Burp (verb) syn. bolt, rout, ruck

Burp verb

1. noisily release air from the stomach through the mouth; belch.

2. a noise made by air released from the stomach; a belch.

Synonyms: bolt, rout, ruck

Earliest known use: 1929

My eight-year-old son has discovered the art of burping.  I don’t know where he stores them in his wiry frame, but he’s mastered a long, loud release of wind that rumbles through the air like freight train rattling down the tracks.  I’m pretty sure he learned the skill – practices it, daily – with the other third grade boys in the back seats of the school bus. 

For the most part, I dismiss his frequent eruptions.  I figure, it’s part of having a boy and, while I don’t want to be talked at or hear the alphabet song sung in burp (a skill he’s also working on), I’ve decided to save my outrage for other more offensive aerial explosions that I’m sure are soon to become a hobby as well.   

The burps, though, light a fuse in my otherwise rarely lit husband.  He says the mere sound of it is like nails on a chalkboard.  I find this both surprising – he is a former boy, after all – and amusing.  My husband is so seldom angry while I’m so frequently irritated, it does my heart good to see him lose his parental cool from time to time. 

We both agree on one thing, though, no burping at the dinner table.  Otherwise, in the living room, the van, I tell my husband he’s just going to have to let it go.  He gives me a pained expression in reply. 

//

I have a habit, sometimes, of repeating things.   Every couple of months or so, I turn to my husband in the middle of the mundane and announce in a voice filled with surprise, “Apples make me burp.”  Usually, I say this after burping, as though I myself am just discovering the funny little quirk.

 

“I know,” he says, “you told me that.”

“Oh,” I say.

// 

One night, sitting on the couch watching TV, my husband burped.  “Ba-ba-ba-bup,” he said, opening and shutting his mouth as the air passed, breaking it into a multi syllabic expression. 

I looked at him.  “What was that?” I asked. 

“A burp,” he said.  “It’s what you do.”

“What?!  I don’t do that!” I said, incredulous.

“Yes, you do,” he said, surprised by my denial.  “You do it all the time.”  

“No, I don’t,” I replied, scrunching my forehead as though searching through a mental catalog of past burps.  “I never do that.”

He couldn’t believe my denial and I couldn’t believe his accusation, so we returned to watching TV as the long-married are want to do during an argument, especially if they want to stay long-married.  Later though, who could say how long – a day? a week? – I happened to burp with my husband nearby. 

“Ba-ba-ba-bup!” I said.  Shocked, I looked him in the eye and laughed.  “Oh, my gosh!  You’re right, I do do that!”

//

I’ll never forget learning to burp a baby, watching the lactation consultant sit my tiny, hours old daughter on her knee.  She cupped her hand just under the baby’s jaw bone, tilting her fragile body forward precariously, pounding with her other hand on the soft, rounded back.  Holding my daughter that way, whacking her back, felt completely counter intuitive, but I quickly learned that, aside from slinging her onto my shoulder with my bone pressed just so against her diaphragm, it was the best way to get a burp.  

There are few things as satisfying as mastering the art of burping a baby and knowing, with that hearty gush of air, that you’ve saved your baby pain and yourself hours of broken sleep.

//

I started out this morning wanting to write about fish burps.  Fish burps, I now know, are a common side effect of fish oil supplements.  Review after review on Amazon had customers who switched from one product to another explaining, “I couldn’t take the burps anymore!”  The highest complement for fish oil online seemed less to do with its effectiveness than with the consumer’s relief, “No fish burps!”

I don’t like fish and I was hoping maybe the general sense of alarm over fish burps was nothing more than hysteria.  But then I got my first fish burp last week.  It was round and full, a small explosion of fishiness that rolled up into my mouth, silently.  I was shocked, surprised.  I thought to myself, “Fish burp!”  Then I texted my husband, who loves fish and who I assumed would be more than a little envious.  

“I had my first fish burp,” I wrote. 

“How was it?” he replied.

“Fishy,” I wrote.

//

It occurs to me that, unlike the word ‘hiccup,’ which can be used to describe an unexpected interruption, the word ‘burp’ has no positive use aside from its frowned-upon bodily function.  This, I think, is too bad.  Is there no potential for positive association with the humble burp?  

