Apparently, there is (or with a healthy imagination CAN be) a lot more in common than you'd think between my college days and these ones of reduced-sleep parenting. Here's the pretty lil' picture: Jordan and I are in the kitchen popping popcorn for her snack day (she defiantly is bringing her copy of Las Posadas as her sharing story even though her day falls on the day they celebrate St Nicholas' Day at school). It's about 6:30pm and I'm bleary-eyed from a weekend of family bliss. Sawyer is asleep, Tom is trying to start his homework, and I'm, yet again, slaving over a hot stove. With a pot full of oil and popcorn kernels that makes a mindnumbing screeching sound, metal on metal, and next to me Jordan is yelling "SHAKE IT MAMA! SHAKE IT SHAKE IT SHAKE IT! GO, HEATHER, GO! SHAKE IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!" It's pot number two or three of popcorn, and it was likely a mistake for me to tell her that you have to shake it or the kernels will burn. With her fluid change between calling me mama or Heather, if I close my eyes and give in to the rhythmic screeching of metal on metal and imagine some other college band instead of Elvis or Perry Como or whatever CD is still on playing harmonious holiday family shmaltz, and think her little girl voice simply belongs to a horribly repressed but fastidiously drunk 20 year old and is harmonized by the low bass of a shitload of frat brothers, my life is so, so much different. SHAKE IT, HEATHER, SHAKE IIIIIIIIIIIIT!

Jordan is unstoppable, and amazing. The constant conversation that punctuates my life (like a poorly conceived ad campaign for Constant Comment Tea) with this almost four year old is occasionally punctuated by the rareness of utter silence in the brief pauses after she has, yet again, done something amazing. Tom was doing gymnastics/yoga with her while I was on a run and she picked up a piece of paper and pencil and decided to write down the list of what they were doing with absolutely no coaching or spelling from Tom: Leg Lifts: L (and the L's are sweetly inverted, mind you) Lft. Next line, Singing Bridge: Sng Brij. Next Line, Summersault: Sumrsot. Unbelievable. Not yet 4. Which is well exemplified in her temper tantrums of late, and somewhat indistinguishable from her teen years with some of the snottiness that has also emerged, but at least she's smart, dammit.

Sawyer and I had the great privilege of watching Tom teach a first grade class today. The lunchroom lady pulled me aside at the beginning - the one who has been at the school in one position or another for 20 years and since the lunchroom shares space with the gym has watched him teach. "I have never, NEVER, seen anyone teach PE much less substitute teach anything like he does." A man in his element, certainly. It was parachute day, and Sawyer (with his requisite shiner) was rapt with these first graders - any school campus is pretty much the promised land for that guy. Add in a few rubber balls and he's exploding with joy. Tom had these kids moving from the first moment they were in, focused, excited, motivated - truly doing the impossible. The man IS a parachute - with or without the miles of silk fabric as the centerpiece for a class.

OK, so it's irritating to talk about how great they all are, I know. But they are. Ask me again when Sawyer or Jordan have been up all night and the house is a mess and I haven't been on a run for four days. THEN try screaming at me to SHAKE IT and we'll see what happens. But for now, I'll keep it all.