Sleeping with Chris

This post is rated PG.

So I've been sharing a bed with Chris for a long time now. Chris's anniversary flower note said it was over 4000 nights and I'm just going to trust his math. 

It's taken me some time, but I'm now pretty much an expert in sleeping with Chris. I will share my knowledge with you just in case you ever end up sharing a room. 

He will wake you up with a tightly secure hug, whispering, "shhhhhhh.  It's okay.  It's okay. Shhhhhh."  You will blearily think, " I . . . had a nightmare? Thanks for helping out, buddy.  I'm so soothed I don't even remember having a scary dream."  Don't buy it. It's bullshit. You weren't having a nightmare.  You were just sleeping. 

He will get up on his hands and knees and try to push you out of the bed, claiming you are squashing a child. You are not squashing a child. There's only one person in this bed who would squash a child, asleep or awake, and it's not you.  Also, there is not even a child in the bed. Also, generally speaking, if he is up on all fours, no good will come of it. The second you sense him thrashing and heaving his way up, just accept the fact that you are about to deal with some absurd bullshit. 

He will steal all the covers. And then get hot and throw them on the ground. He will then wake you up and ask you where the blankets are.  

He will clomp his teeth together so loudly and with such vigor that you will fear breakage.  Don't be concerned.  He has Hippo teeth. 

He will absolutely leave you for dead when a child comes into the room. The child could be wailing, on her third trip in, and your best case scenario is he MIGHT clomp his teeth some.

When you are tired and trying to fall asleep, he will wait until you are thisclose to asleep and then tell you that if you give out your gmail address with an extra dot in it than you can easily filter for junk mail. He will repeat until ptsd sets in and your body says, "forget it, then. No sleep for you."  Then he will fall peacefully and cheerfully asleep. 

At this point I'm so good at sleeping with Chris that I could teach a four credit hour class in it. Unfortunately, it's just another skill I have that means nothing to anybody else. Still, he's not the worst roommate ever. He is warm, and he has no way of knowing if you are lying when you say it's his turn to get up. 

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.

Stick Figures

We dropped Owen and Lilly off at a kids-only luau-themed event last night.  Owen refused to wear a grass skirt, but probably has more natural talent at hula-hooping than anyone else I'm related to.  By blood, at least.  Ziggles could be hella good at hula-ing.  Who knows?

Any way, the teacher let the kids take home some tissue paper and people cut outs so that could continue their crafts at home.  They were supposed to use the tissue paper to make grass skirts and glue them on the people cut outs.   

Instead, this morning, Owen comes proudly into my room, carrying two sticks with some red tissue paper taped to one end.  

"Wook!"  he says, brandishing a stick, "torches!"

"Oh, great!" I say.  "Very cool, Owen."

"I used my two favorite sticks," he says, nodding meaningfully at me.   

"You have . . . favorite sticks?"  I am aware that Owen enjoys sticks, but I was not aware that he had, like, permanent sticks.  Like, sticks that he has relationships with.

"He keeps them in a secret place," Sam says, not even looking up from his book.  

"Oh."

I'm conflicted.  Do I want to know where the secret stick stash is?  How many sticks are there?  Is it a land of sticks, with stick rules and stick hierarchies, all bowing to the benevolent Lord Owen?  Where sticks vie in contests of skill and bravery to be his favorite?  

"I wike dem because they wook wike shooting rifles."