My kids and notes: 11.6
September 9, 2026
Life with JB
I took the (rare) initiative to contact a middle school mom who we seemed to get on with fine last year to set up some play time for the kids since they rarely see each other now. I got the weirdest longwinded reply about how the kid doesn’t think they need to make plans and is perfectly happy doing their own thing on the other weekends and “kids spend enough time in school with friends and classmates way more than with parents” and and and.
I was confused and it took me a couple days to understand it feels like a rejection because it is one. We had exchanged information in the first place expressly to set up time for the kids to get together. We just hadn’t managed it last year but we used the contact to keep in touch about other stuff. But I guess that’s the first of many little shifts in middle school social life.
Life with Smol Acrobat
Almost out of the blue, to me at least, SmolAc has begun singing songs they learned at school and daycare before that. The ant, the bug and the bee. Once I caught a fish alive. Five little speckled frogs.
I love it. JB did this when they were 2-3 but SmolAc has been musically silent until now.
Also they’ve had school lunches and breakfasts and declared it better than daycare food at least in the first week or two. Now they used to have really good food, JB loved going back for camp specifically for the food, but I think things had taken a turn for the worse in the past year for it to rate below school food. I’m not knocking school food, I liked it back in the day, but it’s certainly nothing fancy. The shine wore off after the second week, they’ve decided they prefer to eat breakfast at home and bring their lunch.
They have been sharing stories about their 2 seatmates in kinder being jerks to them (hitting, saying they’re going to hit, calling them stupid) and it’s surprised me a) how very calm they are about sharing “today someone was unkind to me” and b) how they seem to have handled it (told the kids to stop and then escalated to the teacher).
JB, their much more social and outgoing older sibling, did not tell us or their teachers for months when they had a problem with a kid hitting them in 2nd grade so I’m relieved that they seem to know what to do (and scared all over again about how much we need to develop JB’s self defense).
Precious Moments
SmolAc: Today was a big day. We had to do a wot of math. You know how 5+5 is 10? And 2+2 is 4. We had to do 11+11! We are working on dat.
SmolAc: Today was a Very Big day. Me and Z and my friend who I did not know their name, we had to clean all the tables. EVERY TABLE WAS A MESS. We also cleaned everything else. I did most of it. Z did not clean very much.
SmolAc practicing sports: the better I get at it, the better I will be!
SmolAc: Where’s my mummy??
Me: I’m right here.
SmolAc: No! The kind made from toilet paper!