Inventions

This morning Turtle asked me, "What is the sky made of?" Before I finished stumbling through my tortured explanation of atmospheric gases, she asked, "Who invented the sky?"

I groaned to myself - I hadn't even had a cup of coffee yet and I had been called on to literally explain the universe. But I decided to go for it: "Well, some people think God invented the sky and the earth and everything on it. And some people think the sky and the earth formed by themselves through, ummmm, natural processes."

I held my breath, hoping she would not ask me what I thought, because I really was not ready for that conversation as I am still working out the details myself. But, thankfully, she asked, "What are processes?" I said, "Nature, I should have just said Nature, you know, how things grow and change over time?" She seemed satisfied with this. So the moral of the story is, if your kid asks you complicated questions that you're not ready to answer, fill your answer with big words to distract them from the main question!

Speaking of inventions, Monkey has developed some good ideas for inventions lately. A few weeks ago she told Twin Daddy that when she grew up she wanted to invent a car where, when you got in, someone popped out of the front seat and drove the car so that she could sit in the back with her babies. "Like a robot?" I asked. "No, a real person," she said. While she may have some details to work out, I still thought this was genius, and figured that she must wish we could sit in the back seat with her now. Twin Daddy had a different take, commenting to me that Monkey was truly her mother's daughter, always looking for a way to get someone else to do her chores. I think he may have a point, as I regularly fantasize about not only a full time housekeeper but also a driver.

She thought of another invention yesterday, a mask you wear so that you speak English into it but Spanish comes out the other side. She showed me with her hands how it would work. Again, genius. Or a way to get out of the hard work of having to actually learn Spanish. Either way, it works for me. I suspect, given all the translation devices in existence, this sort of thing may be in the works somewhere, but how can she know that? She's just brilliant is all I'm saying.

Another thing she did yesterday was build an x-ray machine. She got some first-hand experience with x-rays last week, after she swallowed a nickel. Yes, a nickel. The pediatrician has us go in for x-rays the next morning so we could make sure it was actually in her stomach and on its way out, which it was. I was instructed to look for the nickel every time she had a bowel movement, which was a lovely way to spend the weekend. Of course, no one was watching when she went at school, and I never found it. The doctor said it must have passed by now given her prolific production over the last several days, and that we could assume it was gone and not worry about it any more.

So anyway, back to Monkey's x-ray machine. She took a big box and put Turtle's baby doll inside it, then taped the box up and then taped paper over the box. I helped her find a toy that blinked to use as the camera, which she put on top of the papered-over box. She would come in and turn on the blinking light, then walk out of the room and peek around the corner. I would say, "beeeep, beeeep" and then she would come back in and turn it off. We did this for about half an hour. Finally, she unwrapped the box and took the baby out, and then proceeded to show me all the x-rays, which involved holding up a bunch of different pieces of paper and then holding a toy in front of the paper to show me what was in there. Apparently the baby had swallowed: yarn, a toy elephant, a toy cat, a lovey, and I don't remember what else but it was a lot. So then Monkey had to do surgery on the baby, both on her throat and on her belly, to get all these things out. She cut on the baby for some time using the cake cutter that came with her wooden birthday cake set, then covered the baby with silver stickers - these were the stitches.

Then, because the baby had been such a good patient, Monkey brought her a basket of "stickers" for her to pick something to take home. Turtle picked something for the baby, as she had been playing the patient mother/voice of the baby through all of this, allowing her doll to be closed up in a box for half an hour and then cut up for another half hour, while she occasionally made crying noises to indicate the baby was unhappy about something.

All in all, a good day's work for Dr. Monkey and Mommy Turtle.

What Four-Year-Olds Do

Monkey and Turtle turned 4 on October 22. Seems a little negligent to forget to post about their birthday on a blog devoted to them doesn't it? We did manage to get them gifts-new big girl bikes with training wheels-and it was really cute to watch them ride their bikes around the culdesac a few days later, singing "It's the Hard Knock of Life" from Annie at the top of their lungs. Riding brand new bikes around a safe culdesac in a nice neighborhood with a doting mother watching over them. Hard knocks indeed. Then Turtle started singing Miss Hannigan's "Little Girls," verbatim, including the following: "I'm an ordinary wo-man, with feeeelings; I'd like a man to nibble on my ear! But I"ll admit; no man has bit; so how come I'm the mother of the year??"

I suggested we start a new round of "Hard Knock."

