My kids and notes: Year 11.5
August 12, 2026
Life with JB
Middle school is coming up like a freight train and it’s all we can do to keep just ahead of the cowcatcher. I’ve got the bell schedule written down and I’m working out what that means for my presumptions about my schedule. I’ll be doing an early pickup for kindergarten, and then a couple hours later doing a second pickup after middle school lets out. PiC has been organizing the walking routes for the kids and setting up walking buddies for JB. I’m not ready for any of it, nor are they, but we’ll have to ride it out no matter how we feel.
Life with Smol Acrobat
SmolAc has started eating more foods and whining less about it in recent months. They used to hate all forms of potatoes that aren’t french fries; they couldn’t handle any hint of spice; even pizza wasn’t a sure thing with them some days.
This month they willingly enjoyed a meal that they would have scorned 3 months ago: Costco tritip (the very occasional treat), a baked potatoes and roasted potatoes, steamed broccoli. 3 months ago, they would only have eaten the broccoli and whined about the rest, this month they are all of it and said it was good! They’re willing to test the seasoned and crusted tilapia, where they wouldn’t have even touched it before. It’s still too spicy for them but they keep coming back to try it now and again.
This does mean that it’s getting more expensive to feed the family. We used to get by on fish night with 3 tilapia and 2 salmon fillets. Now I think we need 6-7 total fillets for everyone to be full. It’s getting to be more than the toaster oven can handle in one go so I’ll have to plan a little more in advance. Fish nights are the easiest because prep is so fast. Someday I should learn to roast whole fish properly, they feed more people.
Pupdate
My internal debate: I don’t know if it would be responsible or irresponsible to adopt a dog while I’m out of work (financially) but when else am I going to have this much time to transition and train a newbie?
I’ve been gently perusing the available dogs at local rescues and telling myself “not before November” as a rough guideline for when we’d hopefully have settled into a new school routine for both kids and would then have the attention to pay to a newcomer. SmolAc has been asking for a dog, and it breaks my heart all over again because most recently they asked PiC: but aren’t Seamus and Sera coming back?
Have they just been quietly waiting for their dogs to come back all this time?
It might be unhelpful that I’ve kept their bed at the foot of ours all this time, I couldn’t bear to put it away, nor did I put away their bowl tray.
Precious Moments
Uncle: This costs $55. Did you save your money for this?
SmolAc: No.
Uncle: Are you going to start?
SmolAc, very solemnly: No, I only have one dollar. I cannot spend my one dollar.
*****
SmolAc Explains the Rules: you can only do tumble if you can tumble very goodly and if you can tumble very goodly then you can do backward tumble.
*****
SmolAc: Mommy, this doesn’t say Start!
Me: It does, it says “Empieza aqui!” That means Start Here in Spanish.
SmolAc: It does!? What does this say?
Me: Completado! It means Completed!
SmolAc: Oh, so it says start AND finish. Wow, you DO know a lot.