The other day, a parenting-advice account I follow on Instagram served me a post about things parents of teenagers have to accept. You know, like, “teens will make dumb decisions” and “you and your teen will experience conflict.” Stuff like that. 

One of the things was “you will be driving them all over the place.” Somehow, while agonizing over my miles-long list of concerns about parenting when my husband and I were making the wild decision to procreate, I did not consider the driving. Please chalk this up to complete obliviousness when I myself was a teen, because obviously my parents drove ME all over creation. But I do not feel prepared in any way. The Driving was not on my radar. I had no idea. No. Idea. There is so much driving. 

One of my friends has two very active, involved boys. She was telling me the other day that there is one night a week when the kids have simultaneous dropoffs at separate locations. Separate pickups from those activities. Then separate dropoffs at separate locations for the next activities. And then simultaneous pickups. At separate locations. My brain is broken just thinking about it, and she is LIVING IT.

Carla has a friend who is one of five. The kids attend three separate schools. The older four are all in (different) sports. At least one of them is in multiple sports. Is the mom ever NOT in the car? I feel like I am in the car a lot and I only have the one child! 

It has been hard for me to grasp the reality of the situation. I am trying to come to terms with the disheartening fact that I am simply Going To Be In The Car. From now until Carla graduates, presumably. Or until she gets a license of her own, which terrifies me beyond reason so let’s not think about that at this time.

But I guess what I want to say to anyone who might be reading this and considering having children: FACTOR IN THE DRIVING. 

Obviously, I would not trade Carla for anything in the universe… and yet it would have been nice if any of the parenting or child-planning books I consulted had mentioned the driving. 

Okay, that’s a whole post on its own but let’s also have some bullets.

Easter Baskets: We are not celebrating Passover this year, because we are lazy and I am a terrible steward of my child’s religious heritage/education. Fortunately, I am still able to order crap from crappy places in order to participate in the completely secular aspect of the next upcoming religious holiday. My husband and I are total opposites when it comes to Easter baskets. He thinks they should contain mainly (only?) candy. I think my child has fully mastered the art of manifesting sugar in her life, and doesn’t need any a lot of additional sugar from us. Listen, I am not necessarily into the glorious excess that I am now accustomed to seeing on social media. (Some of it grosses me out, but at the same time, I understand the impulse.) However, I do like her to have SOMETHING in her Easter basket. This year, I am going for Practical Slash Fun. She needs a little jewelry container she can clip to her backpack, so she can safely stow her earrings and bracelets while she’s Doing Sports. She needs a new pair of sunglasses and carrying case. She has a couple of long bus rides in her near future, so I wanted to get her this bus-friendly folding puzzle. Or maybe this fun questions-and-answers card deck, to play with friends? There is a new Rosanne Parry book out, so I will definitely add that to her Easter Basket. (She adores Rosanne Parry books.) On the completely IMpractical side, no one needs emotional support pickles, but Carla would LOVE THEM. She has also been obsessed with the idea of getting our future cat a bow tie. My big problem is that none of these things fit into a plastic Easter egg, and Carla has expressly requested that we hide Easter eggs this year. Well, there’s always money. Or candy. Or a monster easter egg.

Cupcake Plans: While I’m on the topic of Easter, we might as well discuss cupcakes. My parents have invited us over for dinner and have requested that I bring dessert. Specifically, cupcakes. More specifically, cupcakes with adorable Easter décor. (My mother knows me so well.) My husband and mother enjoy carrot cake, so I’m thinking maybe these? Plus, I love the little coconut birds’ nests with Cadbury eggs. This recipe has less oil and HALF the eggs. Do you have a go-to carrot cake recipe? I cannot believe that I am about to type this (Engie – look away), but the recipe can and in fact should include raisins; my husband has expressly requested golden raisins in the carrot cake. (I cannot abide raisins in any form.) Because I am raisin-averse, and because Carla straight up refuses to eat carrot cake, I will also make a batch of lemon cupcakes with lemon-curd filling. Those are my go-to and Carla loves them, too. (By the way, all the recipes I linked to include frosting recipes, but I will probably make an extra big batch of plain old cream cheese buttercream and use it for both varieties.) To top the lemon cupcakes, I am thinking of trying this adorable chick frosting. If you are worrying that two batches of cupcakes is too much cupcake for a group of five, I plan to send a bunch of them in to my husband’s office on Monday. 

Reading Incentives. I don’t know that I’ve ever needed an incentive to read; being able to snuggle up on a couch and escape into a completely different set of circumstances is reward enough. But I think Carla might need a little push. She enjoys reading when she’s doing it, but she doesn’t seek it out. This fills me with anxiety because there are so many good books she’s not reading! And I’m afraid she’s going to miss the window for feeling that they are “age appropriate.” Over the winter holidays, she got started on the Black Stallion series. She devoured the first book, leapt excitedly into the second book, and then once school resumed, she kind of tapered off. Over spring break, we of course went into nearly every bookstore we could find that sold English books, and Carla found multiple books she HAD to have. But… she hasn’t made much progress in any of them since we returned from vacation. I’ve been having fun “restocking” her bookshelves with more age-appropriate books, and there are SO MANY BOOKS I am dying for her to read… but we’ll never get to half of them if she isn’t into it, you know? In the past, my husband and I have tried various methods to spur her into reading, from adding it to her to-do list for the day, to paying her to read books. Maybe I need to give her a financial incentive again? What prompted you to read, when you were a kid? (The Pizza Hut Book It! program was definitely a bonus for me in elementary school. I love pizza. Pizza and books make for a magical combination.) If you have children, what prompted your kids to read? Carla and I have begun listening to audiobooks on our drives to school, which helps a little… but I still want her to do more reading. 

Shorts Weather. Even though there is still frost on the ground, I know shorts weather is around the corner. It has me trolling through the internet, looking for shorts that won’t make me hate everyone and everything. (And pretty dresses, natch.) Shorts and I have a fraught relationship. One of the big problems is that I am self-conscious about my legs and prefer to keep them hidden. (Am I seriously considering this “magic” cellulite solution, that has so many reviews about how it makes people feel like their legs are on fire?) (I admit I am partly just curious about whether the on-fire feeling is as severe as people say. But curious enough to set my own legs on fire????) My legs are what they are, and I get too hot in summer to wear jeans or pants all the time, so I return to The Shorts Search once again. I’ve had good luck with Madewell shorts, and these have potential. As long as I’m considering denim, maybe I need a pair of these Levi’s shorts? I am always drawn to Boden’s beautiful colors and fabrics, but the description of most of their shorts includes this little kicker: “slim through waist, hip and hem” which is not the loose flowy style I prefer, so I might have to simply enjoy thinking about their shorts. I keep wanting to try Quince, and these shorts are cute. Ugh. Just thinking about shorts makes me want to avoid them altogether and stick to dresses.

Non-Shorts Signs of Spring. Despite the persistence of snow and mid-thirties temps, we do have a few signs of spring here and there. Daffodils are abundant in my neighborhood. My irises are stretching their little leafy arms up through the earth, testing to see whether they should show their faces. The lilac tree is beginning to bud. All the maples (I think?) in our neighborhood are a blur of pale red. The magnolia tree of one of my friends already bloomed; I was jealous until the frost returned and all the blooms dropped off her tree. There’s a forsythia shrub in the backyard that is producing its own sunshine. I cannot wait for flowers everywhere. 

That’s all I’ve got, Internet. What are you thinking about today?