Hello all. I'm going to stop playing the "name that reference" game haha. Yesterday's answer was Prison Break. Amazing, life-ruining show that you should all watch. Seriously. If you think shipping Spoby gets bad sometimes, you don't even know the half of it. Anyway, rant over. So let's get to it, yeah? I'm glad you all agree that the 3B stuff should be settled on the show. I just feel like glossing over it is only going to set them up for even more issues along the way...

Today's chapter title comes from the "Magic School Bus" theme song. Ahh, the nineties. Picture it- you're in first, maybe second grade and it's been a super boring day, but then your teacher strolls in with one of those TVs on a cart and suddenly you know- we're watching The Magic School Bus! All of a sudden, your day just got so much better. Am I right? Or was I the only one that experienced this in childhood? If you want to relive it, it's on Netflix. ;)

take a left at your intestine, take your second right past Mars

In May, Spencer joins Emily and Hanna in the search for the right preschool for their children, with Aria's daughter being a year shy of preschool just yet. Emily struggles with the decision to separate the twins into different classrooms when they do decide upon a school and sign up for an orientation session. She decides it'll be better for their development if she separates them, so Brynn ends up in a class with McKenzie and Bennett with Grace. Orientation is just an informal way for the parents to meet the preschool teachers and for the kids to get used to the school setting. Grace is wary only at first; she warms up quickly and when it's time to leave, she expresses deep interest in coming back.

Spencer had taken the day off in order to attend orientation with her daughter. She and the others take their children to an early lunch afterwards and then home for a nap and for Spencer to get some actual work done. Just because she had taken the day off doesn't mean she's free of all her responsibilities; the house badly needs a cleaning and she has case files to type up and organize and calls to return. Once Grace is fast asleep, Spencer's honestly not even sure where to start. She cleans the bathrooms and mops the kitchen, dusts, runs the dishwasher and finally gets around to the pile of hand-wash-only clothes she's been avoiding. She's ironing a blazer when Grace, bleary-eyed and refreshed, comes downstairs.

"Mommy," She calls and even though she says it about a dozen times a day, it still makes Spencer's heart flutter that this beautiful little girl is all hers. "Mommy, where are you?"

"In the laundry room, baby," Spencer informs her and when Grace appears at the doorway, she adds, "Hi Gracie! How was your nap?"

"Good," She says shortly. "I wanna play Play-Doh."

Play-Doh is the bane of all parents' existence. Spencer frowns. "Are you sure? You can't play in your kitchen or with the dollhouse or-"

"No," Grace whines. "Play-Doh!"

"I just cleaned the kitchen, honey," Spencer counters. "Play-Doh is so messy. Why we don't bring out the Lincoln Logs? You want to build a cabin?"

"No!" She stomps her foot. She's always at her crankiest post-nap. It's something her parents have never been able to figure out. "I wanna play with Play-Doh!"

"Wait, I have a better idea," Spencer says. "I'll get the LEGOs, okay? You can build me a huge tower. You love building towers, right?"

Grace hesitates but nods and Spencer grins, triumphant. Somehow, arguing with her daughter has become exhausting lately and Spencer wonders if this is a quality Grace had inherited from herself. She knows her own parents absolutely loathed bantering with her for these same reasons. She was stubborn; Grace is stubborn. It's true what they say about parenting; you recognize awful qualities about yourself only when you see them in your child. When Spencer's finished ironing, she hangs the clothing with precision and situates Grace with the jumbo box of LEGOs she'd gotten for her birthday. When she seems content, Spencer retreats to the home office.

She has a number of things to do. Bills must be paid, checks must be written and she has a stack of case files that must be typed by tomorrow morning. She gets to work; her checkbook is as accurate and balanced as it always has been. At least her father managed to teach her something useful. Slapping some stamps on the corners of all the envelopes she's just addressed, Spencer makes a neat stack in the corner of the desk to remind herself they must travel to the mailbox. Once she's started her actual work, though, she knows there is no room for distraction. The files on her patients must be typed while she's in sound mind and body. And she is, until she hears a rush of crashing LEGOs from the living room and Grace's hysterical giggles.

"Are you okay?" Spencer asks, flying into the living room.

"I made a chair," Grace giggles, her face full of joy. "But it wasn't big enough and it broke."

"Gracie, you can't make a chair out of LEGOs," Spencer chides. "They're only plastic. They'll snap."

"They didn't," Grace shakes her head. "Now can I play Play-Doh?"

Spencer sighs and gives in. "Fine. You can, but you need to put all of these back in the box first."

"Okay!"

When the box is full to the brim, Spencer tucks it back on the shelf and retrieves the yellow plastic containers that will likely undo all the progress she'd made in the kitchen. Grace wields the pizza cutters, the scissors and the plastic shapes like a pro, creating all kinds of concoctions with them and running in between the kitchen and the office to show her mother. Spencer, distracted, always tells her they look great even if she barely looks up. If Grace notices, she doesn't let on, but it makes Spencer feel terrible. She hates when she has to divide her attention between her job and her daughter and she wishes there was a way for her to better balance the two.

