2002-01-30-9:11 p.m.

I figured out this morning that, if I use more white flour and less whole wheat flour, the kids end up eating all the muffins and even fighting over them. The trick is finding that balance between tastes good and is good.

Benjamin asked me to play with him out in his "clubhouse" which is really the little platform part of the swingset. I finished doing some things and finally went out there and it was way too windy to stay up there so we came in. It's a good thing, too, because my hair was still wet and I don't even want to think about what my hair would look like if it dried outside in the wind. We went in my bedroom and sat on the floor and made digivices. Really, Benjamin made the digivices, but I had to pick what color mine would be. He gets a small flat Lego piece and attaches a long, skinny Lego to it so that it looks like a walkie talkie with an antenna. Then he colors paper to make it look like a real digivice (whatever that is) and tapes it to the Legos with about half a roll of tape. We didn't actually do anything with them. I guess the fun is in the making.

Abby sprawled out on the bed and read Hop on Pop out loud while we were making the digivices. When she got to a page we knew we'd say it with her. Like "Brown, Brown. Where is Brown? Mr. Brown is out of town." That's one of my favorite pages. Another favorite is "Snack, Snack. Eat a snack. Eat a snack with Brown and Black." And another one is... well, I guess that's enough of that.

Abby said, "I want to read it again. Where's Andrew? I want to read it to Andrew." And she went looking for him.

***

Sometimes when I'm feeling sorry for myself I look at all my children and think about how grateful I am that they all have all their pieces and parts and are all healthy. But today I realized that maybe I'm not really grateful about that. Maybe I'm just glad that there's nothing really physically wrong with them. It sounds like the same thing when I write it here, but I think there is a difference and that is that if one of my kids was really sick I'd be so sad and wanting him to be able to do all the things he used to be able to do. But none of them are really sick and I'm not happy, happy, happy that they're doing all the things they ARE doing - things they wouldn't be able to do if they were sick or something. This is very hard to explain. I just think I should be happy about good things and not just about the absence of bad things.

***

Becky and Benjamin had both dictionaries out this afternoon looking for pictures of dogs. They found some dogs, but they also found interesting pictures of other things. One was agouti. It's a rodent and the picture made them go "Ew, gross." I like watching my children lie on their stomachs looking at dictionaries. I like it when Benjamin asks me to read a definition to him. I wish dictionaries had more pictures.

***

I was hanging clothes on the clothesline in the garage when Megan got home from school. She came into the garage and had that look on her face and I knew she was going to ask me to do something.

"No, I'm not signing any more forms," I said. "I'm tired of signing things."

She looked at me with her mouth open.

"And no, you can't go anywhere tonight."

She looked at me with her mouth open and she seemed confused.

"I will, however, buy you a new lunch ticket."

"That's what I was going to ask!" she said.

"I know," I said. And I did, too.

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