Of jellyfish, hurt knees, DC, sweet sixteen and the joys of end-of-school

This post will fall into the category of: Oh, my goodness. Is school almost over or what? These last few weeks of the school year feel like a perpetual full-moon, day and night.

The kids are:

#1 excited for summer, spending more time outside and getting hurt (trampoline + my oldest = bruised knee and two weeks physical therapy at least) Oh, and also planning high school graduation, college, yikes;
#2 Anticipating the weekend spent at the lake with good friends, and next week's driver's license test (car + my 16-year-old daughter = lifetime of worry)
#3 Enjoying an 8th grade trip to DC (packing + middle son with no dress clothes that fit = late-night sojourn to Target, much consternation, but eventual on-time departure) and will return just in time for his 8th grade Graduation;
#4 Hibernating. With sinus infection, missing choir concert tonight and opportunity to dance as a jelly fish (me + strange to me environment of fabric store + yards of sparkly fabric + hours of constructing said costume = no performance due to sinuses + an unused, but quite impressive jellyfish costume.)

And me? Taking things one day at a time, trying to remember all the blessing that accompany even the numerous doctor's office visits and trying to make sense of why a McDonald's Baconater helps a sinus headache when you're 12?

Taking the time to plant a tree

As I helped out with my son's 6th grade class Tree Planting Day, I looked around at all the other "parent leaders" and noticed the diversity represented in the volunteers. Of course, there were a couple dads, but I was focusing on the moms. We represented the reality of moms today. Some of us work full time, some are full-time stay-at-home moms (SAHMs). Many work part-time. Most all have more than one child. We were a wide range of ages - from early 30s to mid-50s. We were, with our shovels, today's moms. One took a call from work while we dug; another a call from a nurse about a sick child at elementary school.

There are more than 82 million moms in the U.S., (82.8 as of 2004 - and I'm sure there are more current figures but these stats were on the cover story this Sunday for a Mother's Day piece in The Columbus Dispatch.) A full 80 percent of women ages 40 to 44 were mothers in 2006, with each mother having 2.1 births (?). The number of SAHMs in 2008: 5.3 million.

We are a powerful group, and if you're part of it, congratulations! If you're marketing to us, know we are diverse; and if you see one of us with a shovel and a big smile, that would be me.