Who Needs a Coat When It's Only 17 Degrees?

Finally in a coat

My children have wonderful, warm, winter coats. You wouldn't know it though, because they don't actually wear them much.

Today, at 17 degrees (F) outside this morning, my children were protesting that it wasn't cold and there wasn't any reason to wear coats. We met in the middle after a loud discussion over it: they had on hoodies (zipped was a bonus), and their coats traveled in the middle seat of the car to Kal's basketball games.

Today is also the annual 4-H Pancake Day, the biggest fundraiser of the year for our county 4-H. With whole hog sausage dripping in syrup, pancakes just become the side dish. I love going there and seeing half of Miami County show up. We see so many familiar...

(This is the break in the 10 minutes of writing. It's not easy getting 10 whole minutes to myself during the course of the day. I'll also be changing tenses now, since the break included eating an early dinner at The Great Sausage Eating, a.k.a. 4-H Pancake Day.)

...faces every year. This year, we saw The Tooth Lady. She's the friendly, cheerful dental hygienist that we always see for cleanings. My kids couldn't remember her name, so she became The Tooth Lady.

Back to the coat issue for a minute, I saw a new mom rant on Facebook about how she sees moms all bundled up in the cold weather while the kids are running around without coats, and she wants to shake the mom and give coats to the kids. Well... maybe she'll eat her words later if it's such a fight to get her kids into coats, that she gives up when it's just running in and out of stores. (Disclaimer: I know there are real cases where kids don't own adequate clothing. That's not who I'm talking about here.)

I know I've had to eat every word I've ever said my kids would always, or never, do. Or "don't they ever spank?" Or "my kid won't act like that in the grocery store!" Or "my kids will wear clean, matching clothes all the time!" Or just fill in the blanks. I've said it or thought it, and now I'm feasting on my words.

So, while we strive to train our children the right way and keep the house decent, life is life, and raising children isn't the same across the board. It's rewarding, exhausting, emotional, joyful, and forever changing.

By the way, thank you to my mom and dad for all they put up with! I'm getting a glimpse now with our children.