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It seems like the day Turtle and Monkey turned 4, a switch turned on inside my brain and everything they did that seemed tolerable when they were 3 was suddenly completely innappropriate and driving me insane. It felt urgent to turn them into civilized people immediately, so we began a series of talks about "what 4 year olds do." I knew I couldn't present them with, "now that you're older, you have to do this, that and the other." Monkey, especially, can't stand the idea that anyone would have the nerve to tell her what to do (which is exactly what I was like as a kid), so I went with the more neutral, "Now that you're 4, would you like to know what 4 year olds do?" Yes, they did want to know, very much so. Here's what we talked about and what we are working on:

Four year olds:

- use a utensil for every part of their meal. (Monkey, who seems content to eat rice, beans, and just about anything else by smearing her hands around her plate and then licking her fingers, was introduced to a fork after this conversation.)
- take their plates to the sink.
- flush the toilet!!! I cannot stress this enough.
- use a tissue for their nose, rather than a finger and a mouth. Please, I beg you.
- get themselves ready on time for school in the morning.

The getting ready for school on time piece is a good example of the switch in my brain. Suddenly, I'm leaving the breakfast table after 20 minutes and getting myself ready for work, rather than sitting and coddling Monkey, the slowest eater on earth, through her breakfast. One week I can't stand the thought of my poor baby finishing her breakfast alone, the next week I'm setting the timer and totally out of there when it goes off, sure she can handle it. And she can.

So there is the "what 4 year olds do," conversation that I had with them, and then there is the "what 4 year olds actually do" experience they are demonstrating to me. Some parts of it are awesome. Complete conversations, logical reasoning, understanding safety issues, responding to consequences. Then there are things that throw me off. Like when Monkey asked me, "Do 4-year-olds get to have their own phone?" When I said "no," she began asking, and asking, when, oh when, could she get her own phone? Then there is Turtle, who won't get off my back with the questions about Santa. I swear that girl is on her way to being a trial lawyer. I don't like making up lies in response to her reasonable questions, so I'll admit that I won't be sorry if some other savvy kid spills the beans in a couple of years. But not this year, please.

Monkey tells me about once a week she is going to marry this boy she knows, Vishnu. Today I asked her, why Vishnu? She said it's because he wants to marry her. I almost tried to explain that you don't marry someone just because he wants to marry you, but I let that go, for now. But I do take every opportunity to remind them that the right age to get married is about 29 or 30, and when they ask when they will get to have their own babies, I say, "oh after you're married and you're about 31 or 32, maybe, if you've finished graduate school and started your career." I have no doubt this will totally backfire but I can't help myself.

So one last story. Today I took Turtle and Monkey to Target to buy a birthday gift for a boy in Monkey's class (not her fiance), and when I asked her what she thought he might like, she said, "maybe a race car!" Monkey seems really into race cars and I thought about getting her one for her birthday but never got around to it. I decided I'd let her pick one out for herself after we found the gift for her friend, a rare treat because I never buy them toys when I take them to the store with me. Anyway, as soon as we got near the kids' area, Turtle saw a pink sweater dress with silvery thread and asked if she could have it. I said, "Let's go look at toys first, and then we can look at clothes."

Monkey browsed all the cars and then we moved on to action figures. She eventually settled on a talking Spiderman for her friend. When I told her she could get something for herself too, and tried to take her back to the car section, do you know what she picked out instead? A walking Ironman! She said, "I like robots and I think Daddy will like it too." So, she got herself a robot that just happens to be named Ironman and she likes to watch it walk around. (She was watching so intently this evening that she literally just pooped in her pants rather than tear herself away to go to the bathroom, but that's not part of this story). Then, in the middle of the toy section, where I was nervously watching Turtle eyeing all the Disney princess stuff, I said, "ok, Turtle, you can pick something too." And she said, "I want clothes!" and ran straight to the pink sweater dress we'd seen earlier. I honestly did not know it was possible for a preschool-aged child to pick clothes over toys, but there you go. We came home with an Ironman and a sparkly pink sweater dress.

My 4-year-olds are awesome.

Help!

Why is a cat's tongue scratchy? Why does Miss Hannigan not like little girls? Why do they call a piano a piano? Is Santa Clause real? What does adopted mean? Does God have to follow the law? What does rheumatism mean? Who made us? What does a six look like? What is your mom's name? Are you a grandma? How do you say thirsty in Spanish? How do you turn this thing off? Are you washing my pink?*


I need a book titled, "How to Answer 40,000 Questions a Day without Losing Your Mind." Or a case of wine. Either would be helpful. Thank you.

