When you have to go, you have to go.
My new obsession is the vocabulary game at www.freerice.com. It’s like the vocabulary SAT but more fun. Plus it keeps score in a visible way. And apparently it somehow gives rice to the third world. Fun, educational, and philanthropic all at once. Beat that!
I feel like I’ve been blogging about Gracie a lot lately, and giving my little man (I can hear him asserting, loudly: “I’m not a little man! I’m a BIG boy!”) short shrift. This morning he attacked a big donut at Cafe Vanille in Beacon Hill while we waited for Steph and Jemma. He was so hilarious and entertaining. He even offered to share his donut with Jemma, without prompting – I was very proud. Also, here are some photos of him right before New Year’s, on a day we spent together a deux.
Whit and I had an action-packed mother-son afternoon. We started at the new children’s museum (amazing). Really fun until the $1 after 5pm on Fridays deal kicked in (I was oblivious to this) and le tout Boston arrived to join us. So we left and went to have dinner at Armando’s. As he wrangled his enormous slice of pizza at Armando’s, Whit looked at me and said, “Mummy, you are the best.” Priceless. … See my Tabblo>
I have had KT Tunstall’s Throw Me a Rope in my head all day today:
(photo from a recent flight, my version of O’Keeffe’s Above The Clouds)
I want you between me and the feeling I get when I miss you
But everything here is telling me I should be fine…
I got used to you whispering things to me into the evening
We followed the sun and its colours and left this world…
So throw me a rope to hold me in place
Show me a clock for counting my days down
Cause everything’s easier when you’re beside me
Come back and find me, cause I feel alone
And whenever you go it’s like holding my breath underwater
I have to admit that I kind of like it when I do…
Okay, this blog has me literally laughing out loud. See the photograph of small boy clutching two identical monkeys? That could 100% be Whit. He has those exact same monkeys, and TWO of them, in his crib.
Much like Brene, whose blog that is, I thought I had learned from dealing with Grace’s passionate attachment to her brown bear. She needed that thing every single night in her crib. One night, the summer before she turned 2, we learned how desperate that need was. I had packed her bag for Marion and she had, unbeknownst to me, toddled over to it and removed brown bear (before we left). I didn’t realize this until we got to Marion. The whole day was spent talking about how brown bear was not with us, and that was OK. I took her to Toys R Us at the Dartmouth Mall and let her pick out any animal she wanted in lieu of brown bear. I thought we were OK. That night, I put her to bed, in a pack ‘n’ play filled with old stuffed animals of mine that were resident in Marion’s various dusty closets. She was clutching her new horse. As I shut the door I could hear her musing, quietly, to herself: “Brown bear? No bear?” I had an ominous feeling in my chest.
And how right I was. I think Grace slept about 2 hours that night, all curled around me (and as you know, I am not so much a fan of that while sleeping). I drove her up and down Point Road at 2am, contemplated driving home, etc. It was not a great night. To this day, when things seem like they are about to go off the rails in a substantial way, Hilary and Terence say to each other: “No bear?”
So, with Whit, I wised up. As soon as he seemed to develop an attachment to his little monkey, I rushed out and bought another one. I hid it in the closet. Somehow, within a few months, he had his grubby little hands on both of them. And to this day we need to locate BOTH monkeys before he can settle down to bed. He has been known to wail in his crib “My mon-keeeee!” when he only has one. The twin monkeys are absolutely essential to sleep.
The horrors we bring on ourselves!