Author Anne Lamott has a well-loved quote in which she describes laughter as "carbonated holiness."  It's a lovely idea, but we all know what carbonation leads to - an accumulation of air in the stomach that must somehow be released.  Maybe, then we could push Lamott's metaphor to the extreme and suggest that burps themselves are unexpected explosions of holiness.  Maybe.  

The truth is, I didn't know what to write about this morning, except I kept thinking about (and enjoying) those round, full fish burps and the thought of those burps - the thought of writing about them - felt like a lump of air building pressure right in the center of my writer's digestive system.  It soon became clear I wasn't going to have room to get much else done if I didn't make way, somehow, for that content to escape.  So, I wrote almost 1000 words on burps and found I had much more to say than I thought I did and perhaps this post itself is a bit of a 'noise made by air released.'  I suspect, like every good burp, it's hit you in one way or another - igniting offense, laughter or a simple reflective pause.  And, now that I think about it, that's what holy things always tend to do.  

I Hate Skittles

I hate Skittles. 

I do not want to, as the slogan goes, "Taste the rainbow."

If a Skittle accidentally fell into my mouth, I would spit it out.  This is how I feel about most candy.  Except for sour patch kids.

Levi and Isaiah, however, like every other four-year-old alive, LOVE Skittles. 

And M&Ms.  

And Blow Pops. 

And all the other Crack-in-a-wrapper kids get at Halloween. 

After a night of Trick-or-treat, Isaiah started the candy-consumption-negotiations first thing this morning.  I don’t think he was even all the way downstairs before he started in.  In fact, he fell halfway down the stairs because he was lugging his bag of candy along, slung over his shoulder like a little Santa’s sack filled with sugar. 

He very quickly negotiated the potential consumption of one piece of candy after lunch.  I know this because he reminded me of it before breakfast, after breakfast, before preschool, after preschool, before lunch, etc.  

The candy of choice?  A full size bag of Skittles. 

The twins waited all morning for that candy which, for a four-year-old, is basically a lifetime. 

Isaiah’s bag was quickly opened, half-eaten, and spilled and picked-up twice in the five or so minutes we waited after lunch before heading to their older brother’s Halloween parade.  Foreseeing the potential for a disastrous candy spill at the parade, I went to get a zip-lock bag for both boys.  I planned to open Levi’s bag and pour both into separate preschooler-compatible packaging. 

I forgot, however, that a four-year-old tears into a candy-wrapper like a squirrel attacking a plastic feeder full of sunflower seeds.  Place a thin layer of plastic between a toddler and a handful of chocolate M&Ms and stand back – all sorts of destruction is about to ensue.

One second we were ready, almost out the door for the parade, then Levi’s bag of Skittles exploded shooting a rainbow of sugar all over the kitchen floor.  He ripped open the whole side of his bag in one deft, semi-miraculous movement and Skittles rained down, scattering (or would that be “skittling”?) under the island, across the rug, behind the heavy iron radiator. 

This, of course, was a crisis for him – children hunt spilled candy like the shepherd hunting his lost sheep in Luke’s gospel, or the women hunting her lost coin.  Kids hunt lost candy with the kind of determination and passion that God’s hunts lost souls.

Crisis.

This was less than twenty-four hours after confection-ageddon (aka Trick or Treat) and I had already had it up to HERE with sweets. 

Remember the candy-consumption-negotiations that started in the pre-dawn hours of the day? 

And the incessant reminders? 

I wanted to explode like that bag of Skittles. 

One preschooler was crying while the other tried to find and consume as many of his brother’s lost treats as he could and all I wanted to do was hunt down the person who thought it was a good idea to give little people bags of candy bigger than their faces. 

I did not scream, though, like I wanted to, did not stomp on the candy in rage.  I dug deep within, past the part that had it up to HERE and somehow saw for one brief second the rainbow right there in front of me.  I saw how rainbows lead to hidden treasure and rather than breaking the moment further, I reached for the pot of gold.  

I knelt down beside the crying boy and the thieving boy and was thankful the dog at least was outside.

With due diligence, most of the loss was recovered.  

We put the rainbow in a new bag and I zipped it tight. 

Then we ran out the door together, two boys clutching baggies of brightness and one Mama carrying a rainbow in her heart.

//

By the way, we did miss one red Skittle.  This I know, because the dog found it . . . and spat it out. 

Even the dog knows better.          

Crazy (Maybe My Mother-in-law Was Right)

“I have two bad things to tell you and one good," he said.  "Which do you want to hear first?"

“Bad news," I replied.

