Onesies

Nobody told me that when my kids were 15 and 12 they would suddenly revert to wearing onesie pajamas around the house again.

Apparently holiday break means not putting on clothes and/or wearing a turtle costume all day long.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It's that time of year again!

Time for either an incessant susurration of sibilance from the backseat of the car, or, better yet, a chattering storyline constantly interrupted with the compulsive blurting out of "Sparklies, yay!"

Tonight's drive home from swim was of the former variety, so that I could hear what sounded almost like incantations of some sort of Harry Potter-esque Parseltongue spell from behind me.  In fact, it was so continuous that even Madeleine herself remarked upon it.

MADELEINE: (with weariness and relief as we turned onto our street) It's just been a RELAY with these sparklies YAY!

Madeleine's other uncontrollable utterance of late has been a slow evolution over the past year.  Let me back up a bit to say that Madeleine seems to have the same touch of very mild OCD tendencies that I had as a child.  Specifically, we both seem to share this feeling that we need to perform some sort of ritual in order to control something in our lives, like keeping our loved ones safe.  I went through a (cringe-inducing embarrasing) period of my childhood in which I had rituals involving the number five, which happened to be the number of people in my immediate family.  The problem was, I was too afraid to tell anyone in my family what I was doing or why, which left them to look at me like I was just a total and utter freakazoid.  For instance, I decided one day that if I could leap over the baby gates (which we had up to keep our dog from going to the upstairs portion of our house, wherein she would always pee in our beds) five times without any part of my body touching the gate, it would secure safety for the five members of our household.  The only problem was, I had to do it five times in succession, and if I touched at all even on attempt #5, I would have to start the whole process all over again.

Which led to my father finally exclaiming in exasperation, as his dunderheaded elementary-school aged daughter was hurdling back and forth ad infinitum over the baby gates, "Courtney, WHAT the hell are you DOING?"

Then there was my need to touch five white things within my house within the period of flushing the toilet before the flushing and hissing sound stopped.  Hence, my family would see me come practically tripping over my pants as I panic-raced out of the bathroom, slapping my hand at seeming random over parts of the walls and furniture in the adjacent room.

A-herm.  Yes.  I wasn't weird as a kid.

So, ANYWAY, Madeleine began something at the very start of the pandemic which was obviously a way for her to feel like she was protecting her family in some small way.

It was always her parting words to me, upon exiting the car if I dropped her somewhere, or leaving the house to go for a run or walk:

MADELEINE: (cheerfully) Safety!

Then it expanded a little.

MADELEINE: (equally cheerfully) Safety to ALL!

Okay, just a minor modification.  By this summer, it was more like this:

MADELEINE: Safety to all!  I always love you all forever!

And now, here's what must be said EVERY morning before she leaves for school or before anyone else leaves the house:

MADELEINE: Safety to ALL!  I always love you all forever with ALL MY HEART!

I can't wait to see what words have been added to the ritualistic good-bye by spring.

The utterance is still mostly cheery, though if she's in a huge rush for the bus it might be something like this:

MADELEINE: (crashing down the stairs, nearly face-planting in her hurry to get out the door) SAFETYTOALLIALWAYSLOVEYOUALLFOREVERWITHALLMYHEART! (door slamming shut.)

Yeah. So. Like mother like daughter, right? 

Music Note Family

 Hello, hello!  It's been awhile!  Happy belated birthday, Lily!

It might have been a year or so, but don't worry, Madeleine hasn't changed all that much.  She's still her wildly imaginative own weird little person!  

Here's the conversation we had after I picked Madeleine up from Wind Ensemble today:

MADELEINE: I feel like music notes are all little characters in a family, like they all have their own personalities. 
ME: Oh, okay,
MADELEINE: Like, so, B is like the nice but kind of boring main character.  And then C is like the really
kind and sweet under-rated character who cares about all the other notes.  And then D used to be really mean and annoying, like D used to be on E's side, but now D is nice.  Like, D had a character arc.  And D is, like, starting to be on C's side and be nice and sweet.  And then E is really mean and annoying, and E is jealous of F for being higher than him, because E wants to be the highest on the staff.  And then F, like, so I sorta picture there being, like, little clubs within the family.  And F was, like, JUST accepted into the "Sophisticated Club," which is, like, the notes above the staff.  And, like, F is trying to fit into that.  And F is pretty nice.  The Sophisticated Club doesn't really have much time for its siblings, because, they're, like, WAY high up.  But they're still really nice.  And G is really nice.  G is part of the Sophisticated Club and is very proud of it.  A is also really nice, and A is like pretty much the same as G, and A helps the club out at all.  And then B, HIGH B, is like the President of the club.  And so, High B wants to get to know its siblings better, because it doesn't know them that well, since it's, like, ALL THE WAY up an octave, but B is also kind of concerned with getting into the clubs in the NEXT scale.

The music note family sounds WAY more complicated than the Rowe family.  But at least we don't have any family members who used to be mean and annoying.  We may be simpler, but we don't have any clubs or side-switching over here in our little 4-person musical quartet!