Archive for the ‘reciprocal affection’ Category

Home Alone


2012
11.14

Hanging out with my kiddos.  Last night we tried an experiment – leaving them home alone for an hour after dark.  After dark being the key part here, at 11 and (almost) 9, they have stayed home for an hour or two before while I have run errands or whatever.  But I vaguely remember the first time I was in the house alone after dark, and being pretty freaked out at how different everything seemed.

But I had to go to a 7pm meeting, and Charles hadn’t come home from work yet, so we talked about it, and the kids felt like they could handle it.  I told them not to worry about putting themselves to bed, just get ready for bed and their dad could put them to bed when he got home.  It turned out Charles was later than he thought he’d be, and he found them snuggled up and reading together at 8:45 in Dillon’s bed.  Apparently they had discussed putting themselves to bed at 8, but Rose said, “When you weren’t home I got creeped out, and it was like there were ghosts and zombies in my room, so I wanted to be by Dillon.”

I said, “That’s fine, and I understand being creeped out, but you know ghosts and zombies aren’t real, right?  They are just made up.”

Dillon interjects, “But Mom, that is the lizard brain.  And it is really hard to fight those feelings.  Like, the light in my closet (where we have the wireless router and server for the house) is really disconcerting, even though I know what it is.”

That kid really cracks me up sometimes!

Traveling


2012
10.04

I am at the National office for my work this week in a series of seminars and meetings.  It is great to visit New York City, and to do it in a professional capacity is a very different experience than I have had before.  But I really wasn’t looking forward to this trip at all, largely because I know that Rose was going to be very upset about it.  She’s had this in her mind since I first mentioned it months ago, and has asked me for countless details as we’ve gone through the schedule a number of times.

When it came time for me to leave, Rose and my dad drove me to the airport, and she fought so hard not to cry.  It completely broke my heart to leave her.  Later that night, when I called to say I arrived (and to check the soccer scores from the games I missed that afternoon) she told me that she almost scored a goal (the goalie caught the ball) and then when we were hanging up she started crying again.

This isn’t uncommon behavior for Rose, she still doesn’t like it when I go back to work in the evening for a meeting or something, and she might tear up a little in that scenario.  I think part of it is that she loves her mom, but more might be that she’s a routine-oriented kid who likes to rehash the schedule for the next week every night as she lays down for bed.

So I miss her like crazy and can’t wait to be home…

Romance


2012
06.01

Me: [Walking into my bedroom at 9:30pm and finding Charles passed out and snoring.] Oh, is it Friday night already?

Charles: Molly, the romance isn’t dead. It just stays up too late sometimes. The romance is a little bit of an idiot.

We laugh about this, and then he falls immediately back to sleep. It is funny because it is a pattern in our relationship that he only sort of realizes. He can only stay up until 2 or 3am four days in a row. So that is Monday through Thursday. Then, on Friday, like clockwork, he passes out (usually as early as 8pm). Saturday and Sunday are generally pretty early nights too, and then it is back working all night on the weeknights. We’ll see if the new job he’s starting changes things at all…  Not that I am complaining.  He works hard, and I am sure that is why this new company recruited him – he is very good at what he does.  But I’d kind of like our sleep schedules to match a little bit, one or two days a week at least!

Bookworm Memories


2012
05.22

Rose loves to play outside when she gets home from school.  Dillon could go either way, but Rose loves hanging out in the yard.  We have one rule, she has to keep me apprised of where she is at all times, she can’t move from the front yard to the back without letting me know.  (This rule was born of a moment of complete heart-attack-inducing panic one day where she was sitting on the swing playing nicely and I was screaming my head off looking for her in the back yard, but she couldn’t hear me because the traffic on the street can be pretty loud.)

So today she was sitting on the swing while I was making dinner and she came in and asked “can I take my book up into the tree to read?” 

I told her it was fine as long as she didn’t try to move while she was climbing.

The picture here only sort of gets at what she looked like as I spied on her through the window.  I remember doing that when I was a kid.  It always seemed like a better idea than it was, as your butt was likely to fall asleep and you would most certainly have little bugs crawling on you by the time you made your way down, but it was also pretty awesome.

And yeah, my daughter climbs trees in dresses.  Don’t judge.

Later, she brought her book in and went back out with her iPod on, and proceeded to serenade the neighbors passionately with a garbled version of the Hairspray soundtrack.  She comes in strong at the chorus, and her dance moves are awesome.  But I remember standing on my front porch when I was in 7th or 8th grade with my friend Erin, singing along to Whitney Houston’s How Will I Know as it blared out of my pink (cassette only) boombox.  Watching Rose, with her pink headphones belting out “Good Morning Baltimore!” really takes me back…