good days and better days

Hard as it is to fathom, I was just writing (and, gratefully, deleted) a very ungrateful post.  How can I be so ungrateful?  And, dare I say it, about Christmas?  It's too awful to contemplate.

Mid-way through, my Gorgeous started doing an amazing booty dance to the theme music to "Tangled," reminding me what an ungrateful wretch I was being.  Seriously - just like that.

Practice what you preach, Sister.

Being involved with different volunteer opportunities and opening my eyes a little has been a constant reminder that I don't have bad days.  I have good days, better days, and some really great ones.  I don't wonder where my kid will get food or clothes, or whether he'll live to see his next birthday (a few freak, irrational panic attacks aside), or whether I married the right man, or why I'm unloved or alone.

Good reminder.  Back on track.  Lucky to be here.

Merry Christmas!

wait for it....

From vaca - we're at our island away from the island, and it's about 4:30 - time to start packing up for the "ferry" (if you'd seen it, you'd know why I used quotation marks).  My little Irish-skinned boy is very fair, so he's never been in the hot sun without one of those swim shirts that's SPF a billion or something.  However, it was late in the day, weaker sun and such.  And we needed him to dry out.  So Steven took A's shirt off to dry, and A happily romped some more in the ocean.

Calling to his little friend Ava, 6 yrs old:  "Wow!  You wouldn't believe how wonderful the water feels on your skin without a shirt on.  You HAVE to try it!"

the most annoying sound on earth or the cutest vacation story ever? both?

We were driving from our resort to the airport, a trip that should've taken about 20 minutes and took over 2 hours.  There was construction on the island, and the drainage isn't good, which causes a lot of the roads to flood.  Lethal combination.

Factor two:  the cars you rent on St. Martin are atrocious.  They sort of run.  The first time I had to apply the brakes, I discovered that it had no brake pads.  None.  Just grate and squeal.

So, we're driving through the rain on the way to the airport, brakes squealing.  After a few minutes, we realize that Aidan's in the back seat humming, nay, singing along.  Squealing along on the same note as the brakes.  They'd go off and on, and he'd "sing" along with it as they did.  He sang along with squealing brakes.  Tell me that's not the coolest kid ever.

THIS is vacation

I'm not going to lie - I'm typing this from St. Martin.  THE St Martin.  It's always amazing to have a week off, and even more amazing to have a whole week (a whole week) with my boys.  Even more amazing in a place like this.  Our condo is literally 5 feet from the ocean - if we open the balcony, some of the waves crashing in splash onto it.  We can hear the waves and the crashing and feel the breezes all the time.  Pretty great.

Today, though, we lucked out.  We met a guy in the swimming pool the other day who recommended a day trip to us, and we took it today.  Thanks, Tony.  Amazing day.  We took a ferry over to an even smaller, uninhabited island.  It's got a couple of restaurants, chairs and umbrellas, and a really calm piece of ocean - soft, soft sand.  It was so perfect.  It's supposed to be awful out this week, but today the sky was blue, blue, blue.  Just blue sky with the palm trees, the ocean, some good food and my boys.  Little man floating in the ocean with his noodle, playing frisbee with us in the waves, laughing, building castles with his little friend Logan who happens to be three years to the day younger (met them today), making friends, touching the VERY fresh lobsters in a cage waiting in the ocean for someone to pick them for lunch.  I know I'm fortunate all the time - days like today are just beyond.

um, what is that?

Aidan has a terrible mark on his shoulder that wasn't there earlier in the day.  Steven asked where it came from, and he showed us.  Turns out, he was sucking on his own shoulder to see what it would feel like.  That's right - he's given himself a giant (for him) hickey.  Seriously?  Do other children do this?

Things I'll miss

I was very sad when Aidan aquired "L"s.  There are other things I know I'll miss, for example:

• peek for keep, e.g., "He peeks on telling me, but I already know!"
• "bictroller" for controller and "bictrol" for control.  "Where's the bictroller?  I need to pause the TV"
• "Mommy, I can't hear the music--can you speak it up?" or "It's too loud, would you speak it down?"
• be-chother, as in "We love bechother"
• beleven, the number after ten (though I've heard him say eleven once or twice already)
• "salty chips" - the kind with a hint of lime; has nothing to do with salt
• "even" at the beginning of the sentence - "Even I got to have ice cream last night!"

The time approacheth, and too fast....

wait for it....

Today I got an awesome story on the way to work about Aidan's amazing strength.  Did you know that sometimes he can touch an animal and turn into that animal?  (During these times, he doesn't keep an Aidan face - he'd have a cheetah face, for example.)

He also is able to make hyenas back off.  How?  He punches them in the stomach.  The stomach is back behind the head, Aidan, how do you keep them from biting you if you're punching them past their heads?  He tapes their mouths closed, like we saw the man on TV who was moving crocodiles and taped their mouths closed before moving them.  "I use duck, duck......a duck and a goose tape."