The Goon Room

I always worry that I’m not doing enough for the kids. Not reading enough. Not playing enough. Not being patient enough. And that I’m going to give them permanent issues because they are sharing a room. Worry worry worry. You want the best for your kids so you work to give them the moon…but sometimes the moon isn’t totally necessary.

When my sister was in kindergarten, she was sent to the nurse for a bump or bruise. She came home from school that day enamored by the fact that the nurse had “made” ice. She begged my mom to ask the nurse for the recipe. Perplexed, my mom agreed. She realized later that the nurse used ice-cube trays – we had an ice maker so Ali had never seen a tray before.

My niece Madi used to beg my step sister to please turn on the “normal” radio in the car coming home from school. Her friends didn’t have satellite radio so she wanted to listen to the free radio that her friends were listening to.

The other night while getting Baylor out of the tub, she told me how she had been in the bathroom at a friend’s house recently and how she thought they had a HUGE window in the bathroom. But when she pulled back the curtain, she found it was actually the bathtub. Better yet, the bathtub HAD A SHOWER IN IT!! The look of pure joy on her face over the idea of a bathtub and shower together was priceless. This as I’m pulling her out of the claw foot tub that took weeks to get, was installed incorrectly, had to be removed and then put back into place and cost a small fortune…if I had only known she would have been more impressed by a tub shower.

The moral that I need to remember is this: no matter what the gift is, the box is most likely going to be more fun. And that’s a good thing. They are going to enjoy the fact that Baylor used to climb into Auggie’s crib in the morning to play and that they used to wake each other up in the middle of the night. They will laugh about how they put stickers all over each other behind me as I scrambled to get a few things done in the office (hell, they do that now).

At the very least, this will all be good things to talk about at therapy some day. So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.