She Laughs at the Days

I realized early what I was getting into marrying a man who had five brothers, and only two sisters. I knew that they were a testosterone poisoned, belch in public, pee outdoors type of family. I found this out when I first looked through a family photo album when we were not yet engaged. First there was the honeymoon shot that his parents took of his dad peeing over the edge of the Grand Canyon. Then there were the shots of my genius husband, as a small boy peeing over the edge of yet another cliff or mountain, I don’t remember now, and then his younger brother, and then the brother after that. Boy number four had his feet hooked under the bottom rail of a boat and was urinating over the side body swathed in a bright yellow slicker. At this point I realized that I would be forever encountering public urination if I attached myself to this family. I have gradually gotten used to it. There were the days when I would drive onto the family property in the morning and boy number 6, chil

The Girl is right now in the bedroom wailing that she wants mommy. I’m typing this instead. Don’t gasp her father is in there with her, I need a break. This has been going on since 8pm; it is now 10:18pm. It’s my fault really, I let her nap for almost two hours this afternoon, not the best way to help her go down on time after a weekend of late nights, but she’s been so tired. We’ve had sketchy success with teaching this little girl to sleep by herself, if she had her druthers she’s still be nestled up next to my body all night long nursing whenever she felt like it. This arrangement worked well for us her first year of life, and long into the second, but then neither of us was really getting much sleep after that and it was time to get her a bed of her own and teach her that she really can fall asleep without a nipple in her mouth. I won’t bore you with the long process that ensued to reach this goal, but we did eventually get there. Some nights we can brush her teeth, turn, out the

The Boy tries, unsuccessfully for about 5 minutes to get the Girl to take his toy dagger, he is wielding the sword, and play soldiers with him. She would rather walk around with the big stuffed dog. She trips and falls. In a flash he is at her side, “Sister did you trip?” “Uh-huh.” “Did a monster trip you?” ‘Uh-huh.” Handing her the dagger, “Well then here, take this and kill it!” A couple of minutes later he has his sword in the dog’s heart, the stuffed one, and I hear him saying, “We need food, we are going to have food now that we killed the dog.” She kneels next to him and responds, “Uh-huh!” One minute later, the Boy calls, “Mom, do you want to buy a dog? It’s dead, I killded it and cut all the meat off. It’s tasty.” Don’t ask me, I honestly don’t know.

The Boy has been sleeping over, all by himself at Beema’s house, otherwise known as his grandmother. It’s not like he hasn’t slept there before. We have lived there on several different occasions for months at a time. This year he started sleeping in the “BIG BOYS ROOM” with his uncles on the trundle bed. So when we were there for our second Friday night dinner after moving to our own place, he naturally assumed after I got him out of the bath and into his jammies, (in anticipation of going straight to bed when we got home) that he was going to sleep at Beema’s that night. I said “no” at first and then on further reflection thought, “Why not?” So after making sure it was okay with Beema, and the boys, my brothers in law, whose room he would be sharing, I sat him down to make sure that he knew what he was asking. “Mommy and Daddy will be driving home now, are you sure you want to stay here and sleep without us?” “Umm, yep.” This said brightly with a firm upward lift of his chin that

My MILly is a wannabe Jew, which isn’t all that weird to me since my mother, also not a Jew, has this deep emotional/spiritual connection to Israel also. I think it may come from a lifetime of studying the Bible; after all it is all about the chosen people start to finish. How nominal Christians throughout the centuries could have missed this and become so anti-Semitic I have no idea. So we celebrated Passover last week. We have actually been keeping Jewish feasts day with our little family for quite a while now. We decided a long time ago to dispense with the confusing, misleading, syncretistic North American traditional holidays and what better thing to replace them with than the feasts that are commanded in the Bible and are designed with the instruction of your children in mind and the memory of God’s provision in ages past. Assuming of course that you believe the stuff in the Bible, which we do. Most of the time anyway. So before I lose everyone because I just dissed all of the

SO I want to post about our weekend and the long stay at Millie’s house, and Passover with the kids, but that will take a long time and I’m tired, so stay posted, hopefully tomorrow. I will tell you about the apparently perfect woman I met at the boy’s Judo class. Yes we signed him up for Judo, and he looks so cute in his little gi, and he is getting really good at his throws already even though it’s been just a few weeks. His uncles and aunt are in the same class so they pick him up and take him with them several nights a week and I know he’s okay because those kids are the greatest with their little niece and nephew and they help him practice throws and teach him how to do a real push-up and hug him if he cries. So back to the perfect woman. Today I was there and was talking again to this mom I met our first day at the dojo. She is this petite blond Norwegian woman, I learned the first day I met her that she competes in triathlon for fun. She is training for the iron man in Hawaii

Mom why doesn’t this go on here? What? Why doesn’t this go on here? I can’t even see what you are holding buddy. What is it? He holds up a Lego wheel part and the wheel from a wooden rocket ship toy that he pulled apart earlier that day. That isn’t going to work buddy it’s not made to fit together. Why not? Because Lego didn’t make that wheel, so it doesn’t fit with Lego parts. But why mom, why doesn’t it? Because it has to be made by Lego to fit onto that piece. But why mom, why does it? There is no answer to your question honey. Head down and face averted. Don’t say that to me mom, you’re destructing me. I’m what? You’re destructing me with that. Are you trying to say that I’m being destructive to you or that I’m destroying you? No I’m just saying that you are destructing me. Destructing isn’t a word. You can say that I’m destroying you or that I’m being destructive to you. No mom, you’re just destructing me, stop destructing me.

There are days when I am the coolest person on the planet, to my son anyway. When I was assembling an IKEA kids table for his use I was told at least 10 times that I am doing wonderful, good job. Then he would dance around and laugh and make a mantra out of the phrase “a table, a table a table a table.” That day I also finally got around to changing out the rails on his bed so that we could use the Ikea slats and put his mattress on them instead of on the floor inside of the bed. “Thanks for fixing my bed mom, you did a good job.” Today he stood next to bathtub and watched me wash his sister’s hair. “You are doing really good mom, you are doing good at that.” So I chose this moment to explain that the correct way to say it was that I am doing it well. “But why mom?” “Because that’s the right way to say it.” “But why?” “Because to say that I am doing it well is how to make the words say that you think I am doing a good job. To say that I am doing good is saying something that m

So last night in San Diego we were supposed to get 1 1/2 inches of rain, I think we got way more than that. I left the bedroom window open, because it’s not cold and it smells good, and I like the sound of rain falling outside my window. I also need to add that I have always loved storms and thunder and lightning, I used to drive to the highest spot in town during storms to get the best view. This was of course when I lived in the prairies and thunderstorms were a nightly occurrence. Well last night I was sleeping, and having some sort of dream when lightning and thunder happened, simultaneously directly on top of us. The thunder went on for about 30 seconds. I half woke up and opened my eyes to see this flash of light coming at me from the window and this huge sound and I was certain something was actually coming in the window like a big explosion or something and glass was breaking and flying at me. I was truly terrified. So I did the most logical thing one should do in that situa