When Life Gives You Lemons

In an effort to relieve some of the guilt for not bringing in any income, I agreed to help the kids with a lemonade stand today. This was not to be a Pottery Barn stand, with the lemon shaped ice cubes and matching straw dispenser and awnings, but an old-fashioned run-by-kids-using-mom's-card-table affair.

They did come up with a business plan, though: make enough money to buy an ipod. Well, either an ipod or a smoothie.

Grayson took charge of profit maximization, carefully coaching the 6-year-old wait staff on number of ice cubes and ounces allowed per cup, as well as drilling the girls on "cute faces" to coerce new customers. Lucie wanted to be the main squeezer, but when her hands proved too small for the task, settled for sign publicity. It was really important to Violet that she be responsible for the necessary job of stacking and sorting cups. And also looking cute (reference profit maximization tactics above).

I was touched by the number of neighbors who came out to support their little efforts. The cyclists who stopped along the bike path to refill their bottles with lemonade, the Hispanic gardeners who didn't speak English and then left a $5 tip, the friends who responded to my Facebook ad. The lemonade was gone long before the kid's enthusiasm.

And the smoothies were delicious.

Comments

Lauren said…

So glad you're back to blogging! You showed up in my reader, and I was SO excited! I'm also loving all these summer adventures with the wee babes. You are awesome!

July 10, 2012 at 8:28 AM

Lucie and the Problem of Evil

Lucie has suddenly started questioning things. And by things, I mean eternal things. It all started when she asked if I would read her a bedtime story from the Bible storybook. The book opens innocently enough with the story of creation. There are lions and tigers and bears, and naked people being created from dust. (At this point in the story you’d think questions would arise, but no, kids just seem to go along with it at face value. Which is exactly the reason I've had to work so hard to convince Lucie that turtleneck shirts are not actually made from the necks of turtles.) Anyways ... "Do you know why Adam and Eve are sad?" I asked, pointing at the picture of them sorrowfully leaving the garden. "I sure do, " Lucie assured me. "They are sad because they don't have any parents." Impressive, huh? Clearly, she’d been processing and following along. "Well there is that," I prodded her, "and also they have to leave the

Motherhood - Not for the faint of heart

My picture of hell: one soggy rainy day, two healthy energetic children, three solid days of DVDs, one dog that needs to pee but refuses to get wet, and me. Alone with the carnage and contracted to get 4 hours of work done. And just to frost the cake, Lucie can take off her pooy diaper now, which delights us all, but especially the dog, to no end. These days it is sort of a toss up for who has left the pile on the carpet. Lucie? Dog? The fact that it landed on top of a princess high heel is good indication the culprit was of the two-legged, shoe-loving, Oreo-eating variety, which makes it only slightly less disgusting to remove behind a 28-ply Kleenex. Pray for sunshine.

Say This!

Picture by Grayson (our 9 year-old) Last week we reached another one of those parenting milestones. At 27+ months of age, Violet said her first real words: "Mama! Me go!" Three little words so beautiful, so stunning and unexpected, they stopped me in my tracks. Even the other kids dropped their activities and ran out to verify that, yes, Violet had spoken. We hugged and touch-down-danced and, of course, Violet got to "go." When you have a child who is the tiniest bit developmentally delayed, small accomplishments are met with big celebration. Lucie insists on accompanying me on simple errands? I need to figure out a way to sneak out the door more efficiently; Violet suddenly says that she wants to go? Hot dog! Get the video camera and your shoes on kiddo! Therapists have been coming to the house since the first week of January, evaluating Violet's delays. At her last check in, she had about 15 simple words in her vocabulary -- about 100 words u

Montecito Mama

Search This Blog