This morning, I got an early call looking for a last minute chaperone for our son’s field trip. It was going to be a beautiful day for a park outing, so I decided to drop everything and go.

The bus was noisy, and some of the kids were hard to keep tabs on. I was constantly counting and re-counting. 3 girls behind me, 2 boys in front of me, and one boy somewhere in the far distance hopefully near the teacher!

I’m glad I went. His grade has such nice kids in it, and I know them much better than our daughter’s year, for some reason.

When I showed up at school unexpectedly, our son gave me a big hug. When we were walking through the park, he picked up two flowers and gave them to me. At lunch, he saved me half of his dessert. And then when it was time to leave, he asked if he could sit with me on the bus.

Third grade, and he still likes having me around.

Aw, shucks. I love that kid.

The Mr. and I have a girl and a boy. The girl is older, and often (or maybe always) seems to take her brother for granted. The younger brother is always eager for his sister’s attention, and usually so giddy with excitement when he gets it that he becomes overly wound up to the point where she no longer wants to be around all that boy-ness.

He is a hugger and a cuddler. She is less so.

Yesterday, I was alone in the car with our daughter when she asked me this about her brother, “When we are older, will we talk?”

I let out a little laugh and said, “I hope so!”

And then she said, “No, I mean on the phone. Like you have a sister and you talk to her all the time, and Daddy has brothers that he talks to all the time. But I think it’s different, isn’t it? When you are a boy and a girl?”

This broke my heart a little.

I don’t really know of any shining examples on either side of our family, where a brother and a sister have remained close and in touch as adults. I wish I had some relationship to direct her to that would ease her worry. And mine.

Instead, I focused on her brother. “If you have to have a brother, yours is an awfully good brother to have. He is sweet and caring and he loves you very much.”

All of this is true, but she was doubtful. I also told her how much her brother is like one of his uncles – the uncle who can talk, and talk, and talk, and sweetly calls all members of the family regularly just to check in.

“You may have to be the one to make the phone call, but I bet once he starts talking, you won’t be able to get him to stop.”

She laughed, and we moved on.

Do you have a sibling of the opposite sex? Do you have a close relationship as adults?

It’s snowing AND THUNDERING here. This has become the norm in these parts….thunder and lightening every time we’ve had snow this winter. It’s very, very strange and a little unsettling. Weird weather freaks me out.

Local forecasters have been hyping and speculating on this storm for about a week now. Honestly, I don’t know why they bother. Last night, the final word seemed to be rain only….and now we have a couple of inches, wind, ice, and freaky thunder. And a snow day from school, of course!

Lucky for the kids, I got supplies for their book report projects – so they won’t have to worry about wasting the day on brain rotting activities. HA! I have a bench I want to paint, and may do some baking. I’m also making a comfort food dinner tonight – a dish that sounds awful but is so good – spaghetti squash taco bake. Mmmmm.

I finished “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” and I really liked it. Last I wrote about it, I was waiting for the plot to thicken. It never really did, but that’s sort of the point. The entire novel takes place during a soldier’s visit to a Dallas Cowboys football game while on break between two tours of duty in Iraq. He and the rest of his squad (known as “Bravo”) are on a victory tour after getting some positive press during combat. The author, Ben Fountain, does a great job illustrating the juxtaposition of the real war that Bravo experienced and the imagined “war on terror” living in the minds of the Texans at the football game. There’s also quite a bit of commentary on the absurdity of the football culture in this country, which I found to be spot on and quite entertaining. Two thumbs up. Next up is “Twelve Tribes of Hattie,” passed on to me by my mom.

The kids are now on the deck in PJs and winter coats, measuring the snow with a ruler. “Whhoooooaaaaa!” After taking measurements in 3 places, the verdict is 2 inches, and it’s still coming down.

The Florida cousins are visiting this weekend, so the kids’ next order of business is to make some snowballs to put in the freezer for them. Of course, this is a sweet gesture, but in reality the sweetness is being overridden by the fighting over gloves and who gets to mold said snowballs. Sheesh.

Also, at 9:12am, the boy seems to be maxed out on “quiet time.” He is wiggling around like a worm, singing nonsense songs, and just dropped snow all over the floor in the sunroom. He’s been up since 5:30am. On a snow day. Why????

We found out this weekend that our daughter was accepted into the specialty center middle school program where she applied. The letter came on Saturday, while we were at a (hellish) swim meet, so it was opened late on Saturday evening to much laughter and dancing around the kitchen. (She had the giddy laugh and the parents did the ridiculous dancing, of course.)

Now we find ourselves in the awkward position of not knowing how other kids who applied fared. We still aren’t clear on whether the current teacher knows or not. We suggested that our daughter tell her current and past teachers today and thank them for helping her get into this prestigious program. She’s shy, so we weren’t sure she would do it — but then her teacher told the students this morning not to discuss it.

I understand that the kids who got in shouldn’t gloat. (And our daughter surely wouldn’t – she didn’t even want to accept phone congratulations from family members!) But how about letting them feel a little pride in themselves? Or even just find out if they will have a friend in tow when they head way out of Bubble territory next year on this new adventure? It really bugs me sometimes that our culture promotes all matter of bragging about anything related to sports, but when it comes to academics – it all has to be hush hush.

I’ve only told a few people in real life, for fear of hurting feelings or sounding braggy…..but can I just say here how proud the Mr. and I are of our girl? We know she will have a fantastic experience in this program – both academically and socially. We hear there is significantly less drama and mean girl crap at this school, where so many of the best students gather. That is no small thing in the middle school years!

This program will give her a much broader curriculum, access to foreign languages earlier, and incredible freedom of creativity and expression. I am so excited for her I could burst. I barely slept on Saturday night after reading the acceptance letter! Her current teacher told me (before we got the letter) that she thought our girl would be the ideal student for this program and she should definitely go if accepted. Done and done.

Remind me of how excited I am now when I start fretting about how far away her new school is come fall. But I guess it will be closer than the sleep away camp where she’s going for 2 weeks this summer. GULP.

New phase of parenting, straight ahead.