When Your Boys Aspire to Work at the Dairy Queen

This week has been a time of great excitement at our house. Never mind the fresh snow. Never mind the exciting best friend birthday party at the dinosaur museum. Never mind Thing 1’s imminent dance recitals. What we are really talking about is lunch duty, people!!!

Thing 1, being in the upper grades at elementary school, has the great privilege—nay, honor—of assisting in the lunch room for a week periodically. Apparently, this is a hallmark of age and wisdom at Thing 1’s school that he has been looking forward to for some time. I have been regaled with tales of serving pears and Chinese food and the ice cream bar that awaited him as a reward at the end of the week. But the real joy of lunch duty, as I now understand it, is that you get to have seconds and get out of class early to go help in the lunch room, all while wearing a most excellent blue and white paper hat. Yes, heaping mounds of fries, less classwork, and paper on your head are where the true fulfillment in life comes from. And the only down side, as Thing 1 has put it, is that you have to wipe down tables after lunch is over. Well, shucks, cleaning is just the pits, isn’t it? But I wouldn’t know anything about that since I’m a mom and not a lunch worker. (Insert snort here—but only a slightly derisive snort, followed by a smile.)

Overall, I’ve been pleased with Thing 1’s reaction to lunch duty. Maybe, just maybe, this kid will hold down a job successfully someday, despite his inability to clean his room or pick up his dirty socks. The thing that has me worried, however, is just how excited Thing 1 and, consequently, Thing 2 have been about this whole working in the cafeteria thing. Each day after school, Thing 1 hands his trusty, dusty lunch worker hat over to Thing 2 with great care as he shares his stories of wonder about lunch duty. (Yes, he is the greatest big brother ever, in case you were wondering.) And then Thing 2 proceeds to pretend to work in a fast food restaurant for hours.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There is absolutely nothing wrong with working in a fast food restaurant. My only concern is that this is seen as something akin to the coolest job ever by Thing 1 and Thing 2 right now. I had hoped that the possible future fast food restaurant job might be a stepping stone to something—um, how shall I say it?—more lucrative for my boys. You know, a baby step on their way to the pinnacle of whatever career will be theirs. I mean, even Mr. Knightley did his stint in the Baskin Robbins growing up. (To hear him tell it, it was more like a stint in purgatory, but that is neither here nor there.) The point is that then Mr. Knightley went on to procure higher paying jobs with things like benefits. I just hope this is the case for Thing 1 and Thing 2.

But as I cast my mind back over my own life, I seem to recall similar feelings from the recesses of my own elementary-aged mind about selling milk at lunch time. And I grew up without becoming a milk woman, and I’ve never even worked in a fast food restaurant at all. Again, there’s nothing wrong with those jobs. I’m just making the point that although I was sure I had found my life’s calling in selling milk, it did not prove to be the case.

I’m sure it will all end up OK in the end for my boys. Maybe they could be doctors or engineers and wear paper hats still. Just an idea. But whatever they do, I hope they do it happily. And with great hats.

Oh, sorry, I have to go now. Thing 2 just finished making my burger and my order is up.

The Awesomeness of Christmas Morning (a little late)

So…um…yes, I am cognizant of the fact that this post should have occurred in December when Christmas did in fact take place. But hey, something good is good any time of year. And trust me, this is good.

Several months back, Thing 2 and I went into our local music store to buy something I needed (rosin? a music stand?). While there, Thing 2 spied the most beautiful sight that his little eyes had ever come across: a kid-size drum set. I literally had to pull him off of it to leave the store. While he has standing on the sidewalk outside the store as I fumbled with my keys to open the car, a very pained expression came across his face. Thinking that he had somehow hurt himself, I asked him what has wrong. He instantly burst out in tears and declared his undying love for the drum set. Apparently, it was his heart that was hurt. In the face of such deep and true emotion, how could I refuse? Well, actually I did refuse. But I told him that if he wanted those drums that much, he could ask Santa for them and they would be there in our very own house on Christmas morning.

Well, December came and Thing 2 began to enquire daily about whether the drum set would be here tomorrow. (We are still working on understanding this little thing called time.) He became more and more frustrated with this “supposed” Christmas morning that never seemed to come. But we finally made it to Christmas Eve, when the next morning would provide the longed-for drum set. And then the waiting was worth it because this is what happened on that epic morning:

Drum Twinkle from Jennifer Alton on Vimeo.

Let me ‘splain, Ricky. You see, there has been much talk about the formation of a band between Thing 1 and Thing 2 since the sighting of the beloved drum set. Thing 1 wants to learn to play the guitar and got one for Christmas a couple years ago from Grandma. (We still haven’t gotten around to those lessons, but that’s on the list for this year.) And now, since Thing 2 wants to be a drummer, the band idea has been discussed in great detail between the boys. Apparently, since I play the bass, I am supposed to be in this band, too. Bless their hearts, my boys aren’t old enough yet to realize that being in a band with YOUR MOM is probably not as cool as they want to be. But anyway, upon seeing the shining, sparkling drums of true beauty in the living room, Thing 2 commanded Thing 1 to go get his guitar so that the performance of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” could commence. This is Thing 2’s favorite song, so naturally it had to be the first song that the band ever covered.

