What a beautiful morning here in North Texas. We had some rain come in last night and cool things off a bit so I'm sitting on the back porch enjoying the quiet before the rest of the crew wakes from their slumber. In an effort to get back into shape via exercise and eating healthy, I have cut down on the caffeine consumption but now is not the time to give it up completely. Coffee good.
It's been a few days since my last post so I should have plenty of material to pull from., but for some reason I am having trouble conjuring up the stories from those days. This past weekend was Mother's Day, and I think Kasey enjoyed her day. Per my post last week, Lily made some things at school and created a few more drawing for Kasey. Abby and Chloe slipped in a "Happy Mother' Day" somewhere in between "I hungry", "I pooped", and " I want pancakes". We actually made it to church on time which given my rigid stance to be on time made it feel like Father's Day to me.
Now that I'm writing, things are starting to come back to me. Saturday morning is typically relaxed and we try not to schedule anything too early, but this Saturday we had to be at the practice soccer fields to take Lily's team soccer picture. From their we headed to the soccer game where Lily was actually putting forth some effort. She put forth more effort giving the stink eye to the little curly head girl that kept pushing her. At one point (right in the middle of the game) she came over to me on the sideline to complain "the curly head girl" was not nice and she keeps pushing me. I was paying attention this week because I don't put shoes on Lawson any more, and the little girl was being very aggressive. I can't say it was one of my finer parenting moments, but I got down on Lily's level looked her straight in the eye as if I had some serious words of wisdom and I told her, "if she touches you again, push her down". It's not in Lily's nature to be harmful like that, but she exacted her revenge on accident when her feet got tangled with the other little girl and that child face planted right in the dirt........made me proud even if it was an accident. We celebrated this being the end of their season, and I finally realized that these end of season parties are not for the kids, they are for the parents. We just found several extra hours in our week, at least until the next activity starts.
Saturday afternoon I was cooking for the kids (I use the term cooking very loosely as it was really heating up Spaghettios) before the babysitter came over and Kasey and I met some friends for dinner. In my haste I dropped something and uttered the phrase "son of a". I did not finish the sentence though we all know what comes after that. When I say we all know, that includes a certain 4 year old little girl who after reflecting on what I said for about 5 minutes, looked at me and told me, "Daddy, you shouldn't say son of a bitch, because then I might say it". Good point Lily, thank you for bringing that to my attention.
So as I go back and reflect on the last 2 stories, a realization sets in that my 4 year has taught a better lesson than I have.
There are certain things that you know are going to happen with your children but you still do not look forward to it. You know these things because they happened to you as a child and our kids really are a chip off the old block. One of the rights of passage if you will for a child is learning to use scissors. What better way to learn than to experiment, right? Most of us probably have a story from our childhood in which we cut something we shouldn't. For me it was my own hair and a doll we had that mysteriously got a flattop. So I wasn't surprised when Lily came home from school yesterday with a chunk of hair missing and a whole in her brand new dress. I'm sure when Kasey brought her in to my office to show me what she had done, Lily thought she was going to be in trouble, but this was one of those times where you just explain why you shouldn't play with scissors and shrug it off as an inevitable occurrence.
Sometimes we just have to let kids be kids.
The crew is awake, let the day begin.
Jeff, Kasey, Lily, Abby, Chloe and Lawson Boy
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