She’d been working on things for him for weeks now—typing them up, drawing on things, taking this toy and that bauble and putting them into box from the recycle bin under the desk on which her braille machine, the craft paper, scissors, tape, stapler and sharpies reside. This is a popular desk from a materials standpoint for all the children who come to play at the house. She, however, is the only one who uses the braille machine. But she uses it well, and fast. She’s nearly prolific at this point.
Dad opened his box of items and hung the piece of artwork my son had made him and then we had a lazy afternoon. Rayan came over later in the afternoon and I was called up to help in the bonus room while my husband made his own Father’s Day dinner (at his request) of pasta with meat sauce.
My son and Rayan had (much to my daughter’s dismay) pulled out the desk on which the keyboard sat. They had turned the keyboard around and added a nice black mark to the paint on the wall from putting the desk chair behind the desk, now facing the rearranged keyboard. The coffee table was across the room about parallel to the desk and the guitar from my brother-in-law was amped up at the entry to the bathroom.
It made no sense to me. What was all this for? It turned out they were making a band and they needed me to be a band member. I was given a single maraca (the other one being lost) while my daughter was given one handbell. Rayan was on keyboard and my son was guitar. Rayan was the most key member of the group as he could play both the Harry Potter theme and the Transformers theme on the keyboard.
My son explained that my daughter and I needed to come over and sit on the floor on the other side of the now moved coffee table. Why? Because, “the audience is over there”. And that’s when it all made sense. Everything had been rearranged so that the band was facing the single sofa in the room. Only we didn’t have an audience. My daughter got her purple yoga ball and placed it on the sofa, saying it was our audience.
What was our band name? My son wanted to use our last names, only that didn’t fit with our star keyboard player. My son asked about Rayan’s last name but after hearing all six syllables of it he decided we would instead be the Exploding Dinosaurs (or something like that, don’t hold me to it).
We had a dress rehearsal and then, just as our concert for the purple ball was about to begin, we were called down to dinner and Rayan was called home by his sister. My son said to not put the room back but after they were in the bath and it was clear there wouldn’t be time to do more band work for the night I did some rearranging of my own. I permanently moved the guitar to the corner beside the keyboard and put the bin of musical instruments underneath the desk.
After the children were in bed I found my husband in the bonus room and noticed sheets of white paper in different spots on the floor. My son had come back up with papers listing each of the band member’s names on it and put it in their places. And I felt suddenly very bad for putting the room back to rights.
I had just left the children’s bedroom so I went back in and told my son I’d seen what he’d done and I thought maybe tomorrow when Nana and Papa were in town or Tuesday when both they and my parents were in, we could have our band play? He said he’d like that but he wasn’t sure if Rayan would be available. I said dad could be the keyboard part. Oh no, that wouldn’t do—because dad doesn’t know the Harry Potter theme or the Transformer’s theme. Unless, my son mused, dad could have Rayan teach him the songs.
The Big Boy Tiny Girl Tent Want: There was a huge tent at The North Face that my children saw the other night after dinner with Nana and Papa. They wanted this tent very badly. It’s more ideal for temperatures say at Everest base camp than it is places we’d likely ever camp. But it looked cool. And they wanted to know if Nana and Papa were thinking about getting it. They weren’t.
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