Category Archives: Family

Give and Take

Posted on August 4, 2012 | 4 comments

There is an ongoing debate in my mind. Which kid has it better? Not in the small ways, the day to day Did I give them each the same amount of attention today? Did I accidentally say “Who is the cutest baby in the history of the world??” to Lucy within earshot of Emily? But on the grand scale. Who has the better mother?

Emily had me all to herself. I never put her in her car seat in the middle of her nap to take her sister to gymnastics. She had my whole heart. I wrote her letters every month on the 18th for the first year of her life. Sweet Lucy, you have had to share me from the moment you were born. And I am two weeks late on your Happy Half Birthday note! (See, I can commit to a “note!” Not even a proper letter!!)

But there is a give and take. Lucy got the mother that was confident. That knew what she was doing. Lucy has never slept a night in a bassinet or a crib because I did not doubt that she belongs with me. Lucy hasn’t ever eaten in a restaurant bathroom because I knew from day one that nursing my baby is something I would not ever do in hiding. Lucy’s mother held her tiny little body and soaked her with tears because I could not imagine loving her any more than I did not because I was afraid that I would never love her enough. Lucy shares her mother. But it is a confident mother.

My position as an “experienced mother” will bite me in the ass. I haven’t ever been Lucy’s mother before. And as soon as she moves from infant to toddler and her personality takes shape I will get thrown firmly back in to the camp of Holy Hell What Am I Doing With This Kid?! But for now, it’s easy breezy in our house.

My Little Lucy Girl,

You are a little over six months old and you do not sleep through the night. In fact you wake more now than you did those first few weeks. You roll towards me and grab at me with your warm and often spitty little hands until you find something to eat. You’re far too busy during the day to while away the hours nursing.

You are desperate to crawl and keep up with the big kids. Your dear mother who has never done a “real” push up in her life until recently must be inspiring you. The determination in your face as you attempt to drag that big old head of yours around on your teeny little arms is endearing. You’re trying, sweet girl, and you’ll get it any day now. You make do by rolling around in seemingly haphazard circles towards any non baby safe items in the room. If you do not choke on a Lego before your first birthday I will consider this first year a success.

Moments after you were born we were preparing to bring you home. Hours after you were born we were here. In our house. Our family of four. And it was as if you’d always been here. Your father, who had previously held a baby like it was a ticking time bomb, can now “hold the baby” AND do something else! This is no small feat. Your sister, who was the center of my universe, now proudly shares it with you. I keep waiting for her to wish you away with the goblins like in Labyrinth but she adores you. More than once when I I have selfishly been in the bathroom (alone!) I have returned to find her rocking you, holding you, giving me the stink eye and preparing a lecture about my negligence. Even Fisher fell right back in to his position as the lowest low man on the totem pole, biding his time until you become a never ending source of snacks.

Speaking of snacks, you are not the voracious eater I thought you might be. You’re a big fan of the carrot stick and the piece of celery. A cold slice of apple is equally fantastic in your world. But a sweet potato or a banana? Anything you might actually swallow? No, thank you. So for now, you join us at meals with your cloth napkin to wave around and something cold to gnaw on. Like a gal who just never manages to take home an Oscar you are just happy to be nominated.

This weekend’s avocado may have been a success. I keep finding spots you have smeared it that I managed to not wipe up so less of it may have gone in your mouth than I originally thought but it is a step in the right direction. Again, a perk of being the second kid, I am not too terribly concerned. You’ll eat when you’re ready. Baby-led solids or (baby-led weaning) is not called baby-led because the parent is supposed to agonize over it.

If a child is a product of their environment than you, little lady, are proof positive that our home is a happy place. You smile. And you smile some more. Your laughter is like no other sound. No one is quite as funny as your sister but you have rewarded me on more than a few occasions with a belly laugh I’ll not ever forget. I have said since Em was born that she was my heart. She taught me to love and to love myself in a way I’d not ever experienced. You, Miss Lucy Q, are my greatest joy. You make my days go by so quickly now and my smiles come so easily. I have made what might possibly be the most difficult transition in my adult life, to that of a for the most part stay at home mom, and I have done it all while laughing. You have taught me already to slow down and not take things so seriously. I thought your sister was a ham, but you take center stage.

