My Kids Have More Fun Than I Do

I wish I had my kids’ lives. Every day is like a vacation to them. I mean, every single day is amazing. Sasha turns five next month, is in VPK*, and absolutely loves it. When either Evi or I drop her off in the morning, she barely waits for the kiss goodbye before she tears off for the classroom.

*Still don’t know what this stands for.

Norah turns three in January, and comes along for the ride to Sasha’s school. Once we drop Sasha off, she plays in the playground right outside of it for a while, then hops back in the minivan with Mommy or Daddy (or sometimes both) and goes on to some other adventure. Sasha goes to VPK three days a week, so on the other two, Evi usually takes them to the gym, which has childcare that the kids–shockingly–love.

(I interrupt this essay to tell you that we have a Roomba vacuum cleaner that Evi usually turns on as we go to sleep, which she apparently did last night. When something gets stuck in its bristles, forcing it to stop, it usually let’s out a warning beep and says something like, ‘please clear the bristles and press start’. I didn’t even notice this had happened until just now, as it apparently got stuck on the strap to my briefcase. The only reason I’m mentioning this is it just now gave the warning beep and then started yelling at me in German. It having a beautiful female voice is the only reason it didn’t sound exactly like a member of the SS in a World War II movie. God only knows how we somehow changed its language, or how we’ll change it back.)

The point is, my children are excited from the time they wake up in the morning until the time they refuse to go to bed at night. For a year now, Sasha has been asking, in a tone Paris Hilton probably uses with her handlers, “Okay, so what are we doing today?” Recently, she’s started asking, “What will we be doing after school tomorrow?”

Every weekend is either a friend’s elaborate birthday party–by ‘elaborate’, I mean their parents rented something like the Space Shuttle–or a daytrip to somewhere fun, like a children’s museum of science or a waterpark. This past Saturday, they got to see Everglades City, saw a lot of nature, took a picture with a giant touristy alligator, and waded in Naples Beach.

Today being Tuesday, Evi is probably taking them to the gym, then has some other fun plan for them. I wouldn’t know. Once I hit ‘publish’, I have to exercise and, you know, go to work.

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