Highlights

The other day, Leah, who happens to be slightly taller than me now, was standing next to me and apparently inspecting my hair. She told me, "I wish I had your hair."

Considering the thickness and beautiful color of hers compared to mine, I assumed she could only be jealous of the length of mine compared to hers. "Why?" I asked.

"Because you have highlights," she replied.

Ummm...Should I tell her those are just the gray hairs?!


But speaking of highlights (or maybe gray hairs, who can tell the difference anyway?), here are some parenting highlights from the past few weeks:

While driving to the pool on a lovely Sunday afternoon, the older kids were in the back singing the "Diarrhea Song." Yes, there is actually a song about diarrhea. Can you guess which parent taught them that? I'll give you a hint. It's the one with fewer gray hairs! Anyway...The song had kind of trailed off and Bill and I were talking when we realized that, out of the blue, Bristol had just said, "Diarrhea! Toot toot. Diarrhea! Toot toot." Only, where I wrote, "toot toot," it's actually blowing raspberries to make the sound of someone passing gas. I looked at Bill to ask if he'd just heard her, but he was already giggling about it. We will probably bring our children on stage to perform this song at the awards ceremony where we accept our "Parents of the Year" trophy.

Fletcher reported that his first day of kindergarten was "kind of good."

We had a funeral for a toad. I can't even remember where they caught the toad, but it was the weekend before school started and they had it in a little creature carrier thing and I insisted that it would not be brought in the house. Apparently, their "pet" needed a little more oxygen or water (or freedom, maybe?) or something because when the kids returned home after the first day of school, they found that their pet had passed on. I found this set up in the front yard:

 TODO's grave under the crab apple trees. Rest in peace, little friend.

The service that Leah coordinated. It began with her eulogizing, "Todo was a toad, a brother, and a friend. His life was cut short and it was Mom's fault because she wouldn't let him in the house." My kids are awesome. :) Please note the bagpiper in the background. My husband is awesome too. :)

And I'm not really sure this counts as a "highlight" in my life, but just now, I went to our iPhoto to see if there were any other pictures I should be telling stories about. This is new. If I have to be creeped out by this, so do you. Bill found an app called Oldify and this is what it does:

Sick!