I'm probably the only girl in school who has the coroner's office bookmarked as a favorite place.

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My eternal gratitude to the men and women who have served and are serving our country in the armed forces - not a day goes by that I don't think how lucky I am to live here, but today I'm saying it out loud. Your sacrifices and the sacrifices of your families are appreciated by all. Thank you, and please stay safe.

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What a difference a day makes.

Yesterday I was up before 4:00, today I got to sleep until close to 10:00. And when I woke up, I got to lay there in that "I'm awake, but only marginally functional and in no hurry to get up" state that parents never enjoy.

Saturday evening, Bean asked to invite friends over for an arts-and-crafts playdate the next day. I cautioned her that everyone probably had plans, but fortunately Shirley and Cindy were able to bring their girls over and Bean hosted her first playdate since mommy returned to work. The girls glued collages together (Miss O included), and then donned princess dresses to run around like crazy people. O tried to keep up with the big girls, and since they all have younger siblings, they were all pretty good about including her and not being *too* rough with her.

After Miss O's 3:51 wake-up, it took until around 1:00 to get her a nap, and that was 30 minutes, up for 15, asleep for another 45. Thankfully, Dave was picking them up about an hour after her final wake-up. I'm tellin' ya - I have infinite patience for wake-up through bedtime hijinks, but the sleeping stuff annoys the hell out of me.

Getting up this late is confusing. I never sleep past 7:00, so it feels like it should be 8 or 9, latest. It's after 11.

We continued the Journey of the Macabre yesterday, with Bean requesting to stop and look at a dead deer that the vultures were finishing off. I got out and looked first, but it was pretty much bone and hair. And stink. But she wanted to see it anyways, so I scooped her out of her car seat and held her in my arms as we surveyed the carcass. I can only imagine what the folks driving past must have thought - some little soccer mom holding her daughter as they looked at a dead deer. I'm sure more than a few thought I was a freakin' loon ..

So what do y'all think. Am I too open with her about this stuff? Kids, people and animals die - it happens and there's no stopping it. I don't see the point of shrinking from it all or describing it all in fluffy kitten language; but am I missing something? Why is it okay for a 4 year old to hear "Jesus died for our sins", but not know that people die? To me, someone being killed because my kid is inherently bad seems far ookier than her knowing that some babies are born too sick to live, but maybe that's just my prejudice against religion showing again ...

Have your kids brought up death like Bean has? How do you handle it? I don't think I'd be here if the PT at her therapy place hadn't died and opened the door to this line of questioning, but because she's so damn inquisitive, once we start down a path, there's no detour. I could have tried to route us down a flower-filled path, I guess, but I'm such a WYSIWYG kind of person - you ask, I'll tell you. It's impossible for me to imagine not being equally open and honest with my own kid ...
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No more butt-monkey, check.

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There is just nowhere in the *world* at which 4:17 is an acceptable time to begin your day. Nowhere. But as Miss O fell asleep in the car around 5:00 last night and rather than make it a brief nap, I let it just be 'down for the night', I anticipated an earlier-than-usual start. And would have been prepared for it were it not for that magical hour of awake-for-the-hell-of-it that occurred around 1 a.m. Bean joined O in that hour of being awake and making me want to drown myself in the bathtub, so I was hating on both kids last night with equal fervor.

I'm going to propose to Dave a new custody arrangement - he gets them at night, I get them during the day. My daytime patience is infinite, but O sleeps for crap here. I think his daytime patience is slightly more limited, judging by Bean's repeated "I don't like daddy because he spanks my butt!" (which, I have no doubt, is more drama-ho'ing and making a case for always being with me than it is an actual reflection of amount/intensity), but they sleep well with him. So he can do the nighttime stuff where less patience is required, and I can tap into my deeper reserves and do the daytime stuff.

Think he'll go for it?

