Last licks on the most awesome learn to monkey bar monkey bars ever

Oh crazybusy week you close with rain. Tomorrow, I go to pick up Remy at his overnight camp. (Yay, go ahead, you can be happy right alongside me). By all accounts, which is to say three letters—two to all of us, one to his little sister (as requested by his mama)—we glean that “Camp is great!”

I missed my Tuesday three. Yesterday, we picked up our little gal at preschool for the very last time. Sunnyside has been an indescribably important part of our lives for eight years, plus one between the younger two kids’ stints there when I continued to volunteer as newsletter writer. We felt, I’ll be honest, grateful and a tad bit melancholy. Our tenure as preschool parents—and parents to the under five-and-a-half set is now over—just in time for the eldest to turn 18 next month.

We’ll have kids at home, not yet college age, for 30 years when all is said and done. My dear, patient husband reminded me of this yesterday as we strolled home from Sunnyside. There was an “I told you so” tucked into his voice, as he reminded me of the math. Later that evening, I brought the 30 years up again. “I’m terrible at math. You know that,” I told him. “It never occurred to me. I never considered the numbers.”

Why not a Tuesday Three on a Friday? Obviously, I am grateful for my dear, sweet, beyond patient husband. I’m grateful to the best preschool I’ll ever know (if you have young kids or know someone local who does, lucky you). I’m grateful to all four kids, kindergarten to high school, for just about every reason under the sky.

Three quick links: The dear husband and I started to watch Orange is the New Black and yesterday I read a very sweet essay published three years ago by Piper’s very patient husband, about being a loved one with a loved one behind bars. I also loved an essay about trauma’s role as integral in our lives, not a separate entity—or how grief takes more time than we think to shoulder. Finally, my latest for Brain Child is about how sometimes I lapse into momentary forgetfulness that our daughter is adopted—and how adoption shines a light on the issue central to everyone in families: how we are so intimate and not the same person.