Finally finished with her casework, Spencer enters the kitchen to find that a Play-Doh bomb has gone off. Groaning, she gets to work picking it off the floor and out of the chair cushions as Grace mushes it back into the containers. Spencer's cell phone rings shrilly and it takes a moment for her to remove all the Play-Doh from her fingers before she can answer. "Hello?"

It's a client's parent; Spencer has been working with this woman's son for over a year now and he's severely autistic. Now, she's frantic on the other end, rapidly speaking about how her son had gone into an episode and she couldn't calm him down. "What was the cause of the outburst?"

"Mommy," Grace pleads, wiping her hands on her shirt.

"Have you removed anything that might be too much of a sensory overload?" Spencer asks. "The radio, the television, anything brightly colored or extremely textured?"

"Mommy," Grace whines again, tugging on her mother's shirt.

But Spencer's attention is everywhere else. The phone's cradled between her ear and her shoulder and she's still picking up Play-Doh from inopportune places. "I'm assuming you've moved anything that could be of potential harm to him out of the way. Have you tried massage or pressure points?"

"Mommy-"

"What about his clothes? Are they binding or too loose?"

"Mommy!"

"I would use calming voices, turn off the lights and just make sure he realizes he's in a safe space so when he comes back-"

"Mommy!" Grace shrieks and this finally wins Spencer's attention.

"I'm sorry, can you give me a moment?" She pulls the phone away from her ear and asks, "Grace, what is wrong?"

She crosses her arms and asks, "I want to watch a movie."

"You can use my laptop. It's my room," Spencer sighs. "Give me a minute and I'll help you. This phone call is really important."

"I can do it by myself," Grace tells her and bounds up the stairs.

It isn't until after her patient is calm again and Spencer's off the phone that she truly comprehends what she's just told her daughter. This phone call is really important. How many times had she been told that very same thing as a child? Spencer, what do you need? This is important. Spencer, this is far too important to ignore right now. You'll have to wait. For everything in the world, Spencer does not want to become that parent; she does not want to become her parents. It hadn't bothered Grace and it had been a one-time deal, but Spencer still feels a burgeoning pit of regret in her stomach. She has a mountain of work that still needs to be completed, but it can wait. It will always wait; Grace will always come first. She makes a vow to herself right then and there that she will never utter those words to her daughter again.

Spencer brings a clementine and a glass of water upstairs and finds her daughter curled up in the middle of the king-size bed. She's engrossed in something Spencer can't make out from here, so she asks, "Hi baby. What are you watching?"

"Netflix," Grace says simply and then elaborates, "The Magic School Bus."

"Magic School Bus?" Spencer questions and it truly takes her back. The nineties were an exceptional time for quality children's programming. "That's a great show."

"I know," Grace agrees and turns the screen a little when her mother sits down beside her, so they both can see. "I like Arnold. He's so funny."

"Arnold? He's such a scaredy-cat," Spencer comments, handing her daughter the snack she'd brought.

"I know, that's why he's funny," Grace tells her. "And Carlos too."

Spencer asks, "What did I miss? What are we learning about today?"

Grace begins peeling the clementine and says, "The body."

"The body?" Her eyebrows raise and she tickles her daughter's belly a bit, receiving a giggle in response. "What about the body?"

"Ralphie's sick," Grace explains and hands half of her clementine to Spencer to share. "So everybody got in the bus and the bus got really small and they went inside Ralphie! And now they're swimming in his blood."

"Swimming in his blood?"

"Yeah, they have to get to his throat," Grace says. "They want to know why he's sick."

"Wow, that's very cool," Spencer chuckles.

"You know what I learned?"

"What did you learn?"

"There's little things that look like donuts in your blood," Grace tells her. "There's red ones and white ones. They're called cells. The white ones make you not sick."

"That is impressive," Spencer grins proudly. "And what do the red ones do?"

"I don't know," Grace shrugs. "Look pretty?"

Her mother laughs wholeheartedly. "That sounds like a good theory, babe."

They spend the rest of the afternoon learning about antibodies, the digestive system, sound waves and outer space. Grace has dozens of new facts to teach Toby when he arrives home and Spencer jokingly tells him she's already training for the decathlon. He teases back that soon, she and Grace will both outsmart him. They clean up for dinner and trade stories about the day; Toby informs them about his two-hour stint in the pouring rain and even though things barely got finished, his boss hadn't let him leave despite the weather. A cold is certainly to follow, Spencer predicts, and even though he insists he's fine, Grace agrees with her mother.

"Daddy, you're gonna get sick and then the white blood cells will have to fight all the bacteria," She says matter-of-factly.

Toby stares at her a moment before asking his wife, "What three-year-old knows the words 'bacteria' and 'white blood cells'?"

"Three-year-olds who watch The Magic School Bus," Spencer grins. "That's who."