busy weekend at the cape

both my kids awakened with great expectations saturday morning. by sundown, however, they were both staring down some pretty big disappointments. as a parent, i try to be supportive without aiding and abetting the making of excuses or the pointing of fingers. mostly, of course, i just try to be there.

now that they are teenagers, the stakes seem higher and their disappointments more clearly mirror the sort of disappointments that i face in my putatively adult world (e.g., professional rejections, relationship problems). fortunately, they've also begun to develop more adult-like and constructive ways of dealing with these disappointments. they each hashed it out with close friends in their preferred manner (for one, this involves sharing rapid-fire phone, text, and email messages; for another, this involves sharing an obscene number of tacos at taco john's six-pack saturday).

by the end of the night, i'd heard laughter from them both. all in all, it was a beautiful day.