This week you have traded in your incessant Dadadadadada (a cruel joke that Da comes out of a baby’s mouth so long before Ma does) for the far more hilarious and linguistically challenging bllbr-blllbr-blllbr. The accompanying flicking of your tongue in and out of your mouth is fun for all.

Lucy Goose, you are every bit as silly as your nickname predicted. And every bit the little champ I knew you’d be. You came in to the world with your fist raised above your head and you are asleep in my lap as I type with it raised still. You are going to give us hell one day, I just know it. But I also know we will sit back and laugh about it one day.

Six and a half months. I knew I wanted to marry your dad after only six and a half months but I had to play it cool for a bit longer. But you, I can be unabashedly head over heels in love with you. I love you, Lucy Quinn. You make me laugh. Every single day. And when I hold you above my head and you smile and drool drops in to my eyes I don’t even mind. Keep it up. The drooling might get old eventually but the laughing never will.

Love you, kiddo.

Mom

4 Comments

Posted in Family, Parenting

Tagged Dear Lucy, Family, Life, Lucy, Parenting

My Big Girl

Posted on August 1, 2012 | 5 comments

She was in tears. Standing on the steps looking down at me. Lucy was asleep on my lap. Nothing hurts my heart more than when Em needs me and Lucy is asleep in my lap.

“Baby, what’s wrong??”

Big fat years rolled down her face. “I know I said I wanted my room to be pink and green but… But….” She chokes on her tears. “I just don’t think that pink is my personality. I’m just….” A pregnant pause. She is my kid and the pregnant pause can add so much drama… “Not a total girlie girl.”

She sits down next to me and tries to pull it together. “I like blue. It is my favorite color because blue is the color of my eyes and the ocean and I was born at the beach…” and off she went. I let her think she had to really work hard to convince me that we were not going to be painting her room hot pink.

“I think I am a tomboy. And maybe also a girlie girl. I can be both, you know.”

In the end she was thrilled with her room. She spent a long time getting things organized. This morning when I saw this in her jewelry box it made me smile. If you can be a tomboy and a girlie girl surely you can be a hippie chick and a ballerina, right?

5 Comments

Posted in Family, Nonsense, Parenting

Tagged bedroom, DIY, Emily, Family, Life, room makeover

Wonder Woman

Posted on July 24, 2012 | 2 comments

For every handful of days that I feel like a turd that needs polishing there is a day like today. An unbelievable, Wonder Woman kind of day.

I hopped out of bed this morning relatively pain free. This was a good start to the day. I ate a bowl of Cheerios. With sugar. Low carb, no sugar day be damned. As of this morning I have lost twenty pounds since May 1. I can do anything. I can do hard things.

A closet, mid summer. Note the lack of winter coats and scarves.

So I cleaned out the hall closet. This week when I pushed my grandmother’s mink coat out of the way to grab my vacuum (that I use daily) I questioned the wisdom of storing a coat I wear once a year in front of an item I use every single day, thankyouverymuchdogthatsheds. And today I solved that problem. Not an impossibly hard task. But one I had been putting off.

And then I got the fever. I shoved all the furniture in to the center of the living room and started taping. I didn’t have paint yet. But if I got all the taping done I’d have no excuse not to paint, right?

Truth be told it is the taping I hate. Patience is not my thing. I like to just dive in. The prep the whole damn room before you even go and buy the paint plan was perfect. I could not possibly skip a step.

I owe the next few hours of productivity to my big girl. I could not have done it without her. Em played with Lucy for three hours straight in the pillow pile they had assembled in the living room. For this, I let her pick the tunes. This turned out to be a bonus. I got my living room painted and I may very well have been cured of my freakish and somewhat out of character obsession with Katy Perry.

A clean closet and a painted living room might have been enough for Average Mom to have an above average day. But Wonder Woman? She conned her six year old in to playing with her wee one for an extra half an hour and stuffed some chicken breasts with the leftover filling from last night’s stuffed mushrooms, made some jasmine rice and heated up some frozen carrots (with maple syrup!!) and managed to have dinner ready AND the living room painted when Dad got home.

I’m still sporting the overalls. I am setting a new goal. Wonder Woman 2.0 will have a shower, too. I can try again, I have at least three more rooms to paint this summer.

Join me on Facebook for my before and after painting pictures!

2 Comments

Posted in Family, Parenting

Tagged DIY, Life, mothering, room makeover

Down, but not out!!

