Home free

It's seven forty and I'm home free.

That is, I'm home, and I'm free of children. The one is asleep, the other is on his way and doesn't need assistance, and there's a glass of red wine beside me. The payoff for early risers is early bedtimes like this, and even if they don't happen every night, it's great when they do. There's also a big basket of laundry to be folded, but I quite like laundry actually. It's one of the few housekeeping tasks I don't mind keeping up with. (I used to iron, even, but that was a long time ago.)

The weather has broken, and like flipping a switch, my brain has turned on and got busy. Or, maybe more accurately, my body. My will to do things other than flollop around complaining, at least.

We had a big storm on Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday all the oppressive heat and humidity had been scrubbed out of the air, leaving shining clear sunlight. It's almost (positively, even) chilly in the mornings, suddenly. I'm not pushing the bedcovers off my body any more. I might have to find some socks soon.

• I've baked two batches of baked goods (banana spice crumb bars and oatmeal muffins).
• I've gone running two mornings in a row. Only a mile, and I only ran half of it, and then maybe a bit more, but it's a start.
• I've started a star chart for the children, wherein they get stars for tidying up and also for using the bathroom more independently (Mabel) and practising some reading (Dash). So far they each have a lot more stars for the practising than the tidying, but I don't care. It's establishing an expectation, and I don't want to have to shell out at Target too soon.

Mabel has complained about going to school for the past two days. I've left her there anyway, stonehearted mother that I am, even though she was crying and telling me not to go. Yesterday it was all for show, and she was smiling as she played with all the dollhouse people when I looked in the window five minutes later. Today she was more tired and a little more upset, as she'd had a late night and two wakeups yesterday - not my fault if she refuses to fall asleep for her father; I was at a board meeting - but I still stood firm.

On the one hand, I don't want to set the precedent of letting her stay home, or - worse - relenting once we get there and taking her back with me. School is school, and we go unless we're sick. On the other hand, the child is three, and it's not like she's missing anything vital to the curriculum if I let her play hookie once in a blue moon. With Dash, once or twice he made a fuss and I let him off - because I know my kid, and he never did that; so when he did, I believed him and it didn't come back to bite me. But Mabel is a different child, and if you give her an inch she'll take a mile, and if I give her an inch she'll probably run off with the whole kit and kaboodle and never come back at all. So no, not doing that. School it is.

Still, I was relieved to come back from my too-short jaunt to Bethesda to see my friend's new baby (tiny! squishy! asleep on me!) to find Mabel's classmates all happily unbitten and her teachers still looking me in the eye. She'd had a bit of an episode when they wiped her nose, but she told me that she felt better after snack, and I agreed that that was often the way.

In fact, might be time for a post-prandial, laundry-folding snack over here right now.