Come Little Children

Today I took care of a friend's kids. I'll ask her later if I can name them here... I had a blast.

Apparently I can handle more children easily.. as long as they are somewhat capable of caring for themselves.. actually all I need is some one who won't run away in a parking lot. I think if Jake hadn't stopped me in my tracks with his early diagnosis of global delays and not walking on time or talking... I bet we would have had three or four kids. Having these two today felt natural, and made me feel like I am not such a bad mom (except that one of them did drink 8 or 9 juice boxes I think). They are great kids, very well-mannered and thankful children who smile much more often than they frown.

I picked each of them up from their day camps... we decided which movie to put on in the car. We went to the library (but only to drop off books). We made sandwiches.. grilled cheese and ham on 'brown' bread.. some fruit and, of course a cupcake to finish it off. I'll admit I purchased a dowzen cupcakes... thinking that if things got desperate I could put all of the children in the backyard with chocolate cupcakes and just hose them down when they were done making a mess.

We played cars, we picked lemons, we made lemonade. We made a mess in every room. They said "please" and "thank you", and asked me for something when they needed it, using language I could understand easily. When Lucy gets older she will do some of these things. Jake might do some of them too.

Jake loved having friends in the house. He loved it when one of the kids helped himself to a bag of Goldfish crackers on the counter. He smiled and watched out of the corner of his eye... "my kind of guy" is what I'm sure he was thinking.

I need to figure out how to have people over more often. My house is chaos. We have too many things. We have too many projects under way, but it can be done...right now. I don't need to wait for some magical day when my house is "under control".

I am happy this evening. It feels good to be happy. Thanks for loaning me your kids friend.