Taller?

My parents live in the same house today that they did when they brought me home from the hospital as a newborn.   Well, they live there during the winter months.  Fortunately for me, that house is only about five miles away.   They’re available to watch the children during these months, which is a wonderful thing.

I go over there from time to time for different things.  My children love to come over to spend time with Mimi and Gramps.   Today I went over to work with my mother on a few things on her phone and computer and something struck me—I was tall.

Or rather I felt tall.   This was the house I grew up in and I suppose a good portion of the time I lived in the house I was less than my fully grown height.  I’m effectively forty-nine at this point so there have been decades I’ve been at my current height, but for some reason, today I felt taller as I walked through their house,

Maybe it’s because we have ten foot ceilings in our main floor in our house here and their ceilings are eight feet.   That could have played a factor I suppose, but regardless, today I felt more “grown up” in their house than I have in a long time.

The Big Boy Update:  My son just got sent to his room for the rest of the day.   We had a long family conversation about what things were non-negotiable in our family.   Threatening people is never, ever allowed.   In short, we had an hour-and-a-half conference called by my son’s teachers.   The conference involved the head of school as well.   My son came to school mad (due to poor planning in the morning on his part) and he threatened to kill me upon arrival and said, “she’ll regret it”.   They were concerned.   There were other things in the conference, but that precipitated it.   Things that are never allowed in our house are any threats to harm anyone.   My son wanted to play with the girls just now but didn’t do so in a positive manner, more of a bullying way, and as a result of that and his past interactions with them, the girls didn’t want him to join them so they went to another house.   My son said after they left that he wanted to kill them.   So he’s now, “in jail” for the rest of the night and won’t have dinner.   He says, vehemently, that he didn’t mean it.   I explained that an adult could, in a fit of anger, hurt someone and say they didn’t mean it.  And that person would still go to jail.  He’s very upset.   I’m glad he is.   I wanted to help him with the girls and told him to come talk to me and I’d help him, that I was on his side and thought he should be included.   But instead he tried to bully his way into the room with the girls and, well, you see what happened.   He fought and fought and fought us on about fifteen different fronts, threatening, pleading, demanding, avoiding blame, etc.   We didn’t give in on any of them and suddenly he’s normalized again.   I brought the dog up to the room and he’s happily playing with her now.   Children, will I ever figure them out?

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter played a game of Battleship with her father over the past two days.   The game can be played fairly quickly, but when you’re new at it and you have to find every peg with your hands instead of your eyes, the game takes a little longer.   They started last night and broke before bed.   When I came home this afternoon from helping Mimi I heard they’d just finished a very close game, with her father winning right at the end.   Was she a good sport? I asked her.   Her friends, who had been watching the end of the game, said she was.   She’s been working on her sportsmanship.   Losing isn’t fun, but she knows it’s not fun to play with a bad sport.