Seriously, Boys

“Yali! Stop! Do you know the meaning of that word, CHILD?!”

I could hear the boys in the other room while I was getting ready to leave for school that morning. Puck had reached the limit of his patience.

“Yali! Do you feel mad? ARGH! Sad? WAAH! Or hurt? ROAR!”

It doesn’t take long for Puck to get the little brother laughing again. Yali is spoiled by Puck. He couldn’t have a better big brother.

At the Big House, the foundation repair was still ongoing. Half the yard looked tunneled under, like giant moles had a party overnight.

“Food!” Francis announced, walking through the front door from class and patting his stomach.

He set Snuggles the cat on his shoulders and admired his muscles in the mirror. I heated a plate of leftovers for him while Mom talked miscellaneous house repairs with him.

“Mom, it’s not a problem that the downspouts are clogged. This house was built over thirty years ago. That’s old.”

“Thanks, Francis,” I said.

“Oh, yeah, Collette,” he grinned. “I forgot you were old.”

One of Francis’ favorite things is to remind me how close I was born to the end of the Vietnam War. I’m pretty sure he’s just jealous.

Around 3:30, Puck was stampeding a chain of connected scooters across the gym floor with Heidi and Yali as passengers. This allowed for a brief reprieve of Yali’s screaming protests which had escalated to a new level that afternoon.

Later, Puck attempted to help me with the yelling niño by schooling him out of his temper tantrums.

“Yali, Mom has been very frustrated with you today. You’ve been bad to Heidi. And you need to cooperate, or there will be major consequences.” He gently held Yali in his arms, putting a hand on his tear-stained face. “You need to trust me, okay? Okay? You need to trust me.”

What do you know, it worked.

After the boys stuffed themselves on eggs, bacon, and toast for dinner, and we watched some fast-moving deep blue storm clouds roll in, I sat down with Puck to supervise his math homework. At one point, he stuck a hand under one of his arms.

“Oh, Mom! It’s startin’. I think there’s arm hair starting. Oh, no… No, there’s not.”

And he went back to his math.