Books

On Wednesdays Gary and I do this ridiculous schedule where I work from 8am until 8pm and he has the kids half the day and my mom has them the rest. It is the sacrifice that we make that I do not have to go to work 9-5 everyday, I do two crazy days instead. Usually by 8pm I am so toast it is crazy. I am thinking of anything to do besides come home because alas, the real sacrifice is I have free outstanding loving child care at my disposal but not the best housecleaning experience so my house is always a mess and the children always look like pigpen. The messier that they appear, the more I know for sure that they have indeed had fun.
So yesterday was no different. I finished my notes and phone calls slowly and thought of excuses to stay late so that maybe Gary, who also finishes at 8 will get out a little early and beat me to it.
Damn, I am always first in this race. I am always home just in time to clean and tuck in. Always.
Yesterday I chose to tuck Jonah in.
Jonah is my child who I will be singing and rocking to sleep until he is a grown man, just like that crazy mother in that book "I'll Love you Forever." I love that book. He is my last baby and if he needs me to stay in his room and hug him and sing to him for the rest of my days, I am perfectly willing to do it, really I am.
So I sang him several songs. We sang many Cat Stevens songs getting ready for our next session of FFC. He already knows many songs and loves to sing them with me. It's very sweet.
Gary hunkered down with the girls to read them stories. Usually they pick out a bunch of stories and we read them and cuddle. Gary and great at this too because he loves to make up his own stories which is much cooler. Gary told me later how Sadie looked older to him, how her longer body was eager to curl up in to his arms and how it was hard to completely wrap around her. She is getting older.
He asked them if he could pick out a story and I guess she looked at him hesitantly. She said, "sure Dad, just don't pick out something stupid."
When he told me this story later I thought that she had meant, like stop shoving all that educational crap down my throat at nighttime. Like, no I don;t want to read about the moon and physics for bedtime, read something fun and cool.
She came down for water an hour or so later and I asked her what she had meant by that. She said, "Mom, I meant don't read something stupid, like Clifford or something. I meant read something good, something, you know good."
I thought that was interesting.
Gary ended up reading this really cool book by the author of Mike Mulligan. The book is called "Life Story" and it traces life from the first big bang to the reader him/herself and Sadie apparently approves. There is something relaxing about reading this book. It is repetitive and beautifully written, like a poem.
I rocked Jonah until he was well asleep, drifting off myself, warmed by his chubby boy body wrapped in his bat man feety pajamas, snoring.