'Definitely optimistic'

Life at the Murphy house, adventures in pool-ordering, and what they're thinking at the beach. Also, 7 other things worth your time.

Welcome to all of our new subscribers! Thanks for joining. In case you’re just stopping by, or someone sent you this newsletter, you’re reading the daily Understandably.com newsletter by Bill Murphy Jr. If you like what you see, sign up here to get it for free every day.

My wife and I are parents of a preschooler. It’s funny; I admit I can get so caught up in my own life that I forget, at least for a moment, that not everyone has had same kind of lockdown experience.

I’m talking about things like:

• building an impressive number of “couch cushion forts” over the last two months,

• trying to teach a child to ride a bike (work in progress),

• reading every kids’ book in the house aloud 20 times, and

• having the short, simple, and insanely catchy theme to the Australian cartoon TV show Bluey on near-repeat in your head. (Link, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

We love our daughter more than anything, but I have to laugh at what our lives now entail sometimes. It’s also why I started thinking long …