Posted on July 19, 2012 | 11 comments

Kelly at 22. Heading out to a party a 80’s Barbie. I was ironing a kimono. For a vry good reason, I am sure.

I think I was about twenty-two when I started doing that thing that the young people do – start acting irritated by the even younger people. After all I had been hanging out at the Leafe (my favorite bar) forEVER. How was I supposed to tolerate these kids turning twenty-one and acting like children in my favorite bar? Insert eye rolls. Looking back I know that talking about how terribly old I was probably just made me sound so young.

What I would not give to be twenty-two again. In body, certainly not in mind. A fairly good argument could be made that I am not too terribly far off from twenty-two in spirit, so there’s that.

This week I have felt old. And not a seasoned, experienced, wise and sexy salt and pepper hair George Clooney old. More like a can’t get her creaky body out of bed in the morning, anti-inflammatory gobbling, “back in my day” saying, can’t run with the kids anymore old.

The feeling began last week in my ankles. I’ve been sore. And sore does not make this girl happy. Skipping out on my exercise routine makes me homicidal. I have two very strong personalities at play in my head and heart. I am, first and foremost, a mother. Second, I am an addict. As a mother I give and give and give of myself. That hour that I spend with Lucy zonked out in the stroller, Em riding her bike, I need that hour. It is mine. A selfish hour. I turn my mind off and I sweat. For me. So I can give and give and give the other twenty-three hours of the day. And as an addict? I need the endorphin rush. If I skip a day by four o’clock in the afternoon it is like day three without a cigarette in our house. (Which if you have ever quit smoking you know is the day are you are most likely to fly in to a homicidal rage.)

Zero runs at my target distance or speed. I guess I can be proud of listening to my body. I guess.

Lately the body has been conspiring against me. I have woken up in pain more often than not. I have been lazy with rescheduling my chiropractor appointment (edited: I went yesterday!) and my back has once again been sending up flares to remind me that I need to give it some love or it will stop letting me do the things to which I have grown accustomed. Things like getting out of bed, retrieving things from my refrigerator, picking up my baby, walking around.

I had to make a choice. Feed the mind or the body. I decided to take care of the body, since it appears to be aging faster than the mind. I cut way back on the jogging. Took it sloooow. I even walked. And skipped days. And did not kill people. I have used my new found love of Pinterest to scour the interwebz for low impact high intensity exercises one can accomplish in their living room.

But it is not my aging ankles and back that were the greatest blow to my ego this week. It was an awful, slow, painful realization that happened at the pool.

It was hot out. Really hot out. The kind of day when you stand in the water all day because sitting pool side for even ten minutes is out of the question. It was just me, two life guards, Em and her buddy and Lucy. It was hot enough that even the life guards were in the pool.

As the day wore on we all got to talking. The kids started making up a game where the guards chased this ball and there were points received for certain achievements. Aside from the fact that two of the three children in the pool actually entered this world via my vagina and that technically I could have given birth to both of the life guards it was exactly like a scene from my own teenage years. For a moment I let myself go there in my head. It felt so good. Goofing off. Making up games. Teaching the big kids to play Jump or Dive.

And then a mini-van pulled up. And a lady and her two kids came to the pool. A lady I actually like well enough. She waved at me as she put her things down on a table, in the shade, by the baby pool. And it hit me. I belong over there. With the Grown Up.

For two hours I was a girl in the pool in a black one piece and a stylish summer fedora. And now I was Mom again, in that black one piece with the side ruching that fools no-fucking-body and a hat because my post partum hairloss means that my head gets sunburned if I don’t.

And then it hit me again. For two hours I had actually been that Grown Up hanging around the teenagers. That Grown Up that lingers.

I was a life guard forever. For years and years. So, I know. Even the Cool Grown Ups. Two hours?? That qualifies as lingering. I’m gonna need to take them some food. And not something I baked. Because “Look, I baked these for you” does not a Cool Kid make.

If griping about being “so old” when I was twenty-two actually made me seem young than maybe complaining about my aging body at thirty-six will make me seem youthful. Right?

Either way, it seems my bad case of Old is catching. MQD has only been twenty-nine for two weeks and he found a grey hair in his goatee yesterday. I’m not sure what the anti-venom is for a bad case of Old. Beer? Vitamins? I am hoping that it is letting your six year old pick out your nail polish.