“The bad news is, my Mom read your postcard AND she hates the word ‘crazy.’ It’s like a swear word to her.” 

What?  Really? I thought. 

“The good news is, she liked the bible verses you put on the back.”

During the first summer we dated, I sent John a postcard.  One side showed the cover photo for the musical “Crazy for You” with the play’s title in large letters.  I was completely dumbfounded and not a little offended by the "bad news" and also pleased in a secret way that I’d managed to both impress and offend his mother in one fell swoop. 

But really, ‘crazy’ as a bad word? 

That’s just crazy.

//

“We’re just as crazy as them,” my husband said, bleary-eyed in the late-night-kitchen calm, “only our crazy is different.”

He was talking about our good friends, the ones who have three kids and keep a busy schedule of sports, scouts and all manner of fun activities.  I’d never thought about it that way, but immediately I recognized it as true. 

Maybe it’s the fact that we’ve gone through two dogs in the past month, or the way that more than one person has suggested we charge admission to our little “zoo.”  Yes, the upstairs of our house is torn to pieces, with exposed beams and wiring in the walls, holes in the floors where our littlest cat (who we strongly suspect may be pregnant) hides. 

But crazy? Us?

Of course.

That’s when I realized - you can’t see your own crazy.

It’s like we all have a mirror we look in to check for signs of crazy, but our mirror’s flawed with incredible blind-spots for the activities, dramas and investments we value most.  Holding the mirror up to others it’s obvious, “Man, they’re CRAZY.”  But us?  

No way.

//

Turns out we’re all a little bit crazy, in someone’s opinion. 

Over the years, John and I have developed a little code language regarding our own individual levels of crazy - think of it as the equivalent of a subtle hand gesture telling a close companion they have a glaring piece of spinach in their teeth.  This works because, even though you may not be able to see your combined familial level of crazy, a spouse can be very helpful in determining another spouse’s individual level of crazy. 

“You’re doing it again,” he says

By now, fifteen years in, I usually know pretty quickly what he’s talking about (depending, of course, on how far gone I am).  By “it” he means “crazy eyes,” this habit I have of talking loud and fast while my eyes ping-pong around in their sockets.  Crazy-eyes are a warning sign for me, a symptom of sorts that I’m heading for the edge.  

And you know what?  He does it too. 

Maybe he got it from me. 

Maybe that postcard really was the warning sign his mother thought it was. 

Maybe a certain type of crazy can be transferred from person to person like the plague.  

No, that just sounds crazy.  

Outlaws and Rebels (for "Black Hats" Everywhere)

Don't you just love this old picture I stumbled across online?

[The holiday break's officially over and as I headed out to wait for the bus with the older two, the twins were ecstatic to have a few moments to themselves to "steal" something from the kitchen.  I knew this because they announced their plan over and over again all morning long, eagerly anticipating the moment when they would scavenge for gum and candy in the kitchen cupboards.  The thought of getting away with something gives them such a thrill and, since half the time it's a bag of bread from the drawer or a giant stalk of broccoli when my back is turned, I often let them get away with it.  Ah, such is the luck of youngest children.  

This weekend we shared dinner with friends who also have four children spread in age just as ours are, but their twins (girls) are about a year younger.  It's always good to be with them, good to remember how it was (just a year ago), to feel that things have gotten a little easier and commiserate on how hard it all continues to be.  All of this brought to mind this old post from 2013.  Enjoy!]

"They crucified two rebels with him, one on his left and one on his right." Matthew 27:38

 

My 18 month-old twins saunter through the house with swaggering bravado like two black-hats straight out of the lawless west.  Together, they form a mafia-esque crime-ring, a rebellious conspiracy against law and order and decency.  Trafficking in black market goods pilfered from the pile of floor-sweepings in the kitchen corner, they gather on the back of the love seat, perched in the window to inspect and trade their haul.  

They rip the heads off of their sister’s dolls and leave graffiti on the living room walls and every time I kneel to zip Isaiah’s coat, Levi circles around behind me and roots through my purse.  A gifted pick-pocket, he snatches my wallet and phone with such speed, stealth and precision that my frustration is mixed with marvel. 

When one's finally caught, red-handed, and placed in solitary (ie. the corner) the other comes quickly to the rescue, crouching down beside him, chattering about what I imagine are plans of daring-escape and revenge.  Like true accomplices, though, they quickly turn on each other when caught together at the scene of a crime – a mutually enjoyed destruction turns all finger-pointing and tears when the "fuzz" shows up.  

