Mommy, I thought there would be a garden! With kids in it!

So, kindergarten is at last upon us, and let me assure you, we were ready. After a solid month with two boys and one mommy in charge of all the fun at home, I was not really that weepy when my oldest clutched his new dinosaur lunch bag and ascended the school steps. I was too busy racing at top speed toward the nearest barstool. Sure, it’s a milestone, good for him, good for us, but really it means that my life just got a lot easier. I feel like looking down at my youngest and saying “So, tell me about yourself. You like trucks, huh?”

Due to the school calendar here, Big will actually be the youngest kid in his class. Yet another awesome thing about having Christmas as a birthday: he could be as much as 357 days younger than some of his classmates. In high school, it probably won’t matter too much, but in kindergarten, that’s kind of a big deal. And I think he’s been struggling with his search for his mature self.

Having a 4 1/2 year old (to me) seems kind of like having a kid who is 5 sometimes and 3 sometimes, and who is very rarely anything in between. He’s either solving rather complicated problems with novel solutions, sounding out words to read to himself, or he’s flinging himself around the apartment screaming because he wanted to lick the *other* beater when we made cake. Each day seems to be a toss up of how much time you get to spend with the 5 year old and how much time you have to spend with the 3 year old. Sometimes it’s 50/50. Other days it’s 90/10. And of course there are those days when it’s 10/90.

But maybe, if I put on my 6 month glasses, maybe it’s marginally inching toward more days spent with a kid who is 5 more than he’s 3. Maybe. I hope.

Hey, we’re getting there.

It’s fun to stay at the . . .

There are many reasons our local YMCA is important to us. There’s the free babysitting, the exercise equipment, the free babysitting, the showering alone (unless you count all the other women in the locker room), the free babysitting, and most importantly, THE FREE BABYSITTING.

Before we joined the Y, I’m pretty sure we had some sort of police report in our future. Mercifully, we were saved from my appearing in an episode of a Netflix series. And I am running at a pretty good clip theses days!

But there’s another reason to love the Y, and here it is:

Much joy it has brought me.

Yes, the Y has a free bookshelf and I LIVE AND DIE by it. I feel in communion with this bookshelf. When I am feeling defeated, down, and utterly useless, it knows, and offers me — no, not comfort — but comfort food, or the literary equivalent of comfort food. There are books by authors I’ve followed, or books in genres that have claimed me as their own, or bestsellers from years ago that I swore were too popular to read, but then turned out to be good. The Y bookshelf offers me books in which I can lose myself.

Granted, it’s not jam-packed with goodies every time, and luckily so, because despite the workouts, a girl can only carry so much (or more to the point, fit so much in her apartment). But I manage to pull something interesting off of it at least once a week. Occasionally, it’s something divine.

Granted, there are quirks. The bookshelf has a habit of offering books 1 and 3 in a trilogy, and once I thought I was going to have to fight a rather determined dowager for the last issue of Canadian Quilter.

And today, there was this:

US Weekly, eat your heart out.

It’s a real book. With covers. And a list of celebrities on the back. Well, a list of names, anyway. The definition of celebrity seems to have been stretched to rather obese proportions.

But I was delighted, because the Y bookshelf knows just what it takes to cheer me up.