When I Grow Up

On Friday, the Baby was allowed to bring to school a toy that she received for Christmas. (By the way, since it's a church preschool, I think that everyone celebrates Christmas.) Unfortunately, the Doodle Bear and the Hello Kitty backpack had not made it back from Mississippi, so she decided to take her new coffee maker (she may have called it a coffee "blender").

Sweet Baby. I'm picturing that during circle time while the other kids played with their Ninjago and baby dolls, the Baby brewed up some decaf for her teachers. This is the kind of thing that the Baby likes to do: she'll help the Boy clean up his room because she likes to clean, she'll insist on "helping" me make dinner because she wants to cook, and she strolls her dolls, Katie and Katie (not a typo) around the house.

In all of this domesticity she is markedly different from her brother and sister. Just the other day the Girl was talking about some of her classmates who like to play house at recess.

Me: Do you play with them?
The Girl: No. I would play house if a tornado destroyed the house and we had to all live in the wilderness or if I got to throw up on someone. I like action.

So, basically don't call the Girl to play house, call her to play FEMA trailer park.

By the way, this is a shot glass you can buy on Cafepress:

Ah, memories of August of 2005 when the Boy was born and I got very depressed, not because I had PPD, but because I stayed up all night feeding the Boy and watching Hurricane Katrina coverage on CNN. The last thing you need to do when you're all hormonal is watch people being plucked from the roofs of their flooded homes.

The Baby was telling me the other day that when she grows up she plans to live in our house with her three children. Her husband will be our next door neighbor, she guessed, because he already lives so close that it would just be the easiest thing to do. She is nothing if not practical. Since we were on the subject, I asked the Girl what she planned to do when she grows up and she said that she would be moving to North Carolina, working as a veterinarian or a marine biologist, and that she would never get married or have children. Given her feelings about playing house, I'd say that's probably a wise move.

I asked the Boy what he was going to do. "I don't know yet." That's no fun, so I asked where he was going to live. He shrugged. "I don't know, probably Oregon." "But that's so far away!" I cried as if his statement had some basis in reality. "Are you going to get married?" He shrugged again. Panicked: "Are you going to marry a girl just like me?" Appropriately, he rolled his eyes. That was a good reaction because I was veering dangerously close to this:

When I was in third grade, I was going to be a girl detective, just like Trixie Belden. Also like Trixie, I was going to have a fabulously wealthy friend named Honey who would let me ride her horses and we'd wear matching twinset sweaters. I would travel to exciting places with my friends and solve mysteries. Instead I'm a former lawyer and SAHM blogger with lots of great friends, a few of whom are wealthy, but none of whom are named Honey, or own a horse. Probably a few friends would agree that we could wear matching twinset sweaters. They are the really good friends. Recently we did take a trip to Mississippi, but the only mystery I solved was how to use my in-law's washing machine.  So, basically none of my childhood aspirations have come true. I'm fairly certain that the children's plans will change, too. This is good news because I don't think the Boy needs to move to Oregon when he still can't tell the difference between toilet paper and paper towels.