Do It All Fass

Updates on the boys.

1) At 3:00am this morning, the door to our bedroom slammed shut, waking me and Shelley from deep sleep. The "Fight or Flight" reflex triggered immediately in me as I jumped out of bed and, heart beating furiously, began walking to the door to see what manner of home invasion I would need to fend off. Shelley asked "what was that?" as I got to the door, and I answered "I have no idea". "Wait-" she said, "the baby's here." Her eyes had just focused enough to see that Braden was standing stealthily at her side of the bed. "Braden, what are you doing?" she asked. "Eh trying to get me" he answered, crawling on top of her with his ever-present blanket. "What tried to get you?" Shelley asked. "Duh monter," came Braden's sleepy reply. I opened the bedroom door, checked for monsters and returned to bed, where Braden was very nearly asleep already on Shelley's chest (and torso, and legs) as she soothed him with head stroking and whispered assurances that he was safe with us. My heart beat so hard as I got back in bed I whispered that the boy was trying to kill me. She chuckled softly as she carried him back to his room.

2) At bedtime, (which regular readers will know is about my favorite time of the day with the boys), one of Braden's two favorite books currently is "Busy, Buzzy Bees" (a gift from his Aunt Kerry). Last night at dinner, Braden began quoting parts of "Busy, Buzzy Bees" at the dinner table, cracking us all up. "Oink oink," said duh pig "do you wanna have some fun?" "Bzz bzzz," said bees "we duh make a sweet surprise!" The whole book consists of these questions and answers, with various farm animals asking the bees to play and the bees secretively hurrying off to work. Of course, the lines B recited didn't go together (the answers rhyme with the questions), but the way he mimicked the voices I use when I read it to him was priceless. The more Shelley and I laughed, the more he cracked up, too. "Woof woof," said duh dog "wanna chase duh butterflies..."

3) When we read his other favorite, the short Halloween classic "A Dark, Dark House" (a gift from his Grandma), he always asks me at the end to "do it all fass?" At his Bible study class, they had a few songs they sang that they got to sing and act out the hand motions to "all fast", (which he loved, of course). He has since expanded that experience to reading books and anything else he can think of. So I always re-read the "Dark, Dark House" 'all fass', causing us both to fall out in hysterics.

4) Needless to say, bedtime reading routines at our house now include a chapter or two of "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" with Austin. He was gone for a week with Shelley & B right after we got the book, so we have only made it to Chapter 7 or 8, but so far it has been funny and interesting, with only hints of the "kissy-kissy" stuff that makes Austin squeamish. Harry in mortal danger from the dark Lord Voldermort we can handle: his awkward teenage interest in girls tends to be a little too much!

5) Austin got to go shopping for school clothes in Ft. Worth last week with his "totally cool" Aunt Tiffany, former store manager of a hipster clothes store in a mall in Arlington. They made stops at the Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch, and other stores too fabulous for me to even know their names. His prize find is probably the shell necklace he wears constantly, or the Nike sneakers, or possibly the "Vote for Pedro" t-shirt styled after a similar offering in the strangely hilarious movie "Napoleon Dynamite". It all adds up to a wardrobe that has him looking more and more like a teenager and less and less like a little boy. Appropriate, I suppose, for his LAST YEAR OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL BEFORE STARTING JR. HIGH SCHOOL!

As long as he still wants to snuggle with me while I read to him at bedtime, I think I'll be ok. But the day is quickly approaching when he will become too big for that, and I will have to go into a period of great sadness for awhile when that happens. But not tonight - tonight Harry, Hermione, Ron and all the rest of the Hogwarts' students prepare for their return to their 6th year at school, amidst the increasingly dangerous civil war among the wizards and witches. Muggles beware!