… look! Over there! SOMETHING SHINY!

Crap. It’s just a grey hair. An entire afternoon of scrubbing my head with everything short of brillo pads seemed to have little effect on The Dye Job From Hell, last week, but now we have a handy reminder that… hair grows. And grey grows faster than anything else.

Wait. *peering closer* I knew it! Even my hair doesn’t grow that fast. It’s just a grey hair that decided to release all the dye. So my normal hair is still unnaturally dark, but THANK GOODNESS the grey has decided to resume its former glory. All I need now is for my boobs to make the same sort of comeback and no one will even notice the grey!

If I was going somewhere with that, it was nowhere good. Let’s start over.

Hey, I may have questionable appeal, these days, but thank goodness for that whole living through your children thing. Because my children? Are freaking adorable. In my completely unbiased opinion, of course.

Chickadee went over to play with a friend after school today, and apparently her friend’s mother is a much nicer mama than I am. In addition to COOKIES for snack (rare, here) and hours spent playing with Barbies and Bratz dolls (both contraband in this house), my darling daughter came home all glittery and pungent. Apparently Chickadee’s friend has “make-up” and “perfume.” I would’ve said “sparkly body-crayon clown paint” and “whore stink” but whatever; we’ll use her preferred terms. If you smelled something a bit off in the air, today? That was her. But after a while, you know, all the little smell receptors in my nose pretty much just overloaded and died, plus she just looked so PROUD of her BEAUTIFUL self.

By the time I picked her up, I’d already been completely overcome by The Forces of Cuteness, anyway. Monkey’s school picture proofs came back today. I have to say–recessive genes are a beautiful thing. My son is the most photogenic human being I’ve ever met. Poor Chickadee is like me; it’s not that there’s anything horribly wrong with either of us, but we’re both likely to be caught in photos in such a way that we look stoned or about to sneeze or otherwise dorky. But Monkey manages to look like a beaming, wholesome Old Navy ad in just about every photo ever taken of him.

I was standing there by his cubby, viewing the proofs and melting into a puddle all over the floor of Room 7, when one of his teachers came over to tell me about an incident from earlier in the day. Apparently they had all of their “stations” set up for Fun Friday, and children were being dismissed from circle time one at a time to select a station. The teacher got to Monkey and asked him what he’d like to do, and Monkey burst into tears.

That was perplexing, but the cause was soon revealed: Monkey–like his sister before him–loves him some fusion beads. The station for the fusion beads had been set up at one of the small tables, and all available chairs were already full when it came time for Monkey to choose an activity. Naturally, this was a tragedy that could hardly be borne by my sensitive little man.

“Well,” said the teacher, “that’s disappointing. But do you think crying is going to help?” As the story was told to me, Monkey bravely choked back his tears, wiped his eyes, and took a couple of deep breaths.

“No,” he agreed between gulps for air, “Crying is not the solution.” (At this point, every teacher in the room had to either bite her tongue in half or find something interesting to study in the corner while he tapped on his forehead, deep in thought.) “I need to find a BETTER solution,” he told the teacher.

She nodded and praised him for calming himself down. Suddenly his face lit up.

“I know! We can move the fusion beads to a BIGGER TABLE so there’s room for me! Isn’t that a GREAT IDEA??” Now here’s where I waited for the story to continue on to him having a complete meltdown once he was told that no, they would not rearrange the classroom for him… but apparently the teacher was so impressed by his keen reasoning that they did exactly what he asked.

Pfffft. “Impressed by his keen reasoning,” my foot. She was overcome by The Forces of Cuteness. She’s only human, after all.

And so it came to pass that my cold, dead heart was softened and I both bought the children fast food for dinner AND allowed them to stay up late for a Movie Night AND let them pick their own movie-time treats.

My daughter decided to attach the microwave popcorn bag to her snout like a feedbag, and after eating almost the entire bag I finally wrestled the crumbs away from her. The good news there was that the artificial butter coating almost overpowered the seven or eight ounces of perfume she’d sprayed on herself earlier.

My son deliberated long and hard, before settling on… a piece of gum. He is a party ANIMAL.

Sometimes I expend an awful lot of energy wishing my kids would change, and other times, I’m so grateful that they are exactly who they are. It was a perfect evening.