The other day I watched Levi running through the house with what appeared to be a little shiv.  It sported a jagged, plastic tip and seemed capable of inflicting real harm, so I quickly confiscated it, tossing it into the trash.  

Lying in bed at night my husband and I hear a “scritch, scratch, scritch” on the bedroom wall near our heads.  Levi’s crib sits just on the other side of the wall so we sleep head-to-head, divided only by a few thin inches of plaster.   

We tell ourselves he’s rubbing the nubby bottoms of his footed pajamas against the wall, but listening late into the night, I think of that little shiv and wonder if he isn’t tunneling his way to freedom in a scene straight out of The Fugitive.  Chipping away, one tiny scratch at a time, I picture him tumbling through into our bed some night, his face full of surprise and disappointment to find us there or, more likely, delighted.  

These boys are outlaws, I tell you - how can ones so little, so cute, already have a rap sheet a mile-long?   Looking at their round little faces, their hair all downy-fluff, I'm reminded that we’re all thieves, all outlaws of one sort or another, every last one of us.  We’re all Davids and Delilahs, Judases and Peters bent on greed and self-preservation.  We're all convicted, but not condemned, chiseling our way toward freedom, one tiny crack at a time, until at last we fall through the wall to Love.   

//

What's the worst trick you played as a child?  Did you get away with it??


Linking with the community at Unforced Rhythms.

Swim Lessons (Holding On and Letting Go)

(Photo Source here, CC License.)

Let’s just say it’s, oh, I don’t know . . . 90 degrees in the building that houses the high school's swimming pool.

And humid.  Yes, very humid, like a sauna or a spa, although you'll want to get the very idea of any sort of luxury out of your head right. this. moment.

So, maybe not a spa or sauna, but something more like a tropical jungle.

Yes, that’s it – hot, humid and filled with danger.  

You enter, four children in tow, through the germ-infested high school locker room.  Carrying a bag of towels and toys, your purse strapped across your chest, you herd your children down a long narrow hall, past the toilets, the showers, the lockers, until you emerge, like someone newly born, into the heavy, moist, echo-y cavern of the pool.  

This is where you grab the hands of the littlest ones.  Reflexively, your mama-arms shoot out to catch the One Who Wanders like a lost lamb toward the pool’s edge and the Other Who Is Running and Might Slip.  Little limbs are pulled and stretched as you steer toward the metal bleachers, the five of you forming a bizarre amoeba of tired, sweaty, anxious people.   

The older two, the “swimmers,” are nervous and clingy and the little ones are just plain clingy, unhappy with the Waiting, the Watching, the Lack of Swimming, they will do. 

Patience.  

You are a model of patience, as one then another has to use the bathroom.  Hands are clasped again as you pass the Great Abyss of the pool's edge and shuffle again down the wet, tiled hallway.  

It's never just One who has to pee, there's always Another and so rather than running in and out, you all unfold, unclasp and settle in to that small dirty space with the sink that stopped-up yesterday and stops-up still today.  

You help the littlest one onto a toilet, but the fact that he's wearing his rain boots and you are in a hurry leads to what we'll call “a series of unfortunate events.”  Because he's wearing his rain boots you fail to pull his pants down far enough and because you fail to pull his pants down far enough you also fail to place him far enough back on the potty.  He is therefore perfectly positioned to pee directly over the edge of the potty and into his shorts (at which point I would also like to mention that no one is wearing underwear because you simply cannot find any underwear in the house, possibly due to a small-ish laundry “situation” which has crept up out of nowhere).

Seeing the pee heading for his shorts, you will use your lightening-quick maternal reflexes to throw his legs up into the air, hoping to aim the pee back into the potty but instead causing that incredible stream of urine (how long has it been since he last peed?!) to shoot out, under his shorts and onto the bathroom floor.  Your child is now peeing onto the bathroom floor, but you are determined to avoid wet shorts and a trip to the van for something to change into (do you even HAVE anything for him to change into??) and so you simply keep his legs in the air while the puddle grows.

Let’s just leave that puddle there, shall we? 

Finally, someone, the oldest one is deposited with her class and you cart the other three up two flights of stairs to a second set of more removed bleachers.  Miraculously, no one falls down the Cement Stairwell of Certain Death and you are pleased to see only a small swath of pee soaked shorts on your two-year-old’s back-side as he marches up the stairs. 

