My six year old told me she had a tummy ache yesterday.

She said, “Mommy, my tummy hurts. I think the baby must be coming.”

I wonder if it was a result of our conversation where she described her perfect lunch and asked if I would buy her “one of those packages with the gooey, orange cheese, the red stick and the crackers all in the same pack, mom-it-is-to-die-for, everyone in my class has that every day!”

While she hadn’t actually consumed the goo-cheese, I wonder if the very mention of it was enough to turn her stomach. Still, I knew exactly what she was talking about and had no idea they still made the classic salt-lick combo. I too begged for what appeared to be the perfect gobsmacking school snack when I was her age. Like Ellie, I remember everyone in my class enjoying the savoury treat, even the Principal, janitorial staff, crossing guard, neighbourhood squirrels. It might actually be the same box on grocery store shelves, just thirty years later. Maybe that’s why the promos called it, “Out of this world!” because it was actually astronaut food.

I remember kids using the cheese as adhesive on paper mache projects when they ran out of glue.

Then Chloe (who turned 3 last week) put her arm around me while I was digging through a drawer in her closet for her clothes, (I was suddenly feeling extremely thirsty) and said very calmly, “Mommy, this is going to be hard for you to hear (dramatic pause) but I’m not wearing underwear today. Those are your choices.”

I walked down the hall to find Hanna leaning over her stomach on the living room floor. She was using her full arm cast as a tripod to balance her body, “Mommy, do you want to see me flip over onto my back from this position? I can do it, I’ve been practicing.”

What you want to hear next is, ‘And then I woke up.’

But that would be wishful thinking.