Lucy in the sky with doorknobs.

"Museum of Modern Art, curator's office."

"How fast can you send someone to Minneapolis? I have something you sorely need. Bring a frame. And some nilla wafers."

J.J. Stalkerpants toiled (and continues to toil) into the night for school this evening, so I was flying solo today. Despite a rather inauspicious beginning, it went well. "Inauspicious," you ask? Oh yes, say I.

After picking up the kids from their daytime family, I drove them home and leaned in to unbuckle Lily. Something brown lodged in the brambles of her hair caught my eye, so I reached up to grab it out. I assumed it was a piece of dirt, a booger, a hunk of fudge, a small meteorite, or any one of the other 10,000 things my kids get stuck in their hair once every 9 seconds. I reached up, and when I pinched it, it gave way in a very distinct way. I didn't even have to smell it (though I did right away): it was a little tiny piece of poop.

I'm at a loss to explain the circumstances that might allow my kid to come home from daycare with a small piece of poop in her hair. I feel like this is one of those galvanizing moments of parenthood, as if my reaction to fecal matter might foretell the kind of father I'm going to be. So I say with the utmost gravity, after positing on the situation for the entire night, that I'm okay with it.

I can be fairly certain that the people at day care did not plant poop in her hair. This would be a strange and borderline psychotic way to act. And none of them ever have poop in their hair, so I think they're safe.

A more likely explanation is that Lily, during the 1 minute that I let her play in the dirt while I loaded Abby into the car, somehow let her fingers drift over some wayward doodie. While I certainly cleaned that crap out instantly, I'm going to pretty much just be okay with it.

This is usually how I live my life. I am the type of person who, if I come across a piece of hair in a restaurant dish, would more than likely toss it aside and keep eating, because, c'mon, life isn't perfect, hair happens, let's move on. This philosophy is already tainting my parenting.

For our activity tonight, we did a little art project. You might have noticed already. A big piece of white paper and some markers can go a long way to entertaining the kids. They both liked it a lot, though they (Abby mostly) became quite interested in devouring the markers once the art-making had lost its zeal.

Later on in the night, while shaking an inverted shampoo bottle over Lily's head in a frantic effort to get the much-needed cleaning goop down to the bottom (er, top, as it were), I accidentally whapped her right on the head. Bip! Rough night for Lils.

Day two hundred and twenty four.

The instructions were clear: draw a triangle, square and circle as demonstrated. They chose to disregard these instructions.

How can one concentrate so hard on the simple act of moving it back and forth and back and forth?

Purple is not grape flavored.