At the pool this afternoon, Mr. Pants announces, "When I grow up, I'm going to marry a boy."
"Oh," I say, "Why is that?"
"Because I like boys."
I mention that is true of most boys his age, but he might change his mind by the time he's actually getting married. He frowns.
"What if Chick-Fil-A is mad at me?"*
I laugh and hug him and ask, "Well, that wouldn't really matter, would it?"
He giggles, "No, 'cause they're not the government!"
***
"When you make me go to school it just makes me feel like you don't care about me at all!" his face is contorting and tears threaten to escape his eyes.
He has been lobbying for weeks for me to "just stop" going to work. An explanation of why that can't happen only resulted in begging me to "sign another contract that says you don't have to work anymore" and perplexed questions about why the "school" (the lovely sun-filled, wood-floored daycare he and Shmoogie are at three days a week this summer) won't let him stop coming.
So, does he feel like I don't care about him at all on the other four days of the week when I'm home with him?
"Not really."
"What about Daddy? Do you feel like Daddy cares about us?"
"Yes."
"But Daddy goes to work every day, for even longer than I do!"
He shrugs his shoulders, "But I still feel like he cares about me all the time."
At least he's honest.
Shmoogie, of course, was listening to most of this, in her own way, and she's been quite dependent on Mr. Pants for her opinions lately. Curious, I asked her a bit later, "Shmoogie, how do you feel when I drop you off at school?"
"Happy."
"Oh! And how do you feel when I pick you up?"
"Happy."
Well, then.
***
* (Both the kids are upset that I won't take them to Chick-Fil-A anymore, but I'm not ready to cave yet. I tried making our own nuggets the other day with this recipe (somewhat ironic source, considering; I <3 the Internet!), which worked really well — especially the soaking for an hour part — but I doubled the dry ingredients (except I used only 1 Tbs of powdered sugar... powdered sugar! on chicken!) and it turned out to be way too much salt, at least double too much. Also, it seemed to work fine to just put the drained soaked chicken all at once into the flour and mix it up. More even coating on all pieces. And I used about 2/3 veg oil and 1/3 olive oil because I didn't have enough veg oil.)
Don't cave! I'll pass on the recipe to your sister. :-)
Posted by: mar mar | 16 August 2012 at 09:09 PM