*this was the complete question.

Nearly 4 Smarty Pants

On Sunday, on the way to church, I told the girls to tell Twin Daddy what we'd talked about the day before, about how once they turned 4, they would have to leave Loveys at home and not chew on them in the car anymore.

"So, we'll leave them at home, but you can still chew on Lovey while you watch TV or when you're in bed, right?" I said, summarizing our agreement.

"Yes," said Turtle, "but it will be ok because we'll have our big kid beds when we turn 4."

I turned around and said, "Big kid beds???"

"Yes, Mommy," chimed in Monkey. "You get big kid beds when you are 4."

Twin Daddy and I looked at each other in surprise, shock, horror, amusement. Then we both started talking at the same time, things like, "Really?" and "We didn't know you wanted big kid beds" and "We'll have to talk about it."

I was still looking and them, and they each were looking at me like I was crazy, which is a look I've seen before. But then, a first. They looked at each other and exchanged a glance that said, "Can you believe these idiots are our parents?"

I turned around in my seat, bewildered. Twin Daddy was muttering to himself and shaking his head. "Geesh. Twins. Two beds."

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Tonight I was reading a bedtime story to the girls, and when I don't like the message of a book, I edit while I read. Tonight the book was about Percival, a caterpillar who feels sorry for himself through the whole book that he is plain brown when all his insect friends are so colorful and beautiful. It ends NOT when he decides that brown is beautiful too, but when he turns into a colorful butterfly "and is not so plain any more."

So I had left out all the parts about how sad he was to be plain and in lieu of the last line I said, "and then he was all the colors of the rainbow." Turtle pointed to the pink stripe in his wings and said, "Pink is not in the rainbow." Then Monkey pointed to the white dots and said, "White is not in the rainbow either."

"Oh, all right," I said, "It shouldn't say that. Next time I'll say 'Then he was all the colors he had admired so much.'"

They looked a little dubious. I think they're on to me.

More words

Here are a few funny things I've heard lately.

"If a fox comes in, the lifeguard will blow its whistle so the children will know there is a fox here."

- Turtle, at the baby pool at Little Stacy Park

"Mommy is fat, right Sissy?"

- Monkey, out of the blue

"It's like a slimy, disss-gusting, decayed pumpkin."

- Monkey, describing poop

"Wow Mommy, you're amazing!"

- Monkey, after I showed her how to tear a perforated sheet of paper

"Yay Mommy, I LOVE you!"

- Turtle, after I told her that Barney is available On Demand.

Words

Tonight I got what I think is my first, "I don't love you Mommy!" from Turtle. I wasn't too taken aback, since I've heard that about twice a day for the last six months from Monkey. I think I was more surprised to suddenly realize, right after Turtle said it, that I didn't remember ever hearing her say it before. As hard as I try not to, I'm always lumping them together, and so in my mind, "they" said that all the time.

Each girl has had more positive phrasing lately too. In describing an activity she did in her Montessori classroom on Friday, Monkey said, "It's very challenging work." She kind of stumbled on "challenging" but she got it out, and I have to say I was pretty impressed. Then I heard Turtle recently talking to her dolls, saying, "Ok, here are your options."

Since I know they are picking up more complex language left and right, tonight as I read them a story I explained to them that a doll in the book was "symbolic" of something else, and did my best to explain what symbolic means. I don't know if they understood, but they were both quietly engrossed in my explanation, so I know they were at least impressed with my big word.

The Fire Truck series

Monkey has drawn a fire truck every day this week. She will ask for paper and markers, get them all set up, and then say, "I'm ready for my investigation." Then she goes and plays with her fire truck for awhile, holding it in her hands, looking at the ladder and the firefighters, pushing the siren button, and pushing the truck around on the ground. Then she sits down for about 20 minutes and works on her fire truck drawing. It's always an "abstract" drawing, and she has changed around the location of the tires and the ladder every day, and put different firefighters in each picture.

She also likes to alternately pretend she is a 10-year-old boy that we know, Texas Ranger Josh Hamilton, and a ballerina.

Just another little peek into the growing brains over here . . . .

Swiper

Out of the blue . . .

Turtle: Swiper (from Dora) doesn't swipe things anymore. He only swipes Nazis.

Twin Momma, startled: Did you say Nazis?

Turtle: Yes

Twin Momma: Do you remember what a Nazi is?

