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<\/p>\nWhen my girls were little, I sometimes came up with creative ways to occupy them when I was sick.\u00a0 Between problem pregnancies and long-term illnesses, I spent a lot of time on the couch with little girls who were not the type to sit still and watch Sesame Street.<\/p>\n
One of the ways I used to occupy them was to let them draw on the bottoms of my feet.\u00a0 I’d give Victoria washable markers and she’d doodle halfway up my leg while I got to rest and not fall down or throw up for a little while.<\/p>\n
(I still remember how idiotic I felt at the prenatal appointment when I stripped down and then realized I was decorated up to my knees in toddler art and had forgotten to wash it off!)<\/p>\n
I still use the busywork trick.<\/p>\n
Tuesday night, I really wanted to watch a television show.\u00a0 My boys were bored so I sat Alex at the top of the couch with me and 25 Matchbox cars and Jack at the end of the couch with washable markers.<\/p>\n
For a good twenty minutes, I lined up fire trucks and convertibles with one little boy while another enthusiastically decorated me.<\/p>\n
On my right foot was a series of… well, I have no idea, but upside down they look a bit like a weird smiley face.\u00a0 And on the left… I was orange.\u00a0 Jack decided he wanted to make me an alien.<\/p>\n
It worked.\u00a0 I watched my show, the boys played and were happy (before moving on to the next busywork — even doing graffiti on Mom only works so long), and I’m pretty sure most of it was non-toxic.<\/p>\n
And then today… I kept meaning to take a bath or jump in the shower but one thing after another happened.\u00a0 And so I took a walk around the neighborhood with two little boys and decorated feet.\u00a0 I drove to the lawnmower repair shop and rode along to the car repair shop to see about air conditioning.\u00a0 I gardened and chased the kids outside.\u00a0 I said “hi” to the passing teenagers.<\/p>\n
All with these feet.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(Blue toenails courtesy of Annalee, who offered me a free spa treatment and pedicure the same night.)<\/p>\n
My left foot kept scaring me throughout the day.\u00a0 I’d forget about it all and then catch sight of that and think I’d missed some sort of terrible accident.<\/p>\n
Even after I finally got that bath, my left foot is still pale orange.\u00a0 And the brown heart appears to be permanent.\u00a0 I’m surprisingly unconcerned, though.\u00a0 It kind of makes me smile.<\/p>\n
I can’t imagine what our townspeople must think of me.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When my girls were little, I sometimes came up with creative ways to occupy them when I was sick.\u00a0 Between problem pregnancies and long-term illnesses, I spent a lot of time on the couch with little girls who were not the type to sit still and watch Sesame Street. One of the ways I used…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[32,45,49,102,210,237],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}