A Little Entertainment
“Move along little buddy. Move along.” I heard Puck coaxing Yali away from his Legos on the top bunk.
Sometimes the two of them play up there together. Puck is pretty gracious about it to a certain extent, but then it’s almost inevitable at some point down the line that I’m going to hear from him:
“Mom! Can you get Yali down now? He lost his privilege! He’s destroying everything!”
After we dropped Puck off in the gym at school that morning, and Yali received high fives, fist bumps, and hugs from all his admirers, it was over to the Big House, entertainment and dining in the form of “Put Me in the Zoo”, vegetarian shepherd’s pie, and pickled beets. Yes, he ate the pickled beets. No, I did not.
In a mild gray afternoon, I was still feeling under the weather. Waiting for carpool, Big J came over to see Yali and handed him a Hershey’s kiss. Yali was one very happy little man when I let him pop the whole thing in his mouth a few minutes later.
Since it wasn’t completely freezing outside anymore, I still let Puck and Yali hit the playground after school, running around in circles together, Yali dishing out some huge belly laughs whenever the mood struck him. Somewhere in the middle of chasing each other around a tree – Yali tossing muddy handfuls of mulch at his big brother and laughing maniacally before I could stop him – Puck had a thought.
“MOM! I JUST HAD A VOODOO!”
Voodoo… voodoo… My mind skimmed the last number of conversations we’d had together.
“I HAD A VOODOO, MOM!”
I wondered what the parents in the carpool line thought of that one.
Ah. “You mean déjà vu?”
“I felt like I just did that exact same thing here before!”
Bingo.
It was just after four o’clock when we got home. Puck and Yali began rummaging for gizmos to entertain themselves with. Puck eventually dug up a tortilla press from a forgotten cabinet above the refrigerator. They played with that for awhile. Because, you know, we have normal toys around here.
About two hours later when Oxbear changed Yali into his jams for the night, I saw Yali plant a big kiss on his beard with his now-standard, “MMMM-WAH!”