It is a good thing I don’t have more than the three kids. It’s a good thing for so many reasons, but partly because it seems like I can rarely get the three of them together for any one activity other than Christmas and birthdays. And those are just purely for a show of greed rather than any sort of sibling love. The truth of it is that now Loren is 14 and has a very active social life of his own. When I ask him to join us for certain activities I can see the innards of his brain weighing just how important his social obligations are versus how bitchy I will be if he blows us off yet again. I sometimes suspect that if he weren’t so smitten with Devon that he would have relocated to one of his friend’s stinky, dark rooms by now. Cassidy is also accumulating an active social life. She mostly plays with one rough and tumble friend in particular. She can sometimes disappear into his world for days at a time only to surface, come home and nap for 18 hours and return to his front yard for another few days. Cass is getting some girl friends, which is something new, who aren’t too intimidated by her she alpha ways.
The moments I do have with the older ones are carrying more weight these days. I know that someday it will be just Devon and me. It will be wonderful but they are growing up and we will be without Loren and Cass all too soon. I am taking the moments where I can and trying to appreciate them for what they are.

Yesterday I had to get Devon out of the house but I didn’t want to sit in the hot sun of the playground. I asked Devon is he wanted to sail his bathtub sailboat in the park ditch and he said, “Oh yes, Mai-Mai! And my red fish, too!” He then trotted up to the bathroom and came back with a sailboat in one hand and the fish in the other. True to his word we sailed the boat and the fish in the joy of the shade trees and never did I once have to endure the sun of the playground. Loren was kind enough to be our stick man -though at one point Devon felt compelled to slip into the water and retrieve his boat. One mother was horrified that I would let him into the water. In response, Loren then stuck in his stick to the bottom, brought it out and showed her that the wet spot only went up to Devon’s waist. Ha! take that, you nosy wench. I wanted to give Loren a huge hug and kiss but I refrained from embarrassing him in public.