Irish Turns 18

Little Linnea-Irish: eighteen years old.

By some persons’ calculations, she might be considered an adult. But her older siblings knew better and made sure to remind her about that during the weeks leading up to this momentous celebration.

I wasn’t prepared for the outburst of Puck running down the hallway dragging his backpack behind him, yelling, “BOOK FAIR! BOOK FAIR!” as he streaked past me towards the chapel.

Violet, who already had Yali on her hip, was not far behind him. Puck held up his carefully lettered book wish list in front of my face: three new updated Minecraft books. Violet was already browsing the American Girl selection.

“Could we go get your wallet from the car, Mom? PLEASE?!”

Ambushed.

To be fair, I had been warned about the book fair for weeks; I just hadn’t really considered it yet because, well, life.

“Well…” I’m always up for more books. “Okay, I think we can do that.”

“YAY! Come on, Mom!”

“I need to go with you, Puck,” Mr. V told him as Violet escorted him towards the book fair. “I need to find that money tree, too.”

After fish tacos and neighbor friends and creations in the backyard, I put Puck in the shower. About ten minutes later I opened the door to pass him his footy pajamas. I had to look past the steam.

“Puck… you actually created a cloud in here.”

He just grinned.

So while Linnea-Irish enjoyed her birthday celebrating with a concert at The Pageant with good buddy Thumper, Carrie-Bri and I exchanged angry texts regarding a most unfortunate Wild Card game between the Cubs and Pirates up in Pittsburgh. A few cubbies were due for some good old-fashioned post season schooling.

Beware: Chicago comes will full-blown infantile arrogance to St. Louis in October.

It won’t be a pretty war.

PULSE OF THE POST SEASON:

1. Pirates fall to Cubs in National League Wild Card, as predicted.

2. American League Division Winners prediction: Royals and Blue Jays.