Captain Adventure and I are bach-in it this weekend. That’s right. It’s just me-n-mah-boy, for three whole days. His father and sisters piled into Homer the Odyssey yesterday and headed off for the uncharted wilderness of the Los Angeles area for the family 4th of July party.
I couldn’t go this time – between Female Troubles (yeah, still…I think I may be approaching the point where I start proposing we just yank the whole blasted works out of there and be done with it), work-related deadlines and an epic amount of laundry (don’t laugh – one of the girls had scabies, and I’m so freaked out by Such Things that I won’t be able to sleep at night until I have washed ALL the things), I just wasn’t able to take five whole days away from Everything.
Which The Captain feels is possibly the second or third most awesome thing that has ever happened to him in his entire almost-eight-years of life.
I was a little worried last night, as he was revisiting the question of where exactly daddy and the sisters were right now. Would they be home later? Would they be home in the morning? Where did they go, again? And then, just as I was starting to think, Aw, crap, he thinks he’s been ditched!, he grabbed hold of my neck and yelled, “Good! Cause then it just you and me, just dat!”
Sometimes, I think The Captain wishes he was the only child of a single parent. Just a hunch.
Also, I had to keep sending him back to his own bed, because he was totally trying to take over daddy’s spot while he was away. Possession is 9/10th of the law, dude…you left it unattended, I moved into it, ANY QUESTIONS?!
So this morning, he had a list of things he felt would be a good use of our time. Important things. Like marshmallows, cereal, and bendy wax sticks. Oh. And some of the fusible bead trays, so he could build cool things for me to obediently iron upon demand.
The young artiste, he has NEEDS, y’all.
So after some breakfast cocoa and a morning chat about video games, we went off to WalMart together. He chattered all the way there…and then promptly went into shut-down as we were walking up to the store.
…so…much…stuff…!!!
He maintained a death-grip on my hand the entire time. The most I could get from him was a whispered “yes” or “no” when I would show him various products – or a wordless pointing as I started to toss the coveted and seldom-purchased marshmallows into the cart. How about the pastel ones, because the only thing better than marshmallows-at-all would be PASTEL marshmallows, which is, like, ULTRA awesome and stuff…
But WalMart…they had neither the fusible-bead things, nor the bendy wax sticks. Sadness. And. Woe.
So we went next door to Michaels. Where I found the fusible bead things on sale no less in about three seconds. But the bendy wax sticks…couldn’t find them.
We searched high and low, and with increasing desperation. When an autistic kid has decided that this and ONLY this will do? Not being able to find whatever-it-is becomes a big deal. I had to transfer his hand to my belt, because he was griping way too hard as aisle after aisle did not have them, and his anxiety began to mount.
Finally, tucked away in the Crayola aisle, waaaaaaay up at the top in unfamiliar packaging…bendy sticks.
Whew. Disaster averted. Captain Adventure was so happy, he started flapping his hands and skipping to the register, and even forgot that he was freaked out and overwhelmed and started chattering again. I’m going to make a GUY with really long LEGS and hey! How come they have YELLOW [inevitably pronounced LEL-LO, which I find so cute it half KILLS me to correct him] on the picture on the box, but there’s no LEL-LO stah-WINGS in the box? Huh? How come? Huh? HOW COME?!
And then we came home and he made a guy with really long legs and said I had to take a picture quick because his legs were going to fall off because they were toooooooooo LONG!
So I did.
(Note the very serious expression. He is an artiste, people. And arte, it is serious!)
And, they did. Pretty much immediately. So he made smaller people with normal legs out of the fallen-off legs and said it was a family of wax-string people.
And then he decided it was time for fusible beads. I foresee a LOT of ironing in my immediate future…
We don’t get a whole lot of one-on-one time with any of the Denizens, really; normally, my home office is like the customer service desk at Target, a constant string of people asking for things, returning things, registering complaints and suggestions, coming and going day and night.
Sometimes, I can’t remember which kid was just in here bellyaching about what thing, and then I’ll be yelling at the wrong kid to quite harping on that! and whaddya mean, mommy, I only brought it up this one time!
…oh…that wasn’t you five minutes ago…well, anyway, QUIT HARPING ON IT, I KNOW YOU WANT GRANOLA BARS!
It’s always neat to get some of this kind of time, with only one voice to listen to, only one other set of needs to cater to, only one other person to focus on for a while.
…except…well, it is kind of quiet around here today…little bit creepy, almost…I think I’ll go see what the hamsters are up to, see if they want to start running around in their little balls on the tile floor, that might liven things up a bit around here…
2 comments:
i admire parents of multiple children. i *knew* the minute my daughter was born that i would only be able to handle one, ever. she lives Away now, but every week there is some Crisis or Disaster or Drama that i have to try to manage from 2000 miles away. i love her, but she exhausts me.
so i look up to you, tremendously.
Know what you mean about the one-on-one time. It's tough when you have more than one. We've tried valiantly over the years to make sure that we get that time with each one, but I suspect it will be a while still before we know what they really think about things. Like, maybe when they have kids? (eeeek!)
And by the way, the Captain is getting so big! He da man!
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