Being kids

 I asked Vanessa and Caralyn if these shoes were their uniform.  They both just said, "No, but they're really comfortable."

Sometimes Emma and her friends have a careworn look about them.  They laugh a lot but there's this underlying tension too.  They're balancing and it's wearing.  There's the school work, the extracurricular activities, the family obligations, the part time jobs.  They also worry about each other.  They seem to wear it all a little more heavily than Braeden and his friends.

Maybe it's all practice for the balancing act that is motherhood.

Whatever it is, yesterday afternoon when Emma's friends were over to practice a scene for a drama performance, they were all business.  They went to the basement and when I walked in the room to put something away, they neither broke character nor looked my way.  They were Concentrating.  It was serious.

Later, I heard laughter through the open window and glanced outside to see this:

They were bouncing a ball and trading off jumping and lying on the trampoline and really just doing nothing.  It made me happy.

Be kids, I want to tell them.  Please, for a little while longer, be kids.