I took the girls to breakfast at McD's, a cemetery, Toys-r-Us, the mall, the park and Target yesterday. Bean wanted McD's breakfast, and it's so cheap to feed the three of us there I have a hard time saying no, tho I do forbid the playscape. I don't do any indoor playscapes with my kids - personally, I consider them festering pits of cooties and sickness. And I'm a mom who extends the 5-second-rule to include the unwashed, straight-from-the-container blueberries that fall on the floor at the grocery store. I've just seen one too many obviously ill and contagious kid at those places, and once I read Julia's story about watching some kid slide down one and leave a poop trail, it's a completely closed case.

After breakfast, where the girls entertained the masses - Bean with her antics and O with her tiny cuteness - I took Bean on her much-desired cemetery field trip. We talked about burial versus cremation, and what one can do with the powder from cremation, as well as discussing who is buried at this cemetery. This particular one is over-represented by 'Cluck's, so Bean ID'd all the Cluck headstones.

Then she noticed the very small headstones and graves.

Thus began a discussion about why babies and kids die. She wasn't happy about there being kids and babies there, but didn't seem profoundly saddened, just a little sad and thoughtful. I thought to myself then, and think now, that this will likely be a recurring discussion for a while to come.

Bean: That's a baby's headstone
Mommy: Actually, it is. It's a baby that died a long time ago.
B, in her most empathetic and sad voice: Oh! That's so sad!
M: It is. Sometimes babies are too sick to live very long, and they die very early.
B, noticing another small grave: There's another one
M: Yes.
(We proceeded to pick wildflowers, with Bean looking at all the headstones, and stopping at any she thought were kid or baby graves. She wasn't super sad, but seemed to get that it was sadder than adult graves)
B: Miss O, this is a baby's headstone
I kid you not, O stopped and placed the flowers she had been holding down near the headstone.

But overall, Bean really enjoyed her trip there. When I noticed the grave of a veteran, I noted it, and explained to Bean that this weekend was a special weekend where we said thank you to the folks who have served our country. I said "you can say 'thank you for serving our country' because they were soldiers who protected us." She proceeded to thank everyone, babies included, for serving our country.

When I asked her her thoughts afterward, she was focused mainly on how pretty cemeteries are, and how you bury dead people in boxes. She paused and said "when we talk to dead people, can they hear us?" I said "some people think they can, and some people think they can't. Do you think they can hear us?" She thought for a minute and said "Yes. I think they can hear us." So I told her "then that's what you should believe. We'll never know for sure, so the only thing that matters is that what you believe makes you feel good."

Miss O dozed off in the car, so Bean and I chatted and drove around for awhile. She was complaining incessantly about her shoes with orthotics hurting her, and I recalled a sale at Stride Rite, so I planned a stop there. Miss O snagged a 45-minute nap in the car, we did some shopping, got both girls' feet measured (O's actually a size 5 now, Bean's an 11), scored a new pair of sneakers for Bean, then headed home for naps. That totally didn't pan out, so we went to a new park and then to Target. Miss O fell asleep on the way home, and now we're full circle to my first paragraph.

I'll leave ya with a couple conversations with Bean. The Toys-r-Us one, which is not for the easily embarrassed, occurred with someone in the stall next to us.

Bean, pointing at some scribble: Do you know what this says?
Mommy: No. What does it say?
Bean: It says 'Loving mommy. We love you. You're the best mama in the whole world. Thanks.'

Bean, leaning over to whisper in my ear at the park: This is *awesome*. Thanks!

Bean, at Target, to an unsuspecting mom with two kids: When we were at the cemetery today, we saw a baby's grave. It was sad.
Mom, fixing me with a special look: I'm sorry. I bet it was sad.
Me, trying to explain: It was a field trip that she requested!

Bean, in the bathroom with me at Toys-r-Us: Mommy, why do you have hair on your butt?
Mommy, laughing in disbelief: You just asked that, didn't you?
B: Yes I did.
M: Well, when people grow up and go through puberty they get hair in new places. And it's not on my butt.
B: Well, why do you have hair on your bulba?
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