the pick up

Schuyler gracefully applies her lip balm during her descent on the slide.

The routine. The routine is friend and foe. The pie chart of our lives is overwhelmed by the "kids" and "work" component with a still significant slice for "chores, etc." and a slender little slice allocated to "Liz" and "Jonathan" and "Liz and Jonathan". Post CFA exam, we hope to increase these latter three. But the routine is also a friend. It is a welcome landmark in our day when we pick the kids up from their various parent surrogates. I turn up at baby jail and invariably one of the tiny kids notices me and goes off to find Charlie. Once alerted, Charlie's smile and his bumbling, enthusiastic gait as he toddles toward his Papa make my heart sing. Then the Mama Pick Up where Charlie's enthusiasm for his Papa is discarded once The Milk Lady arrives in the car. Then the whole gang goes to pick up Schuyler at Somersfield where Charlie makes himself right at home with the arts and crafts in the cottage, plopping himself on the little stool. He often fights our departure efforts with tears and screams that can only be calmed by playing unspeakably catchy late 80's pop.