Mak and Jack: It was only a matter of time

If I had had my way, I would be sitting at a cafe on a Parisian curb smoking cigarettes, sipping espresso, flaunting a new pair of recently purchased pumps and talking about some obscure subtitled Italian movie; fresh from a challenging game of Scrabble. As it turns out, I haven't smoked in close to two decades. I quit coffee last year, my feet ache, I have to drive too far to see Euro movies and my neighbor is too busy to play Scrabble with me. She's in Minnesota until God knows when.

I've had an interesting week, mostly because I was determined to stay active and spend quality time with both Mak and Jack since these are the last two weeks of summer. This has involved playing tennis with Jack several times, swimming and doing artsy fartsy stuff with Makena.

Jack freshly returned from tennis camp is a month or two away from being bored of hitting balls with me. His forehand has so much top spin and back spin, I never know what he has dished out for me until I run up to the ball and trip all over myself. It's only a matter of time before he surpasses me athletically (EM thinks he has.) and he is four inches away from surpassing me in height. He is eleven. I won't even get into his shoe size other than to say that I have first dibs on his Ugg boots when he outgrows them next week. In the meantime, even though my serve is pathetic, the workout is really good. My hips and knees hate me as I write this and I am nervous about the amount of Advil I have ingested over the last few days.

I also spent a great deal of time playing with Makena. We went a little crazy with our play dough creations (which may or may not have spurred my mental escapism depicted in the first paragraph) and then our interests turned to the practice of cutting. I bought her one of those educational booklets that lead you through the steps of cutting paper (from straight lines to curvy and circular ones) and she loved it. She could not get enough of this newfound skill. I moved on to my pile of magazines in an attempt to teach her to recognize the letters of her name. Once we would find an A or an M, we would cut it out. This proved interesting until it didn't. I don't quite remember the sequence of events precisely but it did involve a telephone call - one I answered - and while I was busy chatting away I suddenly became aware that Makena was no longer at the table but under it... still practicing her cutting. I walked over and found her with a mischievous grin on her face and a clump of hair by her side. It took a few seconds for it to register and then all I could do was gasp loudly. That's when she cut the next clump of hair off her head.

It looks like she cut about three inches in front of her face and gave herself some long bangs. The look just compliments her wild nature so I am in no big hurry to fix it just yet. I'd rather take the time to personally book myself into a hair salon because I need it more than she does.