Dear Midwest,

It is spring.  Act like it.  No more of this "you can wear shorts" one day, and "put away your flip-flops, silly girl," the next.  I mean it.

Sincerely,

Frau M.

P.S.  By "act like it" I do not mean let's have a ton of tornadoes, you made your case quite well in the South already.

There are two kinds

of people in the world.  On one side, you have your people who get how to deal with kids.  Perhaps they have monkeys of their own, teach young ones all day, or are the favorite aunt/uncle (possibly all three like me because I am the only aunt my nephews have nearby).  On the other are the ones who see kids as...wait, they don't even really see kids, so nevermind. 

Last night, we ran into town to do some errands and reached hungry o'clock (the time when everyone becomes irritable from hunger) before we could make it home.  So we decided to eat at a local grill.  The host seated us, gave us our menus, took our drink orders and set the kids up with coloring placemats and four blue crayons.  Wait, question mark?  He handed two children four of the same color crayon?  He didn't even notice?  I glanced over at the basket and there were four colors (hence the giving of four crayons).  Luckily, my kids are pretty laid back and didn't seem to care just as long as I would play tic-tac-toe (and be the O).  But, as I said before there are two kinds.

Chick Days

Ah, Spring.  The time in the school year where you need your students to buckle down, but they can see the beauty and warmth outside the window which renders buckling impossible.  It is also the time of year when kindergarten rooms are equipped with incubators and 12 potential chicks (aka eggs).  The air in the school is abuzz with anticipation of the arrival of these little birds. 

Although she goes to a different school, my daughter's class was no different than any other kindergarten class in our area.  All last weekend, she talked about how there would soon be chicks in their class at school.  They'd start hatching on Monday.  She came home Monday night reporting that four had hatched (she also came home begging to bring them home...to which I said no, as we don't live on a farm and the ones we hatch at school are good only for eating.  I am perfectly happy purchasing preplucked chicken at the store).

On Tuesday, the rest hatched.  When I picked the kindergartner up after school she ran up to me and said, "Mom, I have just terrible news."  I immediately thought, "What do I need to sign?  Where's the note?"  But no, that was not the news.  She looked at me with little tears forming in her eyes and said, "Mom, one of the baby chicks in my class hatched, but then it died."  I said, "Oh that's so sad."  I was all prepared to talk about how sometimes that happens, when she pulled herself together and said, "Mom, that's just the way of life,"  as though I might be too upset about it.  It was sweet.  It also made me sad that I can't keep her protected from the sometimes harsh realities of life forever.