Day 2838

Put the baby in a quiet house and play some music for her and she will dance and dance and  dance.

Day 2837

The longer the lockdown, the more you realize daycare isn’t really that expensive after all. Maybe they should get more money? Just take my money. Take the government money. Have all the money.

Day 2836

It’s aggravating that he won’t poop in the toilet, but you do have to admire the determination that let him overcome the prunes.

Day 2835

Potty training is not for the faint of heart. 

Day 2834

If your kid wipes their hand on you, it’s probably safe to assume you should just burn everything you’re wearing.

Day 2833

Countdown to having two kids out of diapers and pee all over the house...

Day 2832

Course over, life to begin again.

Day 2831

Anyone who has called me random or weird in the last decade or so really needs to spend more time hanging out with kids. It’s a whole different bar down there.

Day 2830

Just keep swimming...

Day 2829

Lizard volunteered to take on all of the cleaning in the house; then suggested perhaps the adults should still wash the kitchen knives. 

Day 2828

That feeling when your parents spend the evening of solstice watching the sunrise at Stonehenge (online) and you spend it practicing net present value capital budgeting and trying to work the knots out of your back...

Day 2827

Our sneaky little baby keeps grabbing stuff from our bed. Tonight she finally succeeded in getting an entire blanket, as well as an extra sleep sack. 

Babies are remarkably and alarmingly adept at spotting things they’re not supposed to have and making a beeline for them.

Day 2826

If more than 60% of your family wore their own pants today, you were ahead of us. 

Still...it’s a pass!

Day 2825

Three days back at daycare and the kids are putting themselves to bed early.

Except Banana, of course. She’s going to sing to herself until proper bedtime on PRINCIPLE.

Day 2824

Good news! Chinchilla says I’m in my mind, not out of it. So that’s a huge relief.

Day 2823

Young Banana was compensating for the lack of noise from her siblings to chatter and chatter and chatter.

Third kids have to take advantage of any opportunities to talk starting pretty early, apparently.

Day 2822

The first day of daycare always makes for a jumbled bag of feelings. This is not any less the case during a pandemic.

Day 2821

I’m not used to having three conversations at once in the car anymore. I wonder whether we can convince Lizard to wait her turn by the time Banana starts talking...

Note: our tiny slip of a Lizard has suggested we could call her Elephant.

Day 2820

Getting Chinchilla to “read stories” to you is one of the greatest things. The billy goats gruff became “the gruffalos fight”. He knows a whole bunch of random expressions and he mashed them together based on the pictures and it is truly a delight.

Day 2819

Give a girl her own space and she suddenly wants to nap every day. 

Make a boy three and everything even tenuously related with the concept of napping can interfere with his ability to fall asleep.

Day 2818

Bought and planted flowers on purpose.

Note to self: invent self-administered rapid response test to determine pod person status.

Day 2817

Today we learned that if you say ‘No!’ very loudly in the baby’s vicinity she will think you’re talking to her and become deeply, pathetically sad.

Day 2816

After Flood comes Green, after Green comes Elm Seeds, after Elm Seeds comes Caterpillars... and then you’re straight into the warm wet wool blanket of summer.

Day 2815

That feeling when you realize your five and a half year old daughter is wearing a shirt made for a one and a half year old...

Day 2814

Tonight’s dinner brought to you by a pie in New Zealand getting flagged by Facebook as being too sexy.

Because the world is small and just fucking weird when you think about it.

Day 2813

When life gives you a pandemic, you get your project done early cause who the hell knows what’s coming next week.

Day 2812

When you’re talking about riots and your five year old asks if you mean the bread riots, and you think ‘who the heck have you been talking to’, and start figuring out how to explain protests and racism and police brutality... and then realize she thinks you said ‘rise’.

Too late, kid. I guess we’re talking race relations today.

Day 2811

This baby is so bonkers. She sleep-trained herself, often sleeps on her side, and sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night, sits up for a while (sometimes looking around, sometimes muttering sadly), and then she face plants and goes back to sleep.

Day 2810

I wonder how many people in the world keep thinking about an improbability engine, and how well that would work as an indicator that they would be suitable best friends for me...

Day 2809

Married with kids = whispering in the hallway after midnight about assaulting peaceful protesters.