Jane: “Mom! At Clara’s field trip I saw a real alligator and he was black and really friendly.”
Me: “Friendly? Really? How could you tell?”
Jane: “He was smiling!”
Mental note- Things to teach Jane.
Jane often wakes me up by telling me she wants to eat breakfast. I, never a morning person, shamelessly attempt any delay tactic I can think of in an effort to stay under the warm covers.
The other morning I was woken by her sweet little voice demanding breakfast and my foggy brain had an epiphany. Grandpa Moose had dropped off donuts the day before and there were a few left! Smug with the thought of extra time in bed and a happy donut-eating child, I asked in my best lure-the-children-to-the-van-with-candy voice, “Do you want a donut for breakfast?!?”
And then Jane, like all children, effortlessly popped my beautiful fantasy bubble.
“No. I want breakfast not a donut!”
Out of bed I crawled to make her something totally responsible and appropriately breakfasty while I tried to determine if, with a response like that, I’m doing this parenting thing all right or totally wrong.
It’s not always necessary to talk when having a “conversation” with Jane…
“Mom this smells like your favorite drink!
Mom, whats your favorite drink again?
Wait! … What is it called?
Oh right- caffeine.
What does caffeine smell like again?”
…but it’s always a good idea to listen because you can bet that she’s been listening to everything you say.
Also, in answer to your question Jane, I’m not sure that caffeine has a smell but if it did I’m pretty sure it would be just like heaven.
Ivy, our first child, had a brief moment in the spotlight of only child-hood before Clara came along. 
Clara arrived happily and then spent the first year and a half of her life projectile vomiting and screaming. It was a rough transition for everyone.
Then, just when Clara stopped covering us all in vomit and our ears stopped ringing, Jane was born.
Suddenly Ivy, the one who had known the status of only child (if only for a moment), was part of a commotion of children.
Ivy asks us questions and no one hears her. She complains that we interrupt her but she talks so quietly no one knew she was talking first. Ivy is begging to be heard. 
And we try. We really do. But it’s, well, a commotion around here.
And, judging from her project she brought home from school, Ivy obviously thinks so too.
Poor girl.
Me: “Hey! How did you know that!?!”
Jane:” Because I’m going to know everything.”
Me: “How old do you think you’ll be when you know everything.”
Jane: “Probably… 14.”
The teenage years are coming and I guess I can’t say she didn’t warn us.
Our school sends home worksheets for parents to do with their children to help teach social skills. The exercises cover things like respectfulness, bullying, how to deal with high emotions as well a variety of safety concerns.
Clara, my tree climbing, bruise sporting, “Watch this mom!” yelling, master of exciting games like slingshot-ing yourself down a staircase with an old therapy band, brought me her homework.
I read aloud the first question.
“What do you need to do to stay safe?”
And Clara, in a voice that heard far too many rules at school in the first day alone, answered,
“Be boring.”
I’m not worried.
School rules or not, this girl doesn’t do boring!
Jane: “Mom! Cut this foil and do everything for me that I want you to!”
Me: “Uhhh… No.”
Jane. “Ok, then I’ll do it.”
And that is why three going on four is a pretty fantastic age!
Note: I used this photo with the nicely blurred scissors so no grandma’s would have heart attacks when they saw how pointy they were. Aaaand also because I was so flabbergasted by her response I forgot about things like dark rooms and back-lighting when I went to document the situation.
Clara hurt her foot in the car accident last week. X-rays haven’t shown anything to be broken but with all the soft tissue damage, she’s still unwilling to walk on it. She has been getting around with a combination of hopping on one leg (she’s getting excellent balance out of the situation), begrudgingly using a pair of crutches (And by begrudging-I mean they get thrown across the floor and called stupid at least once a day) and her favorite method, scooting. Clara leads with her bad foot in the air and zooms around on her butt pushing with her good foot and arms.
While all of these are decent options from getting from place to place when you only have one good foot, she hasn’t yet figured out how to carry much with any of these methods. If we were the kind of family who was ready to go places in plenty of time, it would be no big deal that she forgot the absolutely critical item that she must bring with her upstairs when we are headed out, but we aren’t. We are more of the, hurry-up-we-should-have-left-five-minutes-ago family and so Clara has gotten lots of extra help in the last days, even for things that she could technically do for herself.
The extra attention Clara was getting sat well with everyone for the first few days but now, just over a week in, there are a few people (her older sister in particular) who are ready for Clara to be able to carry her own dirty dishes to the dishwasher.
The evenings are particularly difficult. Clara is extra exhausted from a day of hobbling about and Ivy is extra fed up with being the older, helpful sister. Girls that normally get along are feeding off one another’s grumpiness, mountains are being made of mole hills and fights are breaking out.
Except for one night.
One night there was no fighting. Just Ivy watching Clara scootch across the floor and then oh so politely asking,
“Hey Clara. Wanna play tag?
I have always struggled with remembering when it is you are supposed to get a new toothbrush. I’m sure there is a rule of thumb, I’m just unclear what it is.
Once a month?
Every six months?
When the bristles squish out?
I’m sure there are “rules” about this, but my squeamishness of all things tooth related makes me unwilling to google it. (Sort of like how someone with arachnophobia would be unwilling to google “Black Widow” no matter how much they love their Marvel universe). I suspect it doesn’t matter. In our house a toothbrush would never make it that long anyway.
Because a new toothbrush is probably warranted when they fall in the garbage.
Or when you lose it.
Or when you forget to pack one on vacation.
Or when a dog chews on it.
Or when the kids use it to scrub the sink and mirrors.
But one thing I know for certain.
When Jane explains to me that she had to use her toothbrush to push the used toilet paper off the seat into the toilet because otherwise her hand would get dirty. Then it is, for sure, time for a new toothbrush.
This has nothing to do with toothbrushes of any age. Cassie is just cuter than any toothbrush I’ve encountered.
Afterwards, when the horror had left my face, and I was done explaining why that was a bad idea as well as why she no longer had a toothbrush. I thought about the matter of fact way she used her toothbrush to do her dirty work while I was watching and wondered what else I hadn’t seen…
New toothbrushes – all around!
It wasn’t intentional, raising such a meat lover. It just sort of, happened.
I mean, it’s true, I never ate anything green until I was 12, 24, 30, but vegetables now routinely infiltrate our meals. And, along side those much contested vegetables are the animals. Birds we’ve been out hunting go straight to the table and everyone agreed that Archibald tasted delicious. So while vegetables have often been a sore subject around the dinner table, the girls have grown up knowing where their meat came from and occasionally what it’s name was. Something that turns others’ stomachs has been a fact of life for the girls for so long as to be a non-issue.
Now deer season and the source of most of our red meat for the year has arrived. Personally, I have yet to be convinced that waking up early and sitting in a tree in the cold would be a super fun plan, but one morning John left the house to do just that. When the girls asked where he was, I told them he was out hunting and maybe, if we were lucky, he’d bring a deer home
“Yay!”, Jane cried.
“Yay for meat!”, she cheered as she jumped up and down.
“Meat! Meat! Meat! Meat!”
I guess, thinking back to her involvement last year, I shouldn’t be surprised. 
The picture might be a year old but she’s lost none of her enthusiasm for the rewards of deer hunting!
Behind the Willows 