The exclamation mark up there is me screaming in terror. Every school bus for every school district has been canceled, I think, and my kids are home. Oh, grand.
Normally I love having them home, but I have a LOT of writing to get done today – this post, a review of a play I went to see on the weekend (It stunk. But I can’t say that.), a letter asking to be put on the local library board – as well as a ton of household tasks that MUST be done today. There are bathrooms to clean (and can I just digress and say how happy I am to live in a house with more than one bathroom?), floors to wash, beds to strip and about five zillion loads of laundry to do. Oh, and some baking. And now this all must be done with all three of my children hovering expectantly around me, waiting for me to do something fun.
By some cheerful happenstance, I just happened to have tons of fun paper activities ready for them – and this was just one of those unplanned but timely things – and so while the oldest child is draped across the couch, watching tv and barely moving, the younger two are happily colouring sheets of Christmas-themed paper dolls. (click on "seasonal" to find winter outfits and "holiday" to find Christmas outfits.) I don’t know what I’ll do when I run out of sheets of paper dolls, though.
My oldest daughter was in two theatrical performances over the weekend – not the stinky play, but a startlingly moving children’s musical, with my daughter as one of the youngest members of the angel choir. I think of her so much as my big kid, and yet she was tiny up there, a vulnerable little child with bobbed hair and someone much too small to send out into this cold, snowy world on her own. So I’m going to put everything on hold for today and make sugar cookies with my children, let them use every cookie cutter (and whoo, we have lots) and cover the kitchen in sprinkles. My kids are rarely angels – and I’m laughing writing that, a bitter laugh. ha ha! – but they’re plenty sweet enough and cookies will only make them sweeter, these beloved, annoying children with their fleeting and finite childhoods passing as fast as the snow is falling.
