Ordinary day #1

I mentioned that I wouldn't blog about every routine day.  This was the first such day.  However, one can argue that, by definition, the first routine day isn't actually a routine day, so I thought I'd give a sense of what a routine day will be like around here.

Beginning next week, I'll take Lindsey to early morning child care at her school on my way to work on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  Stace will come to the house in the mornings on Tuesdays and Thursdays to send Lindsey off at her regular time. Lindsey's bus doesn't come until 8:30, which would be too late for me to get to work every day.  Stace will also plan on being around on Tuesday and Thursday evenings to help with dinner and homework and to spend time with the kids.  School only goes for two more months, so that's what we'll do through the end of the school year.

After laying low over the weekend, Stace was back in the swing of things today, and we were all glad to see her. She came to the house this morning to get Lindsey off to school and then was back tonight to make dinner for us.  It was good to have her here.

I should report that so far, the kids seem to be doing just fine.  Lindsey hasn't even mentioned the divorce for a couple of days.  We have teachers and school couselors keeping an eye on the kids for signs of trouble, but so far, everything seems to be going as well as we could expect.  My best description for Tanner is "bemused."  He's always had a fairly healthy ability to handle life's curveballs, and he seems to find this one interesting more than anything else.  I have to remember that he's only four years away from being out of the house.  He's already pretty independent, and this actually hasn't changed his world very much.

[Amusing side note from the other day, which maybe illustrates Tanner's ability to roll with things.  The kids were annoying each other as usual, and Tanner was getting so tired of Lindsey that he finally burst out with something to the effect of, "I'm so glad that we're not blood relatives!"  Lindsey's response indicated that the feeling was mutual.  And then life went on for the Wood family as normal.  No one gets too freaked out over things.]

It's interesting to see how much frou-frou you can strip from your life when you need to.  Over the past month, my world has shrunk considerably, but it's okay.  At the risk of sounding a bit sappy, I'm finding that I enjoy the dumb little things like putting the kids to bed or counting the seconds to make sure that Lindsey brushes her teeth long enough at night.  Last night, when I went into her room to check on her before I went to bed, I was adjusting her blankets because she was too hot.  She opened her eyes, looked at me, and asked, "Did you make it sparkly?"  Then she rolled over and went back to sleep.  I'd love to know what she was dreaming about.

Well, this was going to be a very short post, and I haven't even said everything I was thinking of saying.  We'll have to call it a night for now.