Just Me and The Boy

The house is so quiet. The girls are at Studio Grandma’s for a movie night and sleep over, so Curtis and I have the place to ourselves. (Oops, I forgot to mention our huge, aggressive, man-eating watch dog. Yep, he’s here too.) I suppose it would be just as quiet if the girls were here since it’s past bedtime, but at this hour, I might still be trying to get them settled. Bedtime was a breeze with the just my little guy tonight!

We had a better, calmer day today. None of the furniture got broken. The funny thing is, I went to bed last night with my heart full of forgiveness for them. They’re just little girls who can’t resist the fun of a good jump on the bed. I know we’ve told them not to, but there are times I let them jump on my bed. (Grant tells them to stop jumping on his bed, and they correct him that it’s not his bed, it’s Mommy’s bed.) I guess the lines could be a little blurry on that rule. Plus, I remembered a time when I was probably just between their age and I was playing at a friend’s house. She and her siblings wanted to do jumps off their top bunk. They assured me that they did it all the time and it wasn’t against the rules. I got doing it too, and we were having so much fun until I jumped and hit my head on their light fixture, breaking the glass cover. I remember how scared I felt that their parents would be mad at me. I didn’t even really care about bonking my head; I just didn’t want to be in trouble for breaking something.

My feelings put me in a difficult position, because I told them a punishment was coming. And they should be punished . . . I think. I guess that’s why I have Grant. He’ll come home and help me make sense of it all. Maybe we’ll just give them a few extra chores to do around the house for a while. Since we have to spend time and effort to fix the bed, they can spend time and effort helping out more around the house.

One of the best moments of today was at lunch. I cut the peel off an apple slice for Curtis, and Eleanor asked me to cut the peel off hers so she could eat the apple and the peel separately. I cut it off for her and handed her the two pieces. She put them back together and teasingly told me that I forgot to cut her apple. I told her she would have to scrape it off herself, or maybe she would have to use a little magic to get the peel off the apple. Eleanor put her napkin over her apple and said some magic words. Then she removed the napkin and separated the two pieces. We all cheered for her amazing trick. This started a whole show, with Phaedra and Eleanor doing tricks with their apples, magically removing peel, making bites disappear, and making them disappear altogether. We even pretended Curtis was talking and doing magic tricks making his food disappear. They made me laugh so hard, and I loved the feeling of being able to laugh with my kids on such a lonely day.

It gets hard for me to be so cut off from Grant. We can’t call each other because his phone has no signal out there. The internet service out there is really unreliable, but in the small moments when it is available, Grant steals a few moments to text me using the internet. That’s about all the contact we get until he’s driving home to me. Plus, my mom is in Utah right now visiting my siblings. I don’t want to call Beth because she’s enjoying my mom right now; she doesn’t get much time to do that. I know I could call them, but I don’t really want to unless I really have a need. It’s amazing how isolated I can feel while surrounded by so much constant conversation. Sometimes I wish my kids and I could have moments when we just don’t feel the need to talk. SO much talking goes on around here—not a lot of listening on their end. I wish it could satisfy me the way conversation with actual adults does.

I loved coming home with Curtis and hanging out with him alone for an hour before putting him to bed. I let myself enjoy him and go along with his every whim instead of telling myself I had things to get done. The first thing he did was beg me to turn some music on. Then, he grabbed a spatula and went right to trying to stir my clean towels that are in a basket. We played around with some of his toys. He thought it was great fun to put his flashlight down into his ball popper and then beg me to get it out for him. He amazes me. I sit and watch him discovering things around him and trying to interact, and I’m just in awe of my wonderful little boy. I think I feel this way about all my kids when I really take the time to observe them. So many times, I felt tempted to grab the camera, but I didn’t want to miss anything. I didn’t want to change the mood by Curtis noticing the camera and fussing because I won’t let him touch it. I didn’t want to walk away from the sound of his laughter.

He loves to go between the living room couch and window. I sit on the couch and pop up over the back of the couch where I know he is and say, “boo!” He laughs and pushes my head back down. Then I pop up in a different spot. Sometimes Curtis gets so excited and having so much fun playing with me back there that his little head gets to bouncing like a pinball between the windowsill and the back of the couch. He’s so riled up, he doesn’t even care about all the bonks he’s getting. He just keeps laughing and playing. This time, I had already started trying to get his jammies on, so he was down to just a diaper and socks when we were playing. He’s so cute in his soft baby skin. His body has gotten so lean except for his slight pot gut. The rest of him is thin as can be.

I held him a little longer as I put him to bed tonight. I love how he still snuggles in to my left shoulder when he knows it’s time to sleep.

Phaedra told me several times tonight that she would miss me. I told her I would miss her too, but she should try to have a good time because we would be together again tomorrow morning. She’s such a sweet girl.

They both are.

Eleanor made me a Happy New Year card today, completely out of the blue. She got some new stationery from the present game Christmas Eve, and the first thing she wrote on it was a Happy New Year card for me.

I feel pretty lucky.

These pictures are from yesterday. The girls were playing with their glow-in-the-dark Bendaroos from Christmas. They could spend hours playing with those things.

Phaedra showing off her truffula tree. More on those later.

Eleanor claimed to be working on a phone.

She modeled it for me when it was finished. (She took it apart today, saying she was going to make a better one.)

Curtis and his flashlight (the same one he was putting in his ball popper tonight). One end is a whistle with a lid (and yes, I’m just waiting for him to impale himself on it). He loves taking off the lid and trying to put it back on. He usually ends up begging me to put it back on because his dexterity just isn’t quite there yet. He couldn’t find the lid tonight, and I was amazed at how he got his point across when he was trying to ask me to help him find it.

I probably should get some other things done before I go to bed. I really need to go over my primary lesson. I’ve been putting it off. I have a brand new class this week. I know the kids from when I was in nursery (and one of them happens to live with me). I know they’re great kids. Their last teacher says they are little angels. Still, I’m so afraid they’re going to eat me alive. That’s why I’ve put off preparing this week’s lesson. Great planning, right? I’d better go read through it. I also have to figure out some sort of activity for this young little class. I really want us to start off on the right foot. Ahh! No pressure, right?

Goodnight all.