Daily Adventures of a Working Mother

If you have been following my blog, you know by now that I have two children:  A daughter who turns 5 in the spring, and a son who is 20 months old.  My son is full of rambunctious, little boy antics, and you have read several accounts of his escapades in my blog.  I have not, however, given sufficient insight into the world of my amazing little girl.  I thought about why this is the case, and have come to the conclusion that my little beatle's stories are precious, delicate pearls next to the flame of her brother's blazing rubies!  So!  I have decided to dedicate this entire entry to capturing the wonderful snippets that make being with my daughter so rewarding. Stories of a Beatle Bug: A few days ago a certain family member had just spent some... quality time... in the bathroom, and left rather an aroma in the wake.  My daughter bee-bopped down the hall, and bounced, humming, into the bathroom.  A moment later, she walked back out, hand over...

I remember distinctly the day I first realized my child was weird.    I went to school to pick up my daughter, who was almost 2 yrs old at the time.  The director of her school was in her classroom.  As I was gathering my little girl's belongings, the director said to me, "Okay... I just have to know how you do it." "Do what?" I said with a chuckle. "How do you get her to eat brussell sprouts???" "Um...," I thought for a moment. We didn't do anything special really, "We just feed them to her, and she eats them," I chuckled, beginning to recover myself from the surprise of the question.  "We eat them, and no one has ever told her NOT to eat them, so... she eats them."  The director smiled and shook her head, blonde hair swaying slightly, "In all the years I have been doing this job, I have never, EVER seen a child who would not only eat brussell sprouts, but ask for MORE!"  Parental pride began to swell i...

My grandmother was a fount of extremely USEFUL information.   She could fix things, grow things, cook things, and sew things, and somehow manage to make it all look effortless and fun.   There is one skill that my grandmother had that, above all others, I wish I knew:   My grandmother could diagnose an illness almost as well as any doctor around.   I remember being sick with a sore throat once.   She looked at my throat, it was red.   She felt my throat, swollen glands.   She asked me if it hurt to swallow.   I told her it did.   Then, she did the craziest thing I had ever heard of:   She handed me a slice of lemon & told me to bite into it.   I looked at her like she was crazy, and she laughed at me.   “Go ahead.   Bite into it.”   I bit.   The lemon tasted awful, but it also hurt!   I must have made a face, because she asked me, “You okay?”   I nodded.   “Sour?”   I nodded.   The...

My new assignment has brought me back into my old stomping grounds.     For the past three weeks I have avoided getting too close to my old home; not being quite sure how I would feel.   Today, I ventured out.   I needed gas in the car, and did not want to stop at the Shell station on the corner (they have taken 3-4 days to post transactions to my checkcard the last 2 times I’ve been there).   I drove a mile or so down the road, and cut across the road that joins the two major thoroughfares in the area.   Turning right onto the state route, I saw all the familiar images from days not so long ago:   There is the church I used to pass every day, the “new” gas station (where I decided to stop), and across from the new gas station, the Wendy’s I used to frequent.   In my mind, I knew that if I drove up the hill beside the Wendy’s and turned left at the light, I could be at my old house in 7 minutes flat.    It was a lovely, sunny day, a...