6710 Grand

It’s not unusual for children to make up words or to pronounce them slightly differently than the English language intends. My children are no different. At one time, when Ivy was younger, we were much more frequent travelers and had many occasions to rent a car. She wondered once, whether or not this “new” car was taking the place of our “old” car. No, we told her—it was just a rental. It then became known as the “wrinkly car”. Wrinkles she understood—rentals, not so much. Another common word they mispronounce is lemonade. I don’t even say it right anymore—it’s lelomade. I have to really think about it when we go out for dinner and I have to tell the server what they want to drink. Because of Nick’s travel schedule, he takes lots of portable food on the planes, including a wide variety of bars and shakes. One happens to be granola bars. The girls call them “vanilla bars”, which means I now call them vanilla bars. For a very long time, Ivy’s favorite movie was The Incredibles.

Sometimes I hear music in the background—like my life is a movie and I’m not really living it but wondering how and why anyone would live the way I do. My life is insane. No normal person should do what I do. My husband “lives” in Chicago for 5-6 days in a row while he pursues his airline career, leaving my two children and me here in Phoenix. At the ages of 3 and 5, they’re like any other pre-schoolers: a handful! But we make it (albeit on obscene amounts of coffee, but who am I kidding? I don’t see that as a downside). Here’s a typical day: 3:15 I wake up and get out of bed to weigh myself seven times before throwing my hands in the air and accepting the number on the scale. I then proceed to run 3.2 miles in about 45 minutes while reading whatever business or fiction book I’ve currently promised myself to read. I get through maybe 30 pages. I then shower (after weighing myself another 7 times only to feel like I deserve to have lost at least two pounds for what I’ve just suffered)