Turtle and Monkey in unison: A bad soldier.

I have no explanation for this. I guess Turtle somehow connected the bad guys from the Sound of Music with Swiper. She didn't elaborate, just went back to bouncing around the house. Just wanted to share a peek into this little brain . . .

Still Here

Oh my goodness, where have I been? I'm so embarrassed by my sporadic posting that I've considered closing the blog down but I just can't bring myself to do it. I don't know if anyone will even read this as I'm sure even my most loyal readers have long ago stopped checking my website for updates.

So, I guess I can just write like no one's watching. And what would I write about if I thought no one was watching? Hmm. Let's start with Rob Lowe. He graced the cover of Vanity Fair last month and I've been meaning to tell someone that I nearly fainted in the grocery store check-out line when I saw it. You may think I'm exaggerating, but I'm telling you I saw a little black around the edges of my eyes and my heart kept jumping from my throat to my gut as I tried to catch my breath. The man is hot, is what I'm saying, and has been my #1 heartthrob since I was about 10 years old. Do you think it is just a random happenstance that I married a lanky man with dark hair, blue eyes and high cheekbones? I don't think so people. I had a Rob Lowe Tiger Beat centerfold pinned over the head of my bed that I kissed before bedtime for a lot of my tween years. Those looks were embedded into my consciousness.

As a side note, I did not buy the Vanity Fair issue. I can't have that thing around the house - it would be like looking directly at the sun all the time. The image seared in my brain is much easier to handle.

Let's see, what else. It's kind of been all-Oprah all the time over here. I am a huge fan (in substance, as opposed to solely in appearance as is the case with Mr. Lowe) and I accepted her departure with as much grace as I could muster. Having a weekly Oprah fix over on OWN will help, and I plan to save her final episode on my DVR indefinitely.

Several other noteworthy events have gone on here that are actually about me and not about my television friends. First off, I celebrated turning 39 last Sunday by completing a sprint-distance triathlon. I trained quite a bit for it and had a lot of fun and plan to do more this year. Secondly, I started doing some legal work from home on a part-time contract basis. And those two short sentences actually fully explain why I haven't posted a thing in this blog in nearly 2 months. Between squeezing training and working into the hours of 9-2 M-F and trying to do everything else that I used to do in those hours some other time and handling the resulting emotional fallout from being less available for Monkey, I stretched myself a little thin. So I'm taking a break from intensive training, and trying not to care about how "everything else" is no longer getting done. Those two things have already helped this past week with Monkey's behavior, which in turn has given me more energy, and voila, here is a blog post.

This blog is supposed to be about the kids, and next time it will be. If I could just force myself to sit down for three minutes a day and write the funniest thing they said that day, this would be a great blog. Unfortunately, now it's late and I can't think of anything I can write about them in 3 minutes or less so you'll have to be satisfied with my telling you that they are just fine. And that I'm too embarrassed to tell you how many episodes of Bubble Guppies they watched today. "Everything else" does have to get done sometime, doesn't it?

Turtle's Wisdom

There are a million things to write and I keep meaning to get them all down, but every night I look up and it's past 10 and I'm tired and I still haven't unloaded the dryer, and so I never get around to posting. But today Turtle said something too funny to put off until later. I was helping her get ready for her nap and she was twirling around the room - she likes to be a ballerina about 98% of the time. She asked me to dance with her so I did a few little pretend ballerina steps that I've picked up from watching Angelina Ballerina. She stopped, shook her head, and said, "No, mommy, you don't dance. Mommies just do the dishes and stuff like that." Then she plopped herself into her bed with Mr. Lovie and snuggled in while I rolled on the floor laughing.

She's not ALL ballerina though. They have been doing lots of little science projects at preschool and last week, after I handed her a cup of water, she said, "Mommy, water is liquid and ice is a solid." "Yes, you're right," I said out loud, thinking to myself, "OMG, we have got to start putting more money in her 529 account to pay for this science prodigy to go to M.I.T.!" Then the other night as she was going to the bathroom at bedtime, she said, "Daddy, pee pee is a liquid and poo poo is a solid." And she cracked up.

So I'm going to hold off on panicking about paying for M.I.T. It was a good cross-application of her science knowledge, but the girl's favorite punch line is still "poo poo."

Conversation

I heard the end of this conversation as we were getting the girls ready for bed tonight:

Monkey: ". . . . so boys work to earn money."