Today you brought apples, smart woman that you are.  

This will keep them happy and occupied for sure and, yes, you do cast a none-too-obvious judgmental glance at the couple next to you who’s two-year-old is downing a snack-pack of Chips-Ahoy cookies.  Your gloating, however, is interrupted by the astounding bang your son's apple makes as it falls through the small opening at the bottom of the plexiglass railing, down to the pool level below where it bounces off the bleachers and rolls under a desk.  

This is the same opening you eyed-up again and again on day one, trying to reason out whether a thirty-pound being could in any way possibly be in danger of slipping through it.  Although your maternal instincts argued heavily, your reason won out in determining that your children could not possibly slip through that opening.  

The apple, however, proves to be another story altogether.

Nearly paralyzed with mortification, you watch as the man next to you (yes, the one doling out the Chips-Ahoy cookies that do. not. by the way, ROLL) catches the apple that’s tossed back up by an instructor below.  

Blushing yet?

Your hot, tired, two-year olds cling and climb on you like the tendrils of a plant; if this is the jungle, they are the heavy, swinging vines. 

Then, of course, a half-eaten apple is dropped right there on the ground in front of the other kind mothers and handing it to you, one says, “You’re going to want to wash that.”  

“I have a wipe,” another offers.

But, swallowing your pride and unwilling to face another trip to the bathroom, you brush your hand quickly over the apple to offer the guise of Cleanliness.  Handing it back to your son, you offer up the only explanation you have, “I have four children.” 

Then your son is back to crunching and "building his immune system," just. like. that.

You know, don’t you, that it isn't five minutes before Another One, with big puppy-dog eyes, HAS to go to the bathroom.  Desperate, you suggest, (quite lightly) the possibility that he goes by himself.  This suggestion is met with a look that accuses you of a deep maternal betrayal and you are certain, right then and there that if you do not load up the four of you and head to the bathroom Together, your son will be sharing this very moment with a counselor somewhere, someday.  As in, “My terrible, cold-hearted mother, (gasp!) would not stay with me while I pooped.”

Anxious to avoid abandonment issues, you do what any reasonable woman would do and push down your frustration while you all hike back down the Cement Stairwell of Certain Death, back past the Great Abyss, back through the narrow, wet hallway, being careful to avoid the Pee-Puddle-Stall.  

The pooping commences and you wander, frustrated, between the bathroom and the locker room where your twins have discovered the fun of banging locker doors open and shut. 

“We fit! We fit!” they exclaim which is adorable, of course, seeing them standing there so small and compact in the locker's tiny space.  But you are their Mother and this is the Jungle and you cannot be certain you know how to unlatch those doors, so you convince your two-year-olds that playing in the lockers isn't such a Good Idea and explain how the firemen will have to come and cut them out if they get stuck.  

Finally the pooping is done and you make your way back upstairs again (you know the routine by now, long hallway, Great Abyss, Cement Stairway of Certain Death).  

The first half hour of swim lessons has now passed and, drawing a line in the sand, you convince your six-year-old that he is able to walk down to his class alone - this is the first small victory of your morning. 

But there's another half hour of swim lessons left to endure and despite the help of your daughter, it will be just as eventful as the first.  

You make Two More trips to the bathroom with yet another child professing the desperate need to perform one and then another bodily function.  A toy escapes (by accident? on purpose?) through the opening in the plexiglass railing and when another young swim instructor tosses it up, you catch it with charming ease.  The other Moms are amazed at your good catch - this is yet another small victory.  

You stand now at the railing watching your son who's first in the line of children wearing bright orange life jackets and waiting to jump into the deep end of the pool.  Before jumping he raises his index finger to make one point or another of clarification and then he leaps and you are grateful his teacher doesn't let his head go under.  

He floats, face-up, across the pool and you smile down on him because your eyes, your smile, are like the sun to him and he smiles back seeing you watching him, but his hands never leave the life vest at his chest, because that's what he's been told to do. 

One by one the children leap, like a long line of penguins slipping into the ocean and then they're all bobbing along, like so many brightly colored water bugs.  

It nearly does you in, how small they look drifting in that big square of blue and for one moment in your mind that pool is the universe and you are that child bobbing along, unsure, obeying instructions and hoping against hope to feel (and soon) the familiar nudge of the pool against your head.  