Note the age spots on my shin. Oh. Didn’t see them? Mesmerized by my sparkly fingers and toes? My plan is working!!

11 Comments

Posted in Exercise, Family, Nonsense

Tagged Aging, Humor, Life

Road trip: Part 4 – The Heat

Posted on July 11, 2012 | 2 comments

On day six of our seven day trip to the beach we made what seemed like a very good decision. It was hot. Hot hot. And it was getting hotter. We had been to the beach, the pool, the outlet malls, the board walk. We had eaten crabs and drank some wine. We’d had a good time. And the prospect of dragging our not yet sunburned selves out to the water for one last day in more than hundred degree heat seemed unnecessary. My grandmother always told my mom, and she in turn always told me, that you should always leave a party while you are still having a good time. So, it seemed wise. I had an appointment to get my hair cut at 9 am.

I went short. And I am glad I did. When we got back to DC it was even hotter than it was at the beach. So, we went to the mall. Naturally. We basked in the glory of their air conditioning. Emily decided to get her hair cut. We took pictures of her new do and we relaxed at my parent’s house. We went to bed early. And I am glad we did.

Some time around 11 it started to rain. I went to grab Emily from where she was sleeping. She is not a big fan of thunder storms and it seemed like we were in for a doozy. I had no idea. My compulsion for checking the weather came in handy. A quick peek at the radar indicated that it was no small thunderstorm. The lights flickered. The ceiling fans turned off. I settled in for some sleep with my girls.

In the morning the power was still out. Em and I went for a ride. We were hunting down a cup of coffee. Seemed easy enough. Wrong. On my third trip through the intersection aptly titled Seven Corners with no traffic lights I told Em that we were going home. With or without coffee. With our lives and what remained of my sanity in tact.

We spent the day preparing for the power to remain out. My mom fashioned curtains for the windows in the kitchen out of pillow cases to help keep it cool. David found the last generator for sale in Northern Virginia. I kept both my children alive while slowly regressing to about fourteen years old. We went out to dinner. We “made the best of it.” A euphemism for “did not kill one another.”

We camped out in the downstairs bedroom. Em, Lucy and I slept in my parents’ bed. They napped on the air mattress. We all woke up warm and cranky. Emily survived watching movies on the iPad. I read. I bickered with my mother like the teenage drama queen I had become over the last twenty four hours. My mother declared that she was retracting our application for Family Survivor.

Every family has a go to coping mechanism. When I was little and the power went out we would gather around the fireplace and read fairy tales. When Things go to shit in your house maybe you go to church. Maybe you go to a local bar. Maybe you go out for ice cream. May God, Buddha, Mother Earth and the whole rest of the gang smile down on my step-dad for all of his days. When everything goes to hell in his world he goes to the Ritz Carlton.

Something about showering with tiny bottles of liquid soap and wrapping yourself in big white towels and drinking a very, very large glass of white wine does a body good.

We survived the power outage in DC. My almost seven year old daughter knows absolutely every single swear word in existence. Those she did not learn from me she learned from my mother. Passed on from one generation to another. That’s how you do it, right? And from my step-father I have learned an invaluable lesson. Tough it out. Long enough to say that you did and then get your ass to the nicest hotel in town and order a drink. Make mine a double.

2 Comments

Posted in Family, Nonsense

Tagged power outage, ritz carlton, road trip, vacation

Road Trip: Part 3 – The Boardwalk

Posted on July 9, 2012 | 6 comments

Some things never change.

That is one of those things that people say when what they really mean is “Can you believe that asshole? They haven’t grown up at all!” But sometimes you get to say it and all you mean is that some things do not ever, ever change.

Zoltar told us our fortune. We piled in a photo booth and had our pictures taken. We ate ice cream cones and greasy pizza for dinner. We went on the Gravitron and laughed as our arms turned to lead. The Freefall had me hysterical. The bumper cars did not let us down.

The Boardwalk at Rehobeth beach. Some things really do stay the same.

I walked over to ask a game attendant a question. “A million years ago there was a mermaid,” I said…. Instead of looking at me like I was tripping on acid she started to point towards the rides for small children. She didn’t need to answer. Because I saw her. And some things really never change.

