Reasons Today is Wonderful

The kids and I made rhubarb-apple crisp and ate it warm. There were second helpings involved.

Ari produced the first diaper I have been able to shake out into the toilet. This is gross and not what you want to be reading, but when you cloth diaper, Baby's First Turd is a big deal.

The writing project I have been working on for the last few weeks is finally finished. It's not perfect, but it's done, and I'm not even horrifically embarrassed of it.

I finished reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets aloud to Geneva and Lavender, and they were with me the whole way with gasps of "oh no!" and "so The Heir of Slytherin is-- is--!" And then after the climax, when the story returned to feasting and congratulations, Lavender fell asleep and drooled on my back.

In related news, I now reside with Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. Me? I am Professor McGonagall. It is an absolute hoot, I tell ya, to get to say "Miss Granger, please clear your plate from the table" and "Mr. Potter was using that first," in my best McGonagall voice of course.

Both girls managed to lose one of their ballet shoes last week. Tonight is ballet night, and we found both missing shoes this afternoon.

The DVD of Frozen that we ordered has finally arrived. It's downstairs, and the girls have no idea. I'm just going to sit on it until we all really need a break, and having this hidden ammunition is doing really positive things for my state of mind. I have that smug poker face.

I'm making korvstroganoff for dinner. It's delightfully easy and I know my whole family will eat it without complaint.

Ari is crawling, and it's that perfect, adorable, hesitant kind of crawling where he only actually takes three or four "real" crawling steps each day. It's exciting and thrilling and is still more of a party trick than a form of locomotion, so I don't have to worry about chasing him.

Geneva pulled the word "protagonist" out of thin air, and even used it correctly. They do listen!

But most of all, it just IS. Some days are inescapably wonderful, and today is one of them. The tense, awkward, frustrating moments have just rolled off our backs. I haven't been the world's best parent, and my children aren't models of deference and respect, but we are loud and happy and free. I want to wish for another day like this one tomorrow, but that might be tempting fate. One is enough. One is plenty.