! That child is wearing short sleeves on the coldest day of winter, what a bad Mother he has!) Ergo: It is our fault. And yes, we all do it.
4. The buck stops with us Moms. Always. Everything is in a way always our fault. When our kids are underdressed it’s our fault. When the sun comes out and we didn’t put suntan lotion on before we sent them to school, it’s our fault.
5. If we made a promise we cannot keep it’s our fault.
6. When kids don’t eat the food we lovingly prepare it is somehow our fault.
7. When a child is being bullied/bullies/isn’t liked we feel like it’s our fault and what did we do wrong?

I am exaggerating a little, but you get my drift. I’m making light of  one episode, but have 3 children and all those little things add up to a massive load.  Mignon’s dry skin under her lip she keeps licking?  My fault because I can’t get it sorted within 5 minutes. Isabel biting her nails? My fault and responsibility to sort out.  And so on and so forth.

Or is it just me that feels like I’m mysteriously doing things wrong that should be blamed on me?

* as I wrote that sentence I was reminded of Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing compares to you: It’s been 7 hours and 15 daaayyyysss. Lovely little earworm for the rest of my day right there. You’re welcome.

** the sun briefly came out the other day, even though it was still about 7 degrees outside and he asked if they could run through the sprayers.  The child doesn’t feel the cold.  See also: he prefers to free-ball.  But that could just be a boy thing. I only have a (much younger) sister.