Notes

Sharing the load

This week bears few scintillating accounts of life with the Richards/Simmonds clan.  To be honest, the majority of it (for me, anyway), was spent cuddling on the couch with poor little Linden, who was suffering through a double ear infection.  When we finally took him to the doctor, antibiotics turned him around incredibly quickly, but by that point, he only had one day of school anyway (Friday was a pd day).  

The rest of us were all pretty low-energy and grumpy, what with not very much sleep, and Linden sharing the cold that he had (concurrent with the ear infections). So instead of recounting our (mostly non-existent) adventures, here are some random notes from current day-to-day:

Juniper, reading a Magic Tree House book, while listening to pretend music on her hand-crafted "headphones"

 Juniper is a funny duck.  She is sweet, emotional, generous, and highly conscious and aware of the world around her.  She is also nosy, defiant, and argumentative.  She can be VERY frustrating in this regard. She has taken, recently, to informing us (defiantly) that certain things are "against the law", when we ask her to do them. Sample conversation that happened yesterday:

Tara:  Juniper, if you want to keep claiming that things are "against the law", you're going to need to take a law degree first. Right now you're just being flippant and annoying.
Juniper: What's a law degree?
Tara: It's 4 years of school that you do after university to learn all about how the law works
Juniper: Oh.  Why didn't you and daddy do that?
Clark: (piping in from the background) Because, Juniper, we both decided it would be better to go to school for a longer amount of time, and then get paid a fraction of the salary.

Hahaha (cough), sigh.

Taking turns...

...pulling each other along the snow

Both kids currently have imaginary friends that come calling sometimes.  Linden's are named "LinOliver and Lindo".  I kid you not.  Juniper's are Lucy and Lucia, and are teenagers who come for sleep-overs.  So far, these imaginary friends have not been blamed for any trouble-making, but I am on alert.  I had an imaginary friend as a child, named "Charanda" (?), who got blamed for ALL the bad things that happened. She was very handy that way.  Chances are good that Lindo and LinOliver might follow in Charanda's footsteps, and maybe even Lucy and Lucia (though they should know better, being teenagers and all).

King of the Castle!

 The other day in the car, we were listening to an Elizabeth Mitchell album that had fallen out of rotation for awhile.  I heard Linden whisper softly in the backseat "I love you so much".
"Oh, Linden!", I exclaimed, "I love you too, sweetheart!".
"I was talking to the song, mom".

Clark and kids playing a balancing game they got for Christmas

OK - that is all for now.  I am still buzzing from managing to get both kids on the bus by myself this morning.  Clark is away on a work trip for a few days, and therefore it was up to me to make sure everyone got out the door on time.  This isn't necessarily a huge feat, except that both kids slept in (and I let them, what with all the sickness of the past week).  Juniper's turn-around time was tight, and I had to send her out the door on her own, as Linden was still sleeping.  She made it with maybe a minute to spare (I know because I saw the bus drive by my window 4 minutes after she left the house, waving frantically from the window as I had instructed her to do).  Linden, on the other hand, I had given up as a pointless exercise, as he woke up 10 minutes before his bus came.  But - in a super-human push, I got him dressed, breakfasted, bundled into winter clothes, with a nice healthy lunch in his backpack, and out the door in that 10 minutes.  TEN MINUTES. We arrived at the bus stop just as the bus was pulling up.  I will graciously accept any medals that are offered.