Space trash

Owen is sooooooooo lonely without Sam.

He popped into my room tonight.

"Hey mom," he smiles, winking at me.

He knows he's not supposed to be out of bed, but he thinks a smile and a wink-nudge will make it okay.

It does.

We chat about many many things.

"Do you remember going to Horizon, Owen?"

"Of course I do. I remember the first day I went there."

Liar. You don't even remember your birthdate.

"Oh you do?  That was a long time ago!" [indulgent smile]

"Yeah, I got in to a little bit of trouble for my voice being too loud. I didn't know my voice was too loud because it was the same voice that I had been using at my other school.  I know now that even kindergarteners sometimes have voices that were too loud, but I didn't know that then and I felt sad for breaking rules I didn't understand."

Oh. Well then. Maybe he does remember.

We then talked for a bit about packing lunch vs. hot lunch. Packing lunch has the benefit of healthy foods he probably likes, but hot lunch has chocolate milk.

I think you know which one wins.

"But, mom, you know what my least favorite thing about hot lunch is?"

"What?"

"The foam plates."

He then starts shuttering while he describes the foam plates they serve lunch on, and the sound the plates make as they slide against each other. He clearly wants to peel his skin off just talking about it. He even dry heaved a little bit.

See, Owen, but this is why you keep pinging on aspergers scales.

"Do you want to know the worst kind of foam?"

"Absolutely."

"Star foam.  Star foam is the worst and don't ever bring it in this house."

We should also still use bibs.

I was reading an old blog post recently and I figured out that we put the toddler rail back up on Lilly's bed well over a year ago and we have absolutely no intention of taking it down.  We tried that, it was awful, never trying it again.

Some day, when she's 12, she'll have her first non- family sleepover with some overly mature bitchy 8th grader that she's fallen in with, and that girl is going to make SO much fun of her and Lilly is going to come to us, furious.

"Look," we'll say, "you were a sweet girl, but dumb like a hamster in the middle of the night. We need sleep."

She'll say it caused little Skyler or Blaire or Everly or whatever her hipster name was to ostrasize her at school, but I never liked that kid, so I'm not bothered.

Three stories

1) Owen has been enjoying listening to some old kids CDs. There is one with a funny little song about how awful brothers are:

There goes my brother again

Ruining all of the fun

I know I should love him, I know that it's true

And I will

When I turn

42

But then I heard him singing

There goes my brother again

Being my very best friend

I know that he's clever, I know that it's true

And I'm sure

That he loves

Me too

"Is that from the CD, Owen?"  I know the tune, but don't remember this verse. 

"Kind of.  I changed the words so that they'd be nicer, though."

2) After dinner tonight Chris offered a quick trip to the pool. YAY. POOL. Two minutes later I'm shoving my feet into flip flops when I hear the thunder. 

The kids are upset. 

Sam flops on the ground, despondent. 

Owen and Lilly decide to play outside in the rain. Sam drags himself outside, wanting to be miserable, but unable to resist the opportunity to boss his siblings around. 

They have a wonderful time as I make lunches and load the dishwasher and check Facebook and wonder vaguely what the chances are they will be struck by lightning. 

They come back inside. 

"You guys took lemons and made lemonade!"

"No we didn't," Owen vigorously denies. "We don't even have lemons."  

"It's a saying Owen. It means you made the best of a bad situation."

"When you come in from playing in the fresh rain outside, the house smells like garbage."

3) tonight, Lilly's bedtime pronouncement was, "I really like my life."  

Our little secret

I read an article on Facebook the other day. It was about how you should never have "secrets" with your kids.  Instead, you should have "surprises."  It was kind of semantics, but whatever, right?  I'm taking parenting advice from the Internet, get out of my way.

So when we were driving to target the other day and Lilly says to Chris, "Dad? Remember our secret?" I say, "we don't have secrets, Lilly."

As is often my experience with following advice from parenting articles, this doesn't play out the way I was expecting.

"What?" She says.  "No way. If we tell you then you wouldn't let dad give me gum.  I'm definitely still going to have secrets."

1) dang it, she's right. I totally wouldn't allow that. Now what?
2) hey.  I'm right here. You're terrible at secrets.
3) respect my authority.

Chicken fingers

I was sitting with Lilly this evening, as she lay in bed.  She was pretty asleep.  I thought.  I mean, she was snoring and everything.

Then,

"Mom? Is boneless chicken real?"

It's one of those questions I hate because I'm no parenting rookie and I know this is a set-up. If I say boneless chicken isn't real, she'll be walking around denying that dinner exists. If I say it is real, she's going to make a fool of herself on the class field trip to the farm.

So it's always the long answer.  "All chickens that are alive have bones. Chickens that we eat sometimes have bones, and sometimes the bones are taken out by other people."

"So boneless chicken isn't real?"

Gah. Knock it off.

"Because my friend Jack says a boneless chicken bit him on the finger."

Your friend Jack is full of shit.