By: Revanche

My kids and notes: Year 10.6

October 1, 2025

Life with JB

We now have a fifth grader and our first “please don’t hug or kiss me in public” request which is weird after a summer of cling.

I’m second guessing myself a little tiny bit but mostly not. JB had a friend in their sport who turned out to be a real jerk of a kid but they’re also manipulative so they’re nice to JB’s face and an asshole behind their back to mutual friends. I’m proud of mutual friend for shutting that shit down outright and I’m proud of JB for learning to use the little white lie when JerkFace approached them and wanted to know what they were doing. I’ve been teaching them to be honest with people you’re close to, but people who aren’t trustworthy don’t deserve all of the truth. Especially the little twerps who use that honesty to hurt you. I’d given them my phone to use for a quick phone game so they could have an excuse not to talk to JerkFace, JerkFace wanted to know what they were doing and JB blandly replied, “Oh, just texting a friend.”

“Mutual friend?”

“No, you don’t know them.”

Now, encouraging my kid to lie isn’t maybe the strongest parenting move but honestly I’d rather they had that protecting them from having to be honest and therefore vulnerable to the random jerk kids they encounter regularly.

Life with Smol Acrobat

SmolAc has this funny thing where they are very declarative, and I can’t tell if it’s for emphasis or a cadence thing. It makes them sound a bit like a kids storybook:

I wasn’t coughing, I was not.
I do not want those fruits, no, I do not!
Did you know I jumped the fence? Not the other fence, no. Not that one.
But I can’t help wif anything? I cannot?
They thought it was an awien (alien) but it was not an awien, it was not.

Pupdate

The problems blocking dog adoption that I can solve are: rebuilding our cash reserve, much depleted after the house work, to a minimum of $12K and identifying reliable sitters in case we need to travel where we can’t bring our furry family. I hate leaving them but there are some places that aren’t suitable for them and they’d be happier staying with a good sitter. There’s a hospice dog that I’ve got my eye on. We’d been going through Rover with Seamus and Sera but it was a slog every time the casual sitters would move on or stop sitting or whatnot. I think a full time sitter and a dog boarding facility that isn’t depressing will be the key combination for our needs.

But the thing I can’t solve, only time can, is moving into a slightly different (less?) hectic period of our lives. Caring for dogs is all-consuming at times and right now it’s hard to tell when makes more sense to bring home a fur companion. I surmised that maybe next fall could work, that’s also when our daycare payments finally stop which would be a huge cash back to our budgets. That’s good! Dog money!

Buuuuuut that’s also hard to figure out what we’re going to do with SmolAc being in school only half the day. Unfortunately SmolAc could not fill that time by, say, helping me care for a dog. They need age appropriate activities so that time period will be ??? I will still have a full time job so uh. That might NOT be the best time. I don’t know – there’s not going to be a quiet time in our lives for another twelve plus years, so it’s not like waiting til that happens will work. I’ll quietly tip off the edge of reasoning if I have to be dogless that long. But if we can get in our

Precious Moments

SmolAc: Ozzy came to my school and we did a breakdance. We runned, FWIP! Like dat.

SmolAc: *sudden cackling* Coach Paul today, he said (tapping on my head with each exclamation) “boing-oing-oing-oing, oops! Ribbit! Wet’s twy dat again! Ribbit! Ribbit! Ribbit! Boing-oing-oing-oing! Ba-doop! Ba-doop! Ribbit!”

Oh, was he playing duck duck goose?

SmolAc: “No!” *Cackles, then farts 12 times, cackles some more*

*****

SmolAc: what are these?

Me: Stretch marks from when you and JB were in my body.

SmolAc: you eated me???

Me: No!