Dinner Phone

I put my phone up to charge a lot of the time before we sit down to dinner but I’ve had to stop the habit because my phone is a necessary thing for the content of this blog.   My children say the best things while we’re at dinner.  All of the content for this post was captured at dinner.  About the time I’d put the phone back in my pocket, someone would say something else and I’d pull the phone back out to get their wording down so I’d remember it correctly for later.

Tonight my son was sitting up at the bar, because he didn’t want to sit with us.  Who knows, he’s a boy and eight-years-old and sometimes parents are just not that cool.   My daughter, on the other hand, wanted to pick who she got to sit by and then was having none of the adult conversation, because it wasn’t what she wanted to talk about.

We did “up and down” where we list something we liked that happened in the day and something we didn’t like.   My son would be fine with the game being as advertised meaning an ‘up’ and a ‘down’.  My daughter, however, likes to have more than one up and down—sometimes lots of each even.

We got into a discussion about my daughter’s school tomorrow in which her class will be wax models  of famous people in American history.   She practiced her Amelia Earhart lines for her brother and then told us her braillist wasn’t going to be there tomorrow because her husband’s uncle had died.   My husband asked if they were going to the funeral and we found out my children didn’t really understand what a funeral was.

We talked about how it’s a way for people to gather together and remember the person who had died. And that transitioned into a ceremony my husband had attended while on the ski trip.   My best friend’s brother-in-law had died and had asked that some of his ashes be spread on Solitude Mountain.   They all gathered at a copse of trees on the mountain and Matt spoke about his brother, Carlos, and then they spread the ashes.

You know children, right?  This brought up more questions about what happened when you died.   The ashes part was easy because we have a Lucy tree in the back yard with Lucy’s ashes under it.   This was Carlos’ ashes on the mountain.

My husband said there were two main things that happened to someone after they died: they were buried, "in a box, underground,” he said,   Or your body was burned in a hot fire and the ashes that were left over afterwards could be put wherever the person wanted.

Honestly, both options sound sort of horrific if you’re not sure at all about death and you’re a child, but my children didn’t seem overly bothered by it.   My daughter said she would rather be buried underground.   My son said, “I don’t want to be cremated.   I want to be used for experiments like mom."

Ah, yes, the donating your body to scientific research option (that I have a specific will for).   We had forgotten all about that route.  I told him that sounded like a generous idea.   Honestly, I’m not sure if he didn’t like either of the first two options or if he just liked the thought of being part of experiments.

The Big Boy Update:  My son wanted to play blindfolded Twister with me the other night while his sister and my husband were at a Y-Guides event.  Only my son had some new rules.   The rules went on and on and I had to stop him short, saying we weren’t ever going to get around to playing if we added any more rules.   It was a mashup of Twister and Fortnite.   You started off with one hundred health and would lose or gain health from certain colors.  Then there was the attack phase which deducted points for any limbs adjacent to another.   You could level up your attack damage if you got to one of the circles.   It sounds crazy, but the game held together and was a lot of fun.   The only challenging part was totaling up all the damage done to each person when we had arms and legs all in proximity to one another.   I’d play it again.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I’m not sure how, but the number twelve came up tonight at dinner.   My daughter said, “No! That’s my least favorite number.”   I’ve heard of lucky numbers and favorite numbers, but never a least favorite one.   When I asked her why though, she had a very specific reason: “because of a worksheet in kindergarten where almost every answer was twelve.   There was only one answer that was not a twelve, and that was a nine.”

So Fluffy:  I took the dog to get groomed today.  I give he a bath and brush her fur regularly, but the hair around her face was growing in a way that I wasn’t sure how to handle.   It was blocking her vision and flopping around in a way that made her look scruffy.   Tonight, she can see again—and she’s very fluffy.  This is her, “please can you let me out again, didn’t you hear me ringing the bell?” face.