What Goes Through Their Heads

We were rounding the bend down one of my favorite St. Louis roads towards school. Traffic was piling up, which gave Puck the opportunity to notice some wild turkey in the green pasture beside us.

“MOM! That turkey was mooning all the cars! He was MOONING all the cars! MOONING them!”

“Thank you, Puck. I know what mooning is.”

“Ha ha ha ha!”

With that preface to our morning, I delivered Puck to the gym, Yali to his Nana, and myself back to the school office to keep an eye on things during staff meeting. I’ve discovered over the years that I really don’t mind driving that much.

During the course of the morning, I received a record-breaking five hugs from Heidi as she saw me around school.

“I can’t help it!” she said, skipping up to me for hug number five outside the cafeteria. “Every time I see you, I have to give you a hug!”

Sweet girl. A feminine twist on the rib-crushers I receive from all my boys, which I also love, of course.

“Heidi, you can hug me any time you want.”

“Yay!”

Carpool now usually goes something like this:

“I get to hold Yali now!”

“Hand him over!”

“But you’re hogging him!”

“No, YOU’RE hogging him!”

“It’s my turn!”

“No, it’s MY turn!”

“MAAAA-MAAAA!”

In the end, they somehow sort it out amongst themselves and Yali ends up finding himself pretty happy with the situation. They keep him highly entertained.

However on the drive home today, Yali was being a cranky “little cocoa bean” as his Nana likes to call him sometimes, screeching at the top of his lungs for one reason or another. After awhile, Puck’s patience was spread thin.

“Yali! You are going to be grounded FOREVER!”

I didn’t ground him forever. Not this time anyway. This kid doesn’t travel so well. Word on the street was that Saturday evening he had chucked his stuffed Fredbird out the open window while cruising down the highway. I’m still not sure he learned anything from that lesson…

When Puck left the dinner table that evening with half a fish taco still on his plate, I called him back to finish it.

“Mom, I don’t need to finish it. I earned my daily pound! I weigh 70.2!”