All of the big impending deadlines on my desk have been met. I’m catching up on laundry. Now I’ve just got all the annoying things to worry about…the filing, cleaning the garage, deciding what to do with the overgrown slope in our backyard, matching up all the toy parts found in little nooks and crannies around the house (can you say PULL MY HAIR OUT and ARGHHHHHHH!!!). Oh, and did I mention cookies. Getting those chocolate chip cookies out of the oven. I’ll be right back.

Summertime is supposed to be relaxing, right? For me, it is and it isn’t. No rush to drive Rachel to preschool. Nowhere particular we have to be. And yet, no time to take care of the annoying details. Things slowly start piling up.

I keep Rachel out of summer camp because her school (a wonderful school) has a requirment that she is enrolled in a five morning a week program. She is so happy there that it is worth it, but I like having lazy time with her in the summer, even though she gets a little bored of me. Don’t you remember getting bored as a kid? I vote for making getting bored a requirement of summer break. Don’t you remember staring at your dirty, mulberry-stained bare feet and wondering when school was going to start? I do.

I have kept Hannah on her two morning a week babysitter schedule so I can get SOMETHING done, and also so I can get some alone time with Rachel. We don’t get enough of that during the school year.

I feel like I set myself up for telling gritty stories last week, and today the story that keeps coming to mind is sacharin sweet. I’m just going to have to come out with it and get it over with. It’s blocking up my flow of stories. Bear with me.

The other day Rachel remembered that a while back we referred to a dear friend of the family as being “like a cousin.”. She was curious about that distinction this week and asked us to explain . I told her this friend was “a cousin of the heart.” What makes a friend a “cousin of the heart,” she seems to want to know. Every once in a while, she says “[insert friend’s name]. He’s a cousin of the heart, right?” If I were honest, I’d say, “This “cousin of the heart” thing is really all about Mom and Dad. It’s not about your heart at all.” If it were about her heart, we would have 20 more cousins to add to the roster. Maybe that’s not so bad, considering that I literally have 36 blood cousins. Can you believe it?

I wasn’t going to write about this next part, because it is SOOOOOO sicky sweet. But I bet anyone with a four-year old girl has had at least one conversation as silly as this one. They just don’t want to admit it. This afternoon, I picked Rachel up in my arms to put her into bed. She looked so sweet, and for some reason I said, “Good-night, my princess.” She asked, “Am I a real princess?” I thought about it and said, “You are a princess of my heart.” She said, “Am I the only princess of your heart.” I thought about it and said, “You and Hannah are the only princesses of my heart.” Then she thought about it and said, “Are you the Queen of my heart and the princess of your mother’s heart?” I smiled and agreed. Then she said that her Dad and I were the “King and Queen” of she and Hannah’s hearts.

What? Do you think I plan these conversations? At least I’m coming clean on this one. I never would have thought I’d have this much pink in my house, and I never thought I’d be calling my daughter princess occassionally. But, it happened today and was actually quite touching.

We still have gritty going on here, though. I’ve been looking in my toddler books trying to find THAT chapter. You know the chapter about the stage when a toddler starts pulling off her diaper but is no where close to potty training. That’s my life right now….and possibly for the next year and a half. We haven’t had too many accidents so far, but chasing a toddler around with a diaper in your hand all day is enough to drive a person batty. You would think she would keep the diaper on. The child is afraid of her own poop. Seriously. Life would be a lot less traumatic for you, Hannah, if you kept your nappie on. Wise Man says: “She who screams at the sight of her own emerging poop should not pull diaper off.”

If I were to write that chapter I was talking about it would go something like this:

“There are several approaches that you can take to meet your toddler’s development. 1) Move into the backyard; 2) Have sod installed in your living area; or 3) Go upstairs and take a very long nap….(How long do you think? Twelve months?)