Kangatopia

Certain memories will always stay with me, and surface when they are needed.

Winston stepping slightly in front of me when two little boys in her daycare class came careening towards us from the back of the room. “My mommy,” she warned once, and then, “My Mommy” again just to make sure they understood.

Winston grasping each side of my face with her little hands and then pulling me towards her for a full on kiss on the mouth.

Winston’s kisses. Shep told me once that the way we kiss each other, a series of little pecks that seem to never end, made him jealous.

Monkey taking my hand in hers, or climbing on top of me to be held.

Carrying an 8 year old Bear up three flights of stairs when he was so sick that he couldn’t climb them himself.

When the kids would sleep with me at night, the way Winston would jockey in beside me for position.

A two year old Bear with a full blown case of Chicken Pox completely coated in lotion intended to stop the itching. He was so sad, so miserable.

Bear’s father teaching how to play air fiddle to the tune of an Irish slip jig when he was a baby not yet walking.

Bear sitting down in his chair on his first day of kindergarten, then standing up again and turning a full circle around to say, “I love you, Mommy.”

Monkey’s way of wanting to be first. Sometimes we tell her in the mornings, “the first one out of bed gets a granola bar!” And out of bed she rolls, staggers to the kitchen table barely awake, and sits quietly to be the first to get her granola bar breakfast.

An 18 month old Monkey with two little pigtails and a juice cup almost as big as she.

The way Monkey would repeat everything she heard, no matter what is was. Such as the time I called her father a fucking asshole in a moment of complete frustration and uncontrolled anger, and at the age of 2 she repeated it as “fughing ahwshoe” much to my shame. According to Bear, she has developed a repertoire of colorful language – but to her credit, I have never heard her speak those words.

No one got lost in the Halloween frenzy yesterday. There were only two meltdowns and one was when Winston wanted a drink, and I failed to understand her. Once she swigged a gallon of water at the fountain, all order was restored. The second occurred when I cut her off from the obscenely large candy supply she amassed at the festival. Bear and Monkey were peaceful and accepting of all decisions.

While my ex took Bear and his friend from bounce house to bounce house lat night, Shep and I ferried the girls through the games and bounce houses more appropriate for their age. Winston jumped and down at each game when it was her turn to play, and Monkey didn’t care what the game was as long as she got to do it. They shot rubber lizards (Leaping Lizards!) from the end of a make shift catapult, played table hockey in which the goal was to scoot as much candy as possible through the hole in the table that served as the goal, and whatever came out was theirs to keep and threw toilet paper through toilet seats attached to a vertically standing board. The last 20 minutes was spent jumping in a bounce house. I couldn’t believe how long they could go given that bounce house jumping is not easy – at least for adult legs. They were both like little grasshoppers, but at about the time we were clearing our throats to tell them we needed to go – they both scrambled for the exit before we got the first sound out.

I love my kