Not a "Kid-Person"

I probably haven't mentioned this in the blog - after all, it is a blog about my children - but I'm not really a kid person. This might surprise you, but it's true. I realized it many years ago, before I ever had children. I'd always wanted my own children, but I discovered that I just didn't much care for children in general. Which is not to say that I feel any animosity towards the children I know or even children at large. It's just that I'm not going to be the person in a room (especially if I don't have my own children with me) to go squat down on the floor to find out what the three-year-old is up to. I'd much rather talk to adults. Now that I have my own kids, this is probably even more true when I'm out without them. I'm on me time then and I probably feel deeply compelled in those moments to avoid children at all costs.

That may sound worse than it is. The point, however, is that I am not the person who takes in extra children on a whim. In fact, I'd never before done it by myself. My husband had, oddly, and I consider him to be even less of a kid person than I am. I, on the other hand, had never before taken care of my two plus two more for any considerable length of time before August 3rd. And then I did. I had to come up with ways to keep them entertained too and feed them all two meals and two snacks.

We began with beading while I got breakfast and morning snacks together. Jonas and Aleks played Lego in the meantime.

We did the tiny beads some. Bastian's fine motor skills improve daily. He gets bigger too.

Later, I enacted my most brilliant of ideas: having the children wash my car. All summer long there'd been sunscreen blotches on two or three of the doors and I kept meaning to scrub them off, but just as I've had no time to properly keep up with the blog, I couldn't manage the time (or effort) to get the zinc oxide off either. Until forced to occupy four children for twelve hours, that is.
Lavinia worked very hard. Slave labor is the way to go.
Bastian is a hard-ass about inspections.
The car-washing then transitioned into sprinkler play, which lasted almost as long as the sunshine.




There was bike riding, bubbles, sidewalk chalk, squirt guns, more Lego-ing, pizza for dinner, playing with the neighbors, running in the garden, destroying things that were not meant for destruction (with only mild mama reaction), catching fireflies, painting, and grumpiness for it not turning into a sleepover.
Just before they left, I started Totoro. There was much sadness. More importantly, however, is the fact that I survived the day!