Getting Out the Door

Even though my alarm goes off at 6:15 every weekday morning, getting mis dos hijos out the door by 7:30 is somehow a surprisingly challenging task. Probably because things like this tend to happen:

“Puck, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

I stared at my son, mostly undressed, flailing his arms in the air, dancing around the living room. “I have no idea.”

“Looks like I’m doing the huka dance!”

Pretty sure he meant hula, sped up about a hundred times fast.

When I turned around from packing his lunch box, he had a piece of PVC pipe balanced on his scalp – I’m not sure where he picked that up – while Yali laughed his approval.

“TUBA HEAD! TUBA HEAD! TUBA HEAD!”

And yet again a few minutes later, Puck still hadn’t finished getting dressed, brandishing a pair of underwear in front of Yali like a red cape at the bull fights.

“YALI’S ATTACKING ME!!!! Bear! Bear!”

Sometimes, I don’t even say anything.

Yali’s little fan club was back again strong for 2016, clustered around him in the school gym that morning.

Heidi tapped her cheek in hopes of a kiss. “Queso?” she asked. “Queso? I mean beso! Beso!”

“Cheese”, “kiss”. To Yali they now both mean the same thing. He willingly obliged.

Some time in the afternoon out at the Big House, Irish’s half-Russian counterpart, Thumper, had returned from visiting her family in Michigan.

“Anyone want crepes made by my grandma?” she offered.

Francis – home early on Tuesdays now that Physics was completed – and always interested in the prospect of more food, expressed some interest. Thumper held up a Ziplock of crepe.

“Oh, wow. That’s huge!”

We looked at him funny. “What were you expecting, Francis?”

Francis, who clearly had no idea what a crepe was in the first place, replied, “I don’t know. I was thinking it was something like a chocolate covered grape?”

Puck hustled out of the gym at three o’clock with his brand new Minecraft backpack, a gift from the Silverspoon/South aunts and uncles. Heidi wasn’t far behind him to collect about four more “quesos” from Yali.