Six Weeks

“LET’S MAKE HIM DO THE WHIP WHIP NAE NAE!”

I’m not sure how it happens so quickly. It’s like ants to melted popsicles. But Yali was clustered with Puck’s friends after school, who were begging to hold him. And now they were all singing the Nae Nae. Yali wasn’t bothered by the commotion. His little brown cheeks dimpled up as they passed him around.

After awhile, I sensed a little jealousy in Violet, who wanted Yali to come back to her. “Actually,” she told one of the other girls, “I’m very close to his family. If you know him so well, what’s his middle name? When’s his birthday?”

By the time we got out of there, most of the parking lot had cleared out. Then we almost ran out of gas on the highway when traffic piled up way back due to a car fire.

We stopped for a few groceries before home. Puck saw a rack of ping pong balls displayed in the frozen foods aisle.

“Mom! Could I please have some of these things?”

“What would you want with ping pong balls, bud?”

“Because they are light to do things with.”

I didn’t have a great reason to not let him get ping pong balls, so I let him get ping pong balls. And a lemonade, because…

“MOM! I’VE ONLY HAD A LITTLE DRINK OF WATER TODAY! I’M GOING TO HYDRATE!”

Later that evening, Yali watched Puck from the front window, freshly bathed, wrapped in a fuzzy blanket, a big grin on his face. Puck was biking up and down the street, up and down, over and over.

“I need to go practice for the biathlon tomorrow, Mom,” he informed me after dinner.

And because everyone else was ocupado that evening, movie night was struck from the books. The boys were watching their latest favorite cartoon, “Uncle Grandpa”. And I, of course, popped on the game. Things are getting tense about this time of year.

CARDINALS:

St. Louis: 4-3 loss against Brewers; Martinez exits after 7 pitches.

3 games up on Pittsburgh: 97 and 57; 8 games remaining.

Magic Number: 6.