On their way back across the pool, paddling on their stomachs now, one small boy struggles, taking in gulp after gulp of water.  The mothers in the bleachers lean forward as one with a collective intake of air as the struggling boy flips over onto his back, waving his arms in the air and crying, at last, "Help, help!"

It's mere seconds before the teacher's there and the mothers all lean back and exhale as tears spring to your eyes.  

This, you know, is why you've been relegated to the nose-bleed section - you who would leap without hesitation over that plexi-glass wall if need-be, you who have ushered your children safely up and down the Cement Stairwell of Death, you who have circumnavigated the Great Abyss with care and caution.  

You, dear woman, you are their Life Jacket. 

This has been your role for eight years or more and now they're learning to swim and, God-willing, someday you will be tossed aside as they dive, paddle and float through Life.  

 

Finally it's time to go.  

Your son comes shivering up to you with blood-shot eyes.  

“I wish I could do today over,” he says and your heart sinks as you wonder what went wrong.

"Why?" you ask, ready for the flood-gates to open.

“It was so much fun,” he replies. 

Then you are limp with relief as you again clasp hands with your little people and ferry your way down the hallway, across the parking lot and into the van. 

It is nearly the weekend now, no more swim lessons for three whole days.  You will spend the weekend resting and recovering, wondering just how many calories you burned climbing up and down the stairs in that hellish sweat-lodge of stress.  You will eat those calories and more in chips as you sit on the couch with your husband, explaining the fear and the joy of watching them there, the great difficulty of holding on and letting go.  

Come Monday you will all be back there again, learning how to swim. 

We Don't Lick Each Other (The British are Coming!)

 

There are times, as a parent, when you need to establish norms. 

Simple things like the appropriate surfaces for disposing of boogers, whether one may or may not fart on other people, and whether spontaneously licking another human being is ever appropriate.    

So when, for instance, I see Levi lick his brother’s check, I make a firm and direct proclamation, “We don’t lick each other!” 

Or when someone picks their nose while I’m reading to them at bed time and proceeds to wipe it on the wall, I might say, “We don’t wipe our boogers on the wall.” 

As I said, sometimes you need to establish norms. 

While other families may do as they please (Licking? Why, yes, please.   Booger’s on the wall?  Of course, that’s fine art to me!) we here are choosing to dance to a different drum. 

//

“Only 19 and ½ more days of school!” my daughter said.

She may as well have been Paul Revere screaming his midnight warning, so great was my alarm. 

Good God, I thought, where have I been? What’s happened?  The hour draweth nigh!

The British, indeed, are coming. 

The British are coming and they are demanding to be entertained, to be vacation-bible-schooled and swim-lessoned, to be play-dated and day-tripped and, good Lord, I am unprepared. 

Nineteen and a half more days and me without a plan.

//

So I decided to establish some norms.

We are doing SLOW this summer.  We are eating ice cream on the porch and watching storms move through.  We are catching fireflies (if we let them stay up late enough) and getting bored enough to use our imaginations.  We are camping in the back yard because it is FREE and state-parking because it also is FREE. 

We are doing KINDNESS, which is a spacious sort of thing that pairs well with SLOW and the NON-LICKING of other people.  It will take practice and there will be sure-misses, but KINDNESS is also free and I plan to help us all be prodigal in its dispensation by the time fall rolls around.

We are practicing GENTLENESS which, good Lord, is a long enough word to be out of fashion these days, but necessary also for when our KINDNESS slips and SLOW starts to feel like stagnation.  We will not hit when we are farted on, though we may hit (its reflexive) if we are bitten. 

We are doing HOME this summer, because we’ve waited so long to find one and because having a home means making one which isn’t something that can be done without a little presence.  We will be HOME and unhappy and scraping the boogers off the wall.  Then we will still be HOME and laughing as we tell about the ones who ate their boogers and the ones who used them to decorate.  We will be HOME when the first hail storm tears through and when the first peas are ripe for picking.  We will be HOME for skinned knees and sibling frustrations, HOME for sharing and collaboration. 

We will ALL work hard, because I'm not a martyr in the making and we will knock-off before the work is done because, let's face it, it will never really be done. 

We will do vacation bible school and swim lessons and vacation, but they are not our norms, not the hub that holds the spokes of our summer together. 

The British are coming, but don’t worry, it’s ok.  There’ll be almost no licking, I promise. 

What are your family’s summer norms?