October 15 letter

October 15, 2006

5:27 am
Everyone else is asleep. Tom stayed up late gaming (computer/phone) while the boys were both gone to sleep by 8 pm. I was wiped so I went to bed shortly after they did. Amazingly enough, for the second night in a row, they both slept. Alex fussed a bit at midnight and at 3 (I was awake, of course, waiting for the sound!) but he didn’t wake. I went in, patted him and recovered both himself and his brother with their blankets. (They have a tendency to kick them off then wake up because they are cold…) But now, I am awake. Couldn’t sleep any longer, though my body was not really ready to get up. Wish I had a Jacuzzi – grin – wouldn’t that be nice? To go crawl into warm and bubbling water in the quiet dark and just relax? Sounds like a little slice of heaven to me. Ah well…

The other day, while Alex was sleeping and Jason was playing his game, I snatched a few moments to read the local rag. In it was an obituary for a child Jason’s age, a little boy. They didn’t say why or how he had died just that he would be missed and I found myself crying and crying and crying. Jason came out and found me and was very worried. I explained that I was crying for the child and for his parents and for empathy – the thought of losing either of my sons is terrifying and things like that bring the feelings into sharp focus. What is unnerving to me is to see the number of obituaries for young children appearing in the local newspaper in recent months – and I do mean ‘local’! This particular paper serves the towns of Maple Valley, Black Diamond and Hobart. It is printed in a little falling down old building on the outskirts of Maple Valley and has no editor. (We know this because the quality of the writing/articles is so incredibly bad. Simple grammar errors and misspellings abound.) My theory is that there are a lot of families with young children in the area, more than there were in places like Shoreline, where Tom and I lived when Jason was born. Or maybe I am just more sensitive to this sort of thing. At any rate, I need to stop reading that section of the paper, I think. It does me no good anyway!

Sigh. What news then, besides my maudlin early morning ramblings? Hmmm… Well Jason continues to amaze. His latest ‘invention’ is a legos flashlight – he built it using bits and pieces from his various kits. He also discovered that if he attaches a piece of plastic tubing to the flashlight, the light runs through the tube and appears at the end. I thought it amazingly clever. Tom, of course, took a look and began to explain the mechanical properties, ending with the statement that Jason’s invention was an early form of fiber optics. Jason, as one might expect, looked rather blank at this… grin.

And Xander: what can one say about Xander? He is himself. He is in love with the characters of Winnie the Pooh, especially with Roo and Tigger. He likes to cast himself as Roo and his brother as Tigger, which, if you ask me, is a fairly accurate casting! I found, in the huge stash of stuffed toys that we have somehow accumulated, a stuffed kangaroo – I think it is one that my father brought Jason from his trip to Australia. At any rate, thinking to be helpful, I gave the plush animal to Xander. Big mistake. He wants the joey to come out of the pocket – and it doesn’t. He is quite adamant about this and the battle of the joey is ongoing. I have suggested to my mother that if she is looking for a Christmas gift for this child, a plush Roo would be an excellent choice! Knowing Xander and his passions, he is unlikely to have lost interest in the subject even by Christmas!

According to my mother, Xander’s erstwhile cousin Zach has discovered his ‘twoness’ as well. His favorite phrase these days is ‘my not like dat!’ Sigh. Then my mother suggested to Maggie that it might be a good idea to get Xander and Zach together! I told her that I thought that that would be a situation which would require the very focused attention of at least four adults – there is no telling what the two of them would get into. Tom, on the other hand, said that an encounter between the boys might well devolve into a battle of ‘me no like that’ versus ‘my don’t like dat!’ Again, I say ‘Hmmmm.’