She has been repainted a time or two in the twenty years that have passed since I have seen her. And it seems someone did something to the water that the boats go round and round in. It is no longer so … tan and sludgey. But she is there. I crouched down next to Em and said “This was my favorite ride when I was little, baby. I loved that mermaid. And now I am here with you and it is so crazy…” I hugged her. Emily more than tolerates my dramatic moments. She feeds right in to them. “I will go on that ride for you, mama. Even though it is for babies.”

I didn’t make her ride it. But I thought about it. But we had big girl rides to ride and more importantly – we had games to win.

I thought I should prepare Emily. Explain to her that carnival games are designed so that you almost win every time. Her first time out, it was the horse races. You roll the ball like skee ball and your horse advances. She won. Beginner’s luck. And then she catapulted a rubber frog on to a lily pad with a mallet. And then she tossed a wiffle ball right on to the red plastic cup. The kid was on fire.

She comes by it naturally. When my brother and I were kids my mom would win us stuffed animals on the boardwalk. It was the horse races that were her ace in the hole. She would get in the zone. The same stare she gets playing skee ball. And we knew that we would be going hone with the Jumbo prize.

Some things never change. And I couldn’t be happier about that.

6 Comments

Posted in Family

Tagged boardwalk, Rehobeth Beach, road trip, vacation

Road Trip!! Part 2: The Beach

Posted on July 7, 2012 | 3 comments

I used to go to the beach. On vacation. I got up early and I spent as much time as possible over the week with my feet in the sand. I read. I took walks as an excuse to parade my teenage bikini-clad body back and forth. I ate dinner and went back to the beach again at night to look for shells. I filled grocery bags with shells and had plans to wash them when I got home and make something spectacularly crafty.

Then in my mid-twenties I moved to the beach. “Beach days” were good days. Locals don’t camp out on the beach all day nearly as often as they should and a solid beach day was a good day. I stopped my car at a beach access and took a long look at the ocean nearly every day.

It is the only way to justify your outrageous mortgage payment. I no longer collected shells. In fact, I grew to hate the beach motif. “How do you like living in the Outer Banks?” people would ask me. “It’s fine unless you want to buy some place mats that don’t have a lighthouse on them.”

I have had my fill of sand between my toes. But “going to the beach” is more than just sitting in the sand. We trucked it down to the ocean a handful of times. Enough to get some sun and some sand in our swim suits. We rode waves. We peed in the ocean. We put on sunscreen religiously.

We went to the beach. But I am at peace with my decision to go to the pool just as often. So we could just sit. And relax. And not pack up the entire house.

And I find an even greater peace with our decision to spend one entire day at the outlet malls. Ahh, Delaware. Where the beaches are wide…. and so are the outlet malls.

3 Comments

Posted in Family, Parenting

Tagged road trip, vacation

Road Trip!!! Part 1

Posted on July 6, 2012 | 4 comments

The battle cry of ROAD TRIP! used to mean something totally different to me. I would stock up on Marlboro Lights and Diet Cokes. I might organize my tape case on the front seat of my Geo Metro convertible. If I was trying not to feel totally reckless I’d apply sunscreen to the part between my pigtails and I’d hit the road. I always arrived at my destination earlier than I thought I would because I could drive for hours and hours without stopping to pee and I held steady at ten to fifteen miles over the speed limit.

Things are different now. Lucy and I hit the road early in the morning. It was almost two weeks ago and I have only just now recovered enough to write about it. To say that we made frequent pit stops would be an understatement. She was hungry. She needed a new diaper. But mostly? She just needed her mama. And I cave like a wet paper bag.

I know you, rider…

I picked up Emily and it was smoother sailing from then on out. Lucy loves her mama. But her big sister is supremely entertaining. We laughed. We sang. While sitting in traffic I thought I might pee in my pants. Emily informed me that if she had a magic wand she would turn all my pee to blood. Not eliminate the traffic, mind you. We made it to DC. We regrouped. Lucy, my mom and me in one car. Em and my step-father in the other. We took off for the beach.

A hundred years ago my mom and I went on road trips. Sometimes they would be small adventures. Denny’s for breakfast in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. She would come down to Williamsburg to visit me in my twenties. We would tear up the town. In the summer we would usually steal away for a night or two at the beach. As we hopped in the car to head to the beach I was reminded of those long ago beach trips. In spite of the car seats, the pool floaties, the sleeping kids in the back seat, the sun shades and the SPF 3 Million in my car for a moment it was like I was sixteen and we were headed out just “us girls.”

