Family Update, Bullet Point Style

*Craig and I have decided that he is experiencing an early mid-life crisis. Oh, and because he is a rational mastermind who doesn’t experience normal human emotion (this is what I yell at him during fights when I’m trying to lure him into a yelling match) it has been a sort of long, low-level midlife crisis. He bought a motorcycle that he doesn’t ride. He has refused to go to church as often as I like. He has made a lot of jokes about Silas ruining our life. Oh, and last Thanksgiving Eve he yelled “Shut up!” at me (not something a rational mastermind does) which from here on out will be a part of our family lore.

*Third-time mom moment: Several weeks ago when we took the kids to King’s Island, I took Silas and Henry on a ride called “Boo Blasters.” You ride in a little cart through a dark course where two dimensional monsters pop up and you try to blast them with a gun. Silas was terrified and he sobbed the whole time. And later that day, I took him on the ride again, since it was one of the only rides that all three of us could go on together and I was really tired and wanted to sit down. For the record, he sobbed only three quarters of the time.

*I have been reading Women, Food and God by Geneen Roth, and in it she says that we need to remember only two things: when we are hungry, eat what we want, and when we are not hungry, feel what we are feeling. She posits that those of us who are compulsive eaters are avoiding feelings. She suggests that perhaps we would relate to feelings and food (and God, too) differently if, as children, our parents had said to us in moments of great emotion, “Tell me all about it, darling! How does your belly feel right now? Your chest? What color is your anger?” instead of “Be quiet! Stop that!” I generally do the latter, so I figured I would try the former. So a few days ago, when Luke was acting really upset because I wouldn’t let him play video games that very moment, I said, “How are you feeling right now?”

“Sad,” he said. “No, mad.”

“Where is your anger in your body?” I asked.

“Here!” he said, shaking his fist at me.

“What color is your anger?” I asked.

“Um, red. Will you stop talking to me like this?” he asked.

I don’t think Roth has little boys.

*We really like the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books around here. And the movie is great. And I just realized that all this time, Henry has thought that it was called Diarrhea, the Wimpy Kid. Dang, I would be wimpy if my name was Diarrhea, that is for sure.