Friday, November 27, 2015

A few quick thoughts about a few happy things

So Thanksgiving happened this week.  You may have been aware of that already, but I like to put this in context.

(I had a blog ready to go that was chock-full-o-hilarity, but now it's the witching hour of the evening, and I'm no longer in that mood.  Apparently, I'm sentimental and smarmy at this time of night.  But the hilariously written post will come some time.  I'll let you decide which one it is in the future, just in case our ideas of "hilarity" don't overlap.  That's feasible.)

My children.  Bless their hearts.  I'll laugh heartily if you suggest that I surely want another baby around the house.  'Cause I don't.  My two snuggle bugs are enough for me yesterday, today and tomorrow.  And they definitely put the THANKS in my seasons.

I'm loving the way the Elder helps the Younger keep track of her score during family games.

I had to swallow the belly laughs when one of my children (identity protection) walked into the glass door of the milk case when she was in hot pursuit of some chocolate milk at the grocery store this morning.  

I watched in awe at the amount of food one child can eat: fifteen slices (give or take two) of cucumber along with a cookie for an afternoon snack (healthy balance? holiday indulgence? natural flavor combination?) a mere two hours after eating a large lunch.  She paused as she was finishing the last slice of cucumber, looked at me and said "I think I'm full." 

(Lest you mothers-o-boys think you have full authority over children who eat like ravenous beasts, this daughter of mine...she has her moments.)

I smiled to myself hearing the Younger admit that "I have sleepy eyes" after we left my grandmother's house on the way home after a day of family and food.  Sure, every kid probably says this.  But they only say it for a while.

The boy has been transferring documents and cleaning up his side of our mess of an organizational method for all things technology as we've been getting my new tech digs up and running.  (stroke of luck - frying old laptop just prior to big sales on all things technology)  There's a folder on my desktop right now that I spent about 30 minutes reveling in just this afternoon of videos that he uncovered from his side of our virtual closet.  The Elder and I cuddled our way through various dance moves, calls for "Smile!" and renditions of "Baa, baa, black sheep."  We marveled out how round and bald the Younger's face/head was.  We laughed at the little shimmies and jives.  We chuckled heartily at one particular video of happy the Younger instantly turning into irate the Younger when the boy took her from sitting to "standing," presumably to show of a newly acquired skill.  We lost about 3 months of pictures of the girls that were not backed up on the old laptop in the Great Coffee on Laptop Debacle 2015, so to have these handful of videos surface soothed this mama's heart.

And then, there was Thanksgiving Play 2015.  Our two nieces (11 and 10) are fast buddies and started something of a tradition a few years ago of sequestering themselves in the basement of my parents' home and throwing together a hodge-podge play that typically has negligible plot and copious amounts of giggling.  They obviously love doing it as we've been treated to these performances at every major holiday for a couple of years now.  And this year it expanded for the first time to include our nephew (7) and the Elder (6).  (The Younger (3) made a cameo at the beginning, but this was getting close to her normal downtime, and then she found my lap more enticing than her stage role.)  Friends, we were treated to an entire re-enactment of the story of the Pilgrims from the time they were in England to the first Thanksgiving, including some traditional pioneer garb that my mom happens to have, which functioned as Pilgrim-esque in a pinch for the oldest two.  Even better, my two peanuts were decked out in a couple of my old dresses from when I was roughly 5 and 8, which obviously suffice as appropriate garb from ye olden times.  There was laughter (lots of it), there were mock tears (pre-teens know a thing or two about histrionics), and there was that glorious first Thanksgiving feast.  Unfortunately, we were informed after the conclusion of Act XIII (the finale, of sorts) that this was in fact not a comedy but rather a drama.  There will likely be a Christmas 2015 play coming soon to a basement theater near you me when I will have another chance to practice my straight face.   

But, until that time comes, I should probably practice my exercising face or at the very minimum my I-do-have-some-will-power-over-food face. 

1 comment:

Fugitive said...

That's funny. There are pictures of me as a kid performing the Christmas story (from Luke) with my cousins at family gatherings. Complete with costumes that my aunt would provide. But I don't remember it very well.
What I do remember is being with my cousins (in the basement!) and creating our own play, performing it for ourselves, and then picking a word (excited, sad, slow, fast, happy) and re-performing the same play but with only that emotion/idea that we had chosen. Again and again and again.