Love at first sight
Ages
Happy campers
Slowly by steadily, our addition is coming along. Our crew of Albanians has finally knocked a hole through the wall so we can enter it from inside the house. This means Eva’s bedroom is now a hallway, and last night, we scrambled to find a place for her to sleep.
We ended up putting a mattress on Tyler’s bedroom floor, where she will sleep until her new room is complete. At first, I worried how the two siblings would respond to becoming sudden roommates. Here’s how it unfolded:
6:00: I employ the manpower of a good friend to haul a one-ton, king-sized memory foam mattress into Tyler’s room.
6:30: I reveal their new sleeping quarters to brother and sister. They stare at it. They’re not sure how to go about mending the hole in Eva’s wall.
6:35: The children have discovered that they can climb on Tyler’s dresser and jump into a giant, bouncy trampoline.
6:45: “Mama! Eva and I want to go camping! Can we have a bag of marshmallows?”
7:00: “Mama! We want to go to bed now! We have to go camping NOW!”
7:15: “Can we have a flashlight? We want to count the stars on our ceiling!”
7:30: “We don’t want to brush our teeth. We want to stay in our room!”
7:45: The two have removed their pillow cases from their pillows and placed them over each others’ heads. I wonder if they can laugh and suffocate at the same time.
8:00: Lights out. I kiss my campers goodnight and head downstairs for some peace and quiet.
8:01, as I am halfway down the stairs: “MAMA, GET EVA OUT OF HERE. I WANT MY OWN ROOM BACK!”
I love him with every beat of my throat.
One thing I’ll miss after my kids grow up is having little people around who think I perform magic tricks. Like when I stand in front of a mirror with Anna—she looks at my reflection, then at me, then at my reflection, then at me again. How did I double myself right before her eyes? She stares at me like I’m Houdini.
As Tyler gets older, I’ve noticed that more and more I am losing my magical powers. Maybe it started happening when he realized the only electronic or technological problems I can solve are the ones that require a battery change. “Go ask Daddy,” I say right on cue, thereby handing the magic wand over to Doug. Reluctantly, he assumes the role of Head Magician.
Tonight I was reading Tyler a bedtime story, and he had his hand draped around my neck, and his hand rested on the pulse in my throat. He sat very still as I read, and I thought he was focusing on the story. Suddenly he bolted upright, eyes bulged and demanded, “Mama! How did you put your heart in your neck?”
The magic is back. At least, until the next Leapfrog Leapster malfunction.
A Tale of Two Kitties
Everyone of us can recall our first best friend. And odds are for most of us, that first best friend was stuffed.
There was a time Tyler and his original Cat in the Hat (left), were inseparable. He dragged him along everywhere he went—to the dinner table, to bed, on every daytrip and outing. He played games with him and read him stories. The only time he’d agree to put him down was bath time, during which the Cat in the Hat would perch on the toilet tank and supervise.
Then one day, the Cat in the Hat disappeared. We looked everywhere for him. We searched cracks and crevices in the house we didn’t know existed. Finally, after day three of tucking Tyler into his bed with an empty spot by his side and a heart-wrenchingly sad look on his face, I ran a search on Amazon.com. Four days later, along came a skinny, straggly version of the Cat in the Hat—the Cat in the Hat’s crackhead cousin (right).
Reluctantly but full of hope, I presented him to Tyler. He stared at him for a moment, then quietly put him aside.
At first I thought I traumatized him with my poor substitute. Now his Cat in the Hat was no longer one of a kind—he was replaceable with the click of a keyboard. It was as if I’d torn the heart and soul out of his constant companion and replaced it with stuffing and felt.
Come to find out, he wasn’t traumatized one bit. Over the past week that I thought he was wallowing in Cat in the Hatless misery, he was learning to live without him. My little boy was growing up.
Before long, the original Cat in the Hat turned up. I stumbled upon him on laundry day, stuffed in the back of our kitchen towel drawer, mummified in a dozen towels. I ran so fast to return him to Tyler that I nearly tripped over my feet. I thrust it into his arms and announced, “Look who I found!”
Tyler stared at him for a moment, walked him over to Crackhead Cat in the Hat, and placed the two of them side by side by side. And without a word, he walked away. Neither Cat in the Hat has been to the dinner table, in his bed, on the toilet tank or in the minivan since.
On a happy note, the feline duo still has each other. It doesn’t seem to bother Cat in the Hat that his cousin is a crackhead. Because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.
Happy 109th, Dr. Seuss (1904-1991).