The House of Boys

My daughters left yesterday for 10 WEEKS in Israel. They flew as unaccompanied minors. Today, there was a delightful article about two unaccompanied minors being put on the wrong flights. Even though my daughters had already landed and had flown on a different airline, I still almost threw up when I saw the headline.

Anyway.

D. leaves in three weeks for about 7 weeks of summer camp. With only two children at home, I don't know what I'll do with myself. Perhaps I'll return to my poor, neglected blog and nurture it back to life. I have a long list of things about which to blog, I have some fun giveaways planned, and I have much missing of children that needs to be channeled into something productive. Lucky you.

In the meantime, some fun stories about my children.

1. My younger daughter S. made a birthday card for her older sister. She took a card she had received from her grandparents, whited out every instance of her name and their signatures and replaced them with her sister's name and her signature, respectively. I found this card on top of my fridge, along with a tissue box that had two seashells sticking out of it. At the bottom of the card was a brief note: "P.S. My gift is a fish."

2. Baby A. can smell when the staircase is unguarded, and he makes a beeline for it immediately. We sometimes remember to put up the gate. D. helpfully removes it, then cheers Baby A. on as he races to the stairs. Once Baby A. is on the stairs, D. will race to find us and tell us, "Oh! He's on the stairs!" And when we ask him, "Why did you take the gate down?" he replies with, "He wants to go upstairs." And he looks at us like we're a little bit slow for not understanding.

3. Z. had a birthday party the other night, and J. fell in love with one of her friends. He followed her around all night. "Abby, you win this prize! And you also win this prize! And you are the winner!" And then when the other girls began to notice his affection, he tried to throw them off by also bestowing prizes on others, but he saved the best prizes for Abby.

4. Last Thursday, my daughters had a school berry picking trip. S. announced that she did not want to go. She cried and stomped and raged and we ignored her and sent her. And my friend called to tell me how upset S. was at school and how she did NOT want to go AT ALL. And then, when carpool dropped her off, they told me how she wouldn't shut up about how AWESOME it was and it was SO GREAT and it was the BEST TRIP EVER. And when we asked her if maybe she didn't feel just a little bit silly for complaining so much prior to the trip, she looked at us like we were nuts. "I didn't say that," she said, and I think she really believed that.