Twin Daddy: "Honey, listen. Both boys AND girls work to earn money. Mommy chose to stay home with you and take care of you. But before you were born, she had a job where she earned money. And she is looking for a job again. Mommy is very, very smart and does really, really good work at her jobs."

Monkey: "But she's not as good at cooking."

Twin Daddy: "Well . . . "

Me: "I'm very happy with honesty here. Let's not pretend."

Twin Daddy: "Maybe it's not her greatest strength."

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It's no accident that my cooking came up tonight, a night when I threw the chicken I made directly into the garbage after dinner. Twin Daddy was the only one who ate any, the girls refused to eat it and I took one bite and then served the three of us cold hot dogs directly from the package. The potatoes were undercooked and the green beans were overcooked and I complained the whole time about how awful it all was. I do this most nights because, frankly, I hate my cooking. It's not usually "throw it directly into the garbage" bad, but I have a feeling it just doesn't taste very good to me because I'm so annoyed I had to cook it.

Saturday morning the girls were asking if Twin Daddy was going to make breakfast. We were all cuddling together in our big bed, playing around, and I asked who they thought was a better cook, Daddy or Mommy. This was a set up, because I certainly know the answer and was just curious what they thought. They both yelled, "Daddy!" and I agreed, saying, "I'm not as good as Daddy at cooking." Monkey certainly recalled that point tonight! I swear, sometimes I fantasize about getting a job solely for the purpose of persuading Twin Daddy to quit his and take over all cooking duties full time. We'd all be in food heaven, and Monkey would learn first hand that girls can bring home the bacon, too.

Jokes and More

Turtle and Monkey each made up a new joke over the weekend. Both have some basis in our continuing favorite subject, The Sound of Music. Monkey's joke needs a little set up. Toward the end of the movie, the von Trapp family sings in the Salzburg Music Festival, and when they sing their famous, "So Long, Farewell" song, Leisl and Freiderick sing "Adieu, Adieu, to you and you and you." So here is Monkey's joke:

Monkey: "What would happen if Leisl had the sniffles?"

Me: "I don't know, what would happen?"

Monkey: "She would say, "Achoo, Achoo, to you and you and you!"

Turtle's is more self-explanatory.

Turtle: "What do you call a nun's underwear?"

Me: "I don't know, what do you call them?"

Turtle: "Nunderwear!"

Here are a couple of other ridiculously clever things they said today. We met with Twin Daddy for lunch this afternoon, and when we got in the car Monkey said, "If someone tried to call us while we were at lunch, they had to leave a message, because we were in a meeting with Daddy."

Then there was this morning. I put together a simple craft project for the girls - making a little "garden" out of the base of a cardboard egg carton by pushing colorful popsicle sticks through the egg holders, and then attaching springtime foam stickers (birds, ladybugs, butterflies, flowers, etc.) to each stick and around their bases. This was the first time they actually both did a craft project that I assembled, to completion, following my instructions and with the finished project being as I envisioned. That in itself was exciting. But in the middle of it Turtle said, "Making my garden is so much fun Mommy! I'm glad you had this idea." I am too.

Potty Talk

A couple of people have asked for a new post but I've been so busy doing nothing and everything that I'm just now finding a minute to write. I was inspired today when I saw our "potty tongs" in the garage and knew I had found my next subject. So hold on to your hats people, you are in for a real treat.

Awhile back - it could have been last October or it could have been January, because frankly I've lost all track of time - Turtle called out to me, "Mommy, I dropped my clippie in the potty!" Things occasional fall in the toilet around here; even Mr. Lovey has had a swim in the potty, so I just braced myself and went in. I took a look and there, directly underneath what was surely the biggest poop Turtle has ever produced, was a hair clip laying deep inside the pot. This was my cue to declare the bathroom off limits and send Turtle after Twin Daddy. If he hadn't been home I would have just locked up the bathroom and waited for him because I simply couldn't deal with it.

After he evaluated the situation and thought about it for awhile, he found some old tongs in the kitchen and proceeded to fish out the hair clip while I hid in my bedroom trying not to vomit. I assumed he threw the tongs in the garbage along with the clip, but he wisely washed them carefully and put them in the garage for "next time." And there has already been a "next time" where he had to fish out half a roll of soggy toilet paper clogging up the same toilet. The man thinks ahead, is all I'm saying. And every time I see those potty tongs, I'm proud I had the foresight to marry him.

We've had a lot of potty drama around here in the last couple of weeks, from a vomit-and-fever-producing stomach virus hitting each of the girls to a colonoscopy for Twin Daddy to remove a benign polyp. But potty humor is also very hip these days, with "poo poo" being the punch line of most of the "jokes" the girls try to tell. So tonight at bedtime Monkey kept telling me Knock Knock jokes with the Knocker being some version of "poo poo," like "Poo poo li do di." "Poo poo li do di who?" I asked. "Poo poo li do di Poo Poo!" After a few inane rounds of that, I tried to teach her, "Banana, Banana Who, Banana, Banana Who, Orange, Orange you glad I didn't say Banana?" She just stared at me blankly. The girl can sing all the words to Edelweiss but she just didn't get the joke. So I said, "Orange Poo Poo!" instead, and she shrieked with laughter.

I hope for your sake that I'll be inspired by something less vulgar next time I blog. But then it won't be nearly as interesting, will it?

Preschool: The first two weeks

Here's a news flash: waking up at 6:30 AM every day is hard! But except for having to drag myself out of bed in the dead of night, preschool is going pretty well. The girls cooperate in getting themselves ready to go every day, and complain every afternoon when I pick them up that, "it's too soon, I'm not ready, no you go away mommy and come back later."

I kind of cleared out the entire month of January thinking it would take at least that long for all of us to adjust to our new schedule, and that it would probably take Monkey another month after that to stop crying when I dropped her off or for her sleep to get back on track. But - shockingly - I think we are already used to our new routine. The other day Monkey was complaining because she didn't want to stay home on Saturday - she wanted to go to school! Now that's a girl after my own heart. I loved going to school, hated to stay home, and dreaded summer vacation.

Since preschool is all peaches and roses, I'll tell you about something slightly more interesting. During the Christmas break, Turtle and Monkey finally watched their first movie! Don't get too excited. It was at home, recorded off the television, and watched over three nights with me controlling the remote. But I'm happy to say that some portion of The Sound of Music is currently showing in our home every single day, is in the CD player in the car, and at least one movie scene is being performed nightly by the girls. Tonight, we acted out the scenes where the kids put a frog in Maria's pocket (Turtle shoved her Lovey in my waistband), and where Maria sits on a pine cone (Monkey put her Yoda doll in a chair for me to sit on). They most like to play Leisl, telling everyone who will listen that they are 16 and singing "I'd like to stay and taste my first champagne." The Sound of Music is one of my absolute favorite movies of all time, so watching it every single day and memorizing all the songs and dialog is a real treat.

I have to say, I totally love acting out the scenes with them. It reminds me of my tween years, when I basically did exactly the same thing: memorize movies and act them out. But having a couple of always-willing actresses/sidekicks to direct is even more fun. I can't wait to introduce them to my other favorite pastime of my tweens: choreographing dances to 80s music. They'll be rocking down to Electric Avenue before you know it.

Chapter 2

This morning Turtle and Monkey started their new preschool: a Montessori school about 15 minutes from our house where they will go every day, 8:30-2:30. They were very excited, and they both left their Lovies in the car with a cheerful "See you after school Lovey." In the past, Monkey has literally had to be peeled off me, screaming, every other time we've left her somewhere for the first time, and clung to her Lovey for dear life. Today she gave me a hug and kiss and waved good-bye, then went about her work. Turtle was just as quick to say good-bye. Twin Daddy and I were surprised and absolutely thrilled. We went out for a taco and then came home to tackle the piles that have been accumulating on the office desk for the last three years. I just took artwork from the daycare the girls went to for a short time in 2008 to the recycling bin.

I thought I might have more mixed feelings today, but I've been preparing for this since early October and I think I've already shed the few tears I had. I tried to make myself really pay attention to my feelings, so I wouldn't just gloss over this transition, and this is what happened:

I stopped by a stay-at-home mom friend's house today around noon to drop something off. In her front yard was a double stroller not quite unpacked from a morning walk, a soccer net in the driveway, and a few toys strewn throughout the yard. I shuddered at the thought of what she'd been up to all morning and thought, "Well, I guess I really am ready for them to be at school every day."

So right now I'm happy they are happy, and I'm ready to face the next stage in all of our lives, whatever that may hold. For me it will involve getting some sort of part-time paid employment relatively soon, and trying to sort through our house in the meantime. Of course, I reserve the absolute right to bemoan this change in a few months or a year or two years, and to do a complete 180 and say how much I miss having them at home and to long for the days when my every morning was filled with toys and strollers. But for now, we're all good.