The Sounds of Silence

I kind of forgot what silence is. This morning, for one blissful hour, I was alone. Completely alone. OK, the annoying cat was here, but she was basking in a ray of sunlight sleeping, so it was like I was alone. And there were no other humans in my house.

I dropped my oldest child off at school at 7:30. Then, I came home and prodded the other three children to get ready for school. By 8:30, they and their dad were out the door so he could drop them off on his way to work. I was alone until shortly after 9:30. I ran the dishwasher, washed the couple things that didn't go in there, emptied the laundry hampers and got the daily laundry going. Then I had time to re-heat Chinese food from supper last night and read the paper before my nephew came. He's here now, and despite trying to climb down my body to get back to his mom as she was going out the door, he's great now. We read a couple stories. He laughed, and now he's playing here next to me.

Between four kids, we had three first days of school this week. My oldest daughter is entering middle school. (Yikes! All those big kids! All that class changing!) And she loves it. See how calm and mature she is on the morning of her first day?



My middle two children started a day later. They are both back at the same school they went to last year, so no worries there! They wanted to show a little more personality in their second back-to-school shot.





Finally, yesterday, my youngest started kindergarten. She was excited! She is going to the same school as the two middle kids, and she went to pre-K there last year. She's my little sweetums.





They have all ben laying their own clothes out the night before, and I think doing a lovely job. They sometimes make a few unusual choices, but nothing life or dress-code threatening.

Well, T's getting cranky again! It may be naptime.