These kids

"Be careful how you perceive the world: It is like that."

-- Erich Heller

So, Kevin thinks I have a tendency to pigeon-hole our kids. Like I over-generalize their personality traits. I try to be careful about that. I mean, if there's one thing grad school taught me, it's that the stories we tell about each other significantly contribute to the development of our identities, for better or worse. (Luckily, that's not the one thing grad school taught me. For example, I now now how to save Word files as PDFs. Also, what the words "gerund" and "Glenda Lappan" mean.)

That said, I love to look back on the stories about our kids on this blog. It helps to remember how much they've grown and changed, but it's also telling about their more enduring personality traits. There are just things they say and do and aspects of their "way of being" that are a lot like the things they said and did and were years ago. And you start to see...yeah, they're like that.

Since I've been so bad at keeping up these past few months, it's time to say a bit about each of the kids--my time with them this summer and what they're up to. I'll try not to let my perception define them--but I am their mom, after all. I like to think I know them better than anyone else, plus I'm sure they'll all be in therapy someday because of me, anyway.

They'll each get their own post, but I do want to mention: We kind of have two teams in this family. Yeah yeah, we're all on the same team, but the kids are a little like the puppies on Disney's Lady and the Tramp--some just like the dad and some just like the mom. There's what Nellie calls "Team Wernet," with their strong emotions and sleeping with their eyes open and wanting savory foods for breakfast. The rest of us tend to be pretty easy going and could live on cold cereal until the end of time. In pretty much any fight, I'd predict my team loses, but that's okay.

Actually, Eddie's tough and Annie's scrappy, so maybe we'd hold our own.