And then, of course, we had to educate Thing 2 about his new Christmas gift, so we looked up some YouTube videos of the man, the myth, the legend: Neil Peart. After watching some of those and listening to some Rush (um, yes, Elvis and Bing were banished on Christmas morning at our house because—hello!—there was a drum set in the living room), this was the drum solo that occurred:

More Drumming from Jennifer Alton on Vimeo.

In other Christmas morning news, Thing 1 got the Kindle from Santa that was his great desire. And since he had gotten an E-READER, he proceeded to spend the morning playing games on said Kindle.

Mr. Knightley surprised me with the exact jewelry tree from the magical land of Pier 1 that I wanted (the man is good), and the boys gave me jewelry to store on it (when it’s not on my body, of course). And Auntie V, who was there visiting with us, gave me some killer rooibos tea from Teavana. Seriously, don’t get me started on the rooibos tea from Teavana. I could go on a long time about that, and this post is already long enough.

Thing 1 and I also got a most excellent shared Christmas present that wasn’t the kind that comes in a box. More on that to come later.

And Mr. Knightley got a pair of Korkers wading boots with interchangeable soles so that he might commune with the fishes more effectively and the promise of whatever e-books he wanted to buy on Amazon.

Yes, it was truly a Christmas morning of pure awesomeness!

P.S. The large thing under wrapping paper in the first video, in case you were wondering, was a wooden castle set from the grandparents who live in Germany. I somehow forgot to mention it earlier, and it was pretty awesome, as well.

The Glory of Shoveling Snow

This morning, it finally snowed. In Utah, this really should not be such an abnormal event, but when you have just been through the driest December on record, you start to get really, really excited about the white stuff again. Especially if you are Thing 2.

You see, several weeks ago (before the great December drought of 2011), Thing 2 saw a little boy in our neighborhood out shoveling snow with a perfect Thing 2-sized shovel. Immediately, Thing 2 began to vocalize his extreme need for such a beautiful snow-removal device. And because Thing 2 has some magical powers, lo and behold, we found that exact shovel at the local grocery store a few days later. The rejoicing was extreme.

And then, Thing 2 began the snow watch. As the days passed, he talked and talked about how he just wanted to shovel some snow and whether or not there would be snow coming soon. Days turned into weeks. We passed a dismal looking, completely not white, yet still fun Christmas (in which Thing 2 acquired his other heart’s desire, a drum set, but I shall have to post about that later because right now I’m talking about snow and such). The Christmas break, during which even Mr. Knightley was home, was altogether too sunny by far and woefully lacking in the sledding and snow forting Thing 1 and Thing 2 had planned. New Year’s Day was (dare I say it?) disgustingly warm. Thing 2 still spoke of the snow shovel from time to time, but I think that by this point, snow seemed to him like a vaguely remembered dream from long ago.

Finally, this morning, as I stumbled groggily into the bathroom, I noticed that the sky outside our bathroom window was white instead of the smoggy blue it had been for ages. Yes!!!! The day had come! As soon as Thing 2’s melodic yell of “Mom! Come get me!” came over the monitor, I hurried into his bedroom and told him to look outside. For some reason, he ran into my bedroom to look out the window, but this was fortuitous because then Mr. Knightley got to hear what came next, too.

As Thing 2 pulled aside the curtain, he yelled gleefully, “IT’S CHRISTMAS!!!” (Now, since we had just passed Christmas, I’m not quite sure what he meant with this statement. Perhaps he really thought it was Christmas again because Bing Crosby says it’s supposed to be white and now it was white? Or perhaps that the snow was the present he had been wanting for ages? Or maybe that it was just going to be a great day, like Christmas?)

We no sooner had started to laugh about the Christmas comment, than the inevitable question came with loads of intensity behind it: “Can I go shovel the driveway now?”

As a parent, I often think about how my parenting will affect my children for good or ill. I make many mistakes, but I love my children with my whole heart and hope that my parenting successes will far outweigh my parenting failures. But in the area of snow shoveling, I have succeeded far past even my wildest dreams. You see, somehow, I have convinced my children that shoveling snow is a great treat! I’m not quite sure how I did this. (I suppose it is possible, although I don’t really want to concede the point, that maybe Thing 1 and 2 just really like to shovel of their own accord.) In any case, let me put this out there into the universe: MAY IT EVER REMAIN SO!!!

And so, here in Utah, some people have snow blowers. Some people go out and push the stuff around themselves. But as for myself, I have these guys:

And they’re happy about it, too.

Snow mission accomplished!