Twice in the car she laughed until she spit her water. Her Perrier. My mom likes “bubbly water” without it seeming like a “thing.” I have some on my dashboard right now and I might not wipe it off. Not because I am a slob (which I am, in my car only) but because every time I see the splash marks on my window and my dash it makes me laugh.

Rarely is your Vacation complete before you arrive at your destination. But it had been too damn long since I had made my mom laugh until she spit her drink. Too damn long.

Annie, showing Lucy that the Party never stops. Folding laundry is fun even on VACATION!

4 Comments

Posted in Family, Parenting

Tagged Emily, road trip, vacation

First Love

Posted on June 18, 2012 | 5 comments

When you fall in love for the first time you think that you are the only person that has ever felt this way. Your dreams are filled with thoughts of this person and they occupy your heart in every moment of every hour. You can’t breathe without them and you believe that your life will cease to exist without this person.

You don’t ever imagine loving someone else.

Emily was my first love.

If you are very lucky you can hold on to your first love and never let them go. Keep them in your heart and let them show you how to love another.

I am so damn lucky that I get to hold on to my first love and keep her in my arms! I was silly to think that loving my children would be like loving a seventeen year old boy. That somehow I’d have to fall out of love a little to fall in love again. Or that falling in love for the second time would make the first less special.

I fall more in love with my second love every day. I can laugh at the foolish girl that was scared that she couldn’t possibly love two children. I love them both to pieces. I can’t imagine having one without the other. My big girl showed me how to do it. And this little one? She just makes it so damn easy with her cheesy grin.

My girls… they are both silly. They are both so sweet. They both give kisses that are to die for. They both make my eyes tear up when they put their little hands on the sides of my face. They are both my girls. And I love them. Both.

5 Comments

Posted in Family, Parenting

Tagged Family, Love, motherhood, parenthood

The one where we buried the placenta…

Posted on June 11, 2012 | 8 comments

My husband is a scientist. He labels everything. He once asked me if we could talk about keeping the refrigerator more organized. He volunteered to make labels. Dairy. Vegetables. Condiments. We had only just moved in together so I bit a hole in my lip and smiled and said “if you’d like to take on that project I will try really hard to put things back.”

It was never mentioned again.

That having been said there is no placenta shelf in our freezer. Just a ziplock bag with the tell tale biohazard bag inside crammed in the back of the freezer.

For four months and nineteen days. Lucy is four months and twenty one days old. The nurse practitioner that stopped at our house to see us when Lucy was two says old brought it to us. We left it on the counter when we headed home four hours after Lucy’s birth.

Some people leave their purse. Or their cell phone charger. We forgot our placenta.

I was lucky. I did not experience post-partum depression after Emily was born. So I elected not to dehydrate and encapsulate my placenta. But I liked the idea of doing something with it.

Different cultures do different things. We decided we would bury it under a plant or shrub (I can’t bring myself to say bush, although the comedic possibility is enticing.)

We decided to plant a gardenia. When we were picking out flowers for our wedding we considered gardenias. I imagine opening my front door next spring and smelling them for the first time of the season. Lucy will be walking by then.

Emily chose a hydrangea for her plant. I am hopeful that our soil will produce blue flowers as that was what helped her make up her mind. The September birth stone is the sapphire and she favors the blue sapphire. Not to be confused with her mother’s favorite gin, Bombay Blue Sapphire.

I’ve said it before. I am smitten with my husband. Married a little over fourteen months and he still makes me smile. He hollers up to me as I stand on the deck out of the rain “get a picture! You’ll never see your home again, Lucy!!”

I hope our plants survive. But the benefit of being a mom the second time around? Our kids will make it. Of this much I am certain.

Word to the Wise: “call before you dig” is no joke. We spent our first weekday of summer without cable television or the Internet. MQD wisely elected to not put the plants or the placenta in the hole until after the cable guy came lest he accidentally dig it back up.

It meant we put our plants in during a gentle rain shower on Monday evening instead of on Sunday afternoon. And MQD looks totally hot in wet blue jeans and a tshirt, I mean… our plants were well hydrated and the rain had some kind of poetic symbolism and…. Yeah.

Lucy and I supervised. And Emily? Well, the cable guy came about thirty minutes before MQD got home from work. She established that a placenta looks like a brain and then she decided she’d had enough. There was tv to watch. It’s Summertime.