This weekend my mother-in-law visited and brought with her several tattered cardboard boxes filled with all sorts of odds and ends from my husband's childhood years--the missing years, as we have called them, because while a quick trip upstairs to my parents' attic will open up a time capsule to my childhood, Scott thought for a long, long time that all those boxes were lost--thrown out by a renter who had once used their family's garage and taken it upon himself to do some housecleaning.

L.'s fall break is winding down. On Monday he heads back to school, and we take our deep breaths and cross our fingers, and hope for the best.

On Sunday afternoon T. asked for some computer time, so I set her up in the office with her favorite site, and busied myself peeling potatoes for dinner. Not even ten minutes later T. came out with her hand in her mouth, and an awed, almost frightened look on her face.

“What is it, T.?” I asked her.

“I have a loose tooth!”

Her first loose tooth EVER. She wiggled it for me, back and forth, back and forth. She was amazed, and a little scared, and a little worried, but mainly she felt big. Really big.

I learned this past weekend that despite my pep talks to myself (written and otherwise) I still do not feel particularly good about turning forty. I had a strong urge, all weekend long, to head to some solitary retreat and wrestle, alone, with these turning-forty demons. I'm certain that in some culture, somewhere, turning a landmark birthday involves that type of retreat--maybe to experience some solitary and pivotal rite of passage (through fire?

Back when L. was just a baby, Scott and I coined the word "tag-team parenting"--well, maybe we weren't the first to coin it, but we certainly felt like pioneers in that make-it-up-as-you-go territory. I distinctly remember the first time the phrase popped into my head. I had parked our old Dodge Grand Caravan at the Hardy's parking lot opposite the bus stop where the free university shuttle dropped off and picked up. I was nursing--or trying to nurse--an unhappy L. who was bundled into layers of onesies and a sweater (it was October and COLD).

When we took L. out for his birthday dinner earlier this month the conversation turned, as it always does these days, to his latest obsession: Star Wars. He had just watched Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones (when did Star Wars get so complicated? It has taken me forever to get my mind around the fact that there are no longer just three movies) rented as a birthday treat, and his head was still spinning from the film.

Lately when something doesn't go right at school with T.'s friends, or when her feelings have been hurt by her brother, she'll disappear into a room and play with her "imaginary friends." Sometimes she does this even when things just haven't gone her way, and then I'll feel badly--like she needs to turn to these perfect friends, the ones who don't let her down, because she feels unliked.

Yesterday, as I waited outside T.'s preschool for the doors to unlock, I got to talking with a mom I sort of know, who has a child in preschool and an older son away at college. I told her I teach college kids, and we talked about the gives and takes of parenting as your kids grow older. She told me that her son will often come home from college for a night or two when he's tired, his "heart hurts," or things just aren't going right at school.

If last week was filled with too many terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad days, then yesterday, our snow day, was the most perfect day possible--a shining exception to last week's mayhem. I made big bowls of steaming oatmeal for the kids in the morning (my new favorite way to eat oatmeal is to dice up dried apricots, toss them in, and drizzle lots of honey over the top), and L. ate an entire huge serving of oatmeal for breakfast--something he almost never does.

You know how growth spurts in kids are always marked by physical and psychological changes? Sleeping through the night--or its converse, night waking? Increased appetite, or worries, or tantrums? You wonder whether something's happened to your child lately--what's set them off--and then they suddenly catch you by surprise. They seem taller, or more rounded, or their face has lost the curved cheeks of toddlerhood.