The biggest thing that worries me about being in charge of the kids is dealing with the surprises. For example, before Susan left she laid out two big piles of clothes for the kids. Each kid has one shirt, one pair of pants, one pair of underwear, and one pair of socks for each day of the week. Each morning we pull a complete set off the pile for each kid and the kids get dressed. I like this system because neither I nor the kids have to think about what they’re going to wear each morning. Yesterday after Mason had got dressed, he couldn’t find his shoes. We spent the next 10 minutes turning the house upside down, looking for his shoes. We checked all the easy places first: the living room, the bathroom, and so on. Then we started searching the more obscure places: under the couch cushions, upstairs, out in the truck, etc. At this point things are going through my mind like, can I send the kid to school barefoot? Do I have time to stop by Wal-Mart and buy the boy more shoes? Can I get a pair of my old shoes and duct tape them to the boy really tightly?

Just as all hope had been given up, the shoes turned up. I caught a glimpse of a shoelace sticking out from under MY bed — yes, Mason’s shoes somehow ended up under MY bed. Who knows how they ended up there.