A letter to my two older children

Dear Boy and Girl:

I am writing you this letter for a number of reasons. Firstly, I want you to know how proud I feel when I watch you play soccer, even though you’re not the star of the team, the fastest runner, the most focused goalie or even much of an athlete at all. I’m happy just to watch you pick clover and wave to me as the ball rolls right by you.

Secondly, thank you for being so patient as we await the contractor’s estimate. I realize you’re both absolutely fed up with sharing a bedroom with one another and I don’t blame either of you. I’m not particularly good at sharing a bedroom either, in fact I often fantasize about sending Dad to sleep in your baby brother’s room just so I can hog the TV and fall asleep to family guy instead of that dork crap on the science channel. It’d be nice to not occasionally gag from the smell of his mentholated breath-right nose strip too. And I can only imagine how peaceful and relaxing it would feel to stretch my legs and not lose of chunk of my calf to his razor-sharp toenails. Anyway, this is about you and your patience, not me and my intolerance. When we get this remodeling gig underway, I promise you’ll both have bedrooms of your dreams.

And finally, I’d like to talk about what’s been happening in the kitchen lately. Last night, Mama had class. Do you know why I’m taking classes? So that someday I can become an award winning, prosperous and well renowned journalist. I’ll make so much money that Dad won’t have to work anymore and he can stay home all day building his remote controlled cars. This is what he tells me. He makes me laugh very much. When I leave for night class, I realize I’m handing over your evening feeding needs to your Dad. Although I could send myself into a tailspin of unease over the combination of foodstuffs he’d place in front of you, I try to push it out of my mind. I caught sight of what you were presented with last night, and I thought this would be a good time to ease my guilt talk about how much fun ravioli can be!

Did you know that if you place an empty chef boyardee can to your ear, you can almost hear the sounds of the tiny dwarves’ pickaxes as they dig in salt mines? Isn’t that fun? And despite what you’ve learned in health class, 950 mg of sodium isn’t so bad. Remember that time you snuck that jumbo bag of potato chips into your bedroom and ate the entire thing? Remember how your lips immediately burned and swelled like giant red water balloons? And remember how we just laughed and laughed? No, you didn’t laugh? Anyway, sodium can be fun, trust me.

The night before last, I asked you what you wanted for supper.

Oh, how you love your hot dogs ‘n beans! You both eat them with such gusto, it’s as if I served you m&m’s dipped in hot fudge sauce. And to be honest, you’ll never hear me complain when preparing that meal. You don’t know this, but it takes me all of 30 seconds to slice open a can of B&M beans and five minutes to sliver and fry hot dogs. I know I told you supper would be ready in 20 minutes, but someday you’ll understand the sheer joy cooking a meal in less than six minutes while still having 14 minutes of tranquility before the hungry masses storm the dining room.

And this meal?

The only explanation I can give is that your baby brother has developed a penchant for shrieking like a tortured orangutan at exactly 5:00 pm. His acute screams and thrashing about render me incapable of using both hands. This pretty much eliminates hot meals. I’m sorry I dropped that grape in your milk, but the exact moment I set the grapes on your plate was the exact moment I was fighting to keep my left eyeball in its socket and not in your baby brother’s hand.

Can I make up for these laughable excuses for meals by allowing you this dessert for the next week?
Love, Mama