The Circle of Life

When I picked up Grace from the babysitter's this week, my heart sank when our fabulous babysitter said, "We had a little incident today." Oh, how I dread those words.

This particular incident involved Grace biting a little boy her age. When we tried to talk to her about it, she seemed particularly pleased with herself. She told everyone she saw that night, "I bit D---" in a very matter-of-fact tone. We talked about it a lot, and on the steps to the babysitter's the next day she kept saying, "No biting D--, no biting D--"

I should have expected a biter in our family. After all, Daniel still shares horror stories of childhood when I used to chase him around, mouth open, ready to bite. Apparently, he is stilled scarred by this torture.

Maybe this is just one of those Lion King moments in our home. With Grace biting her brothers and her friends, the circle of life is now complete.

An Inconvenient Truth

Eight years ago, we had one small child and decided it was time to stop our transitory, apartment lifestyle and settle down in a house. At the time, the little 3 bedroom/1 bath home seemed cute and endlessly roomy. So roomy, in fact, that we immediately begin filling it with stuff: couches, kitchen table, actual beds and dressers, toys, toys, toys, more children, two dogs, dead goldfish--you get the picture.

Now we are in the painful process of moving all that stuff, and in the course of moving, I've discovered something: we are disgusting. Oh, I thought we were I okay. I vacuum regularly, dust, wash blinds, scrub toilets, etc., but as we've moved all our junk out I learned I was wrong, very, very wrong.

Here are a few nasty things I've discovered in the process: dried out banana peel behind cabinet, someone's nose nugget collection on a previously covered wall, mysterious brown chunks under frame of boy's bed, LOTs of dust and lint, and dog hair in every crevice between the floorboards and carpet. Eeew!

We are filthy. No wonder I always have allergies. How did we come to this?