By the Numbers

1st Bestie

1st Bar Mitzvah

1st Sleepover

Friend: Did the girls keep you up?

Me: Lucy, sure. But the others? Jane’s waited ten years to realize her dream, they weren’t going to carry on all night! And if they weren’t internally motivated, think of the girl staying over! Vetted for four years, principal’s house… sung to sleep by the school music teacher…

This is how I found the bedroom in the morning!

Not to say there weren’t some bumps in the road after breakfast. Me, alone, with 5 girls on wheels…

Picture Lucy and I stranded on the curb (having forfeit my shoes to the rollerblader), wrapped in blankets and looking homeless in 25 mph winds. Naturally, the girls built a fort out of earshot and refused to look in our direction and risk being called home.

Thankfully, one still pledges a strong, loving allegiance, with an affirmation cycle every 20 minutes.

Just the messenger we needed to get home!

Even if it meant taking part of the fort.

Sleepover first impressions were nothing like animal first impressions… oh Rosie!

Changed by First Grade.

Rose is busy planning a farm of her own one day.

She’s even asking when she can start riding lessons.

There is still some unresolved tension…

but she is challenging her comfort zone little by little.

Personally, the dung heap just over her shoulder was outside my comfort zone…

but if you surveyed the condition of the riding facility, well, it’s a horse blinder type of place.

Case in point, I am not saying how many litters we’ve seen from the dog in the last 12 months.

So many firsts… it’s time for seconds!

The smile is fake. Rose raged over the pavers. As if you have anything to fear?! You are already missing teeth!

We needed to take her rollerblading the week before when the dangler turned gray, having clung on far too long.

Teeth are coming and going all the time at our house.

2nd tooth lost, eventually. She grinned, and beared it!

Second tooth gained, and wielded…

A 2nd place!

3rd string? Cate joined tennis lessons!

3rd degree?

41st

C.S. Lewis’ memoire on his conversion to Christianity is titled, “Surprised by Joy.” Mine would be, “Surprised by Domesticity.” I never imagined something so seemingly unremarkable, could be so enormously satisfying. Even on days my coffee tastes like hairspray, I love (Jane), love (Rose), love (Cate), love (Lucy) raising these girls!