Kavya is actually fine, and often a delight, and even at age 2.75, I don't remember her being particularly much trouble. But Anand, my god. He is just this intense ball of energy and destruction, and by lunchtime on the days he's home, Kev and I are both frayed and miserable. Anand will grow out of this, I know (I hope!), but at least for right now, pre-school does a much better job of absorbing his energies than we do. Anand runs, he plays, he has many little friends and races around like a loon with them, and he's just so happy there.

Here, despite two adults supervising and not even trying to get any real work done, Anand pops screens out of windows, he tears warning labels off them, he rips baby tomatoes off the vine, he flushes unnamed items down the toilet (he did another one this morning, and I have no idea what it is, hopefully we won't have to bring the plumber out again), he dumps dirt out of my plant pots, he pulls grown up board games off the shelf and scatters the pieces to three of them across the floor (yesterday), he gets bored and starts hitting his sister when she doesn't want to play with him anymore, etc. and etc. and so on. Ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

And at 4, the kids will come home, and we will be happy to see them and spend the next four hours with them, reading and cooking and eating and gardening and playing. They are sweet when they're worn out from a day at pre-school. Although even so, it is generally a relief when bedtime finally comes.

Maybe we should have had kids at 20 after all. Waiting 'til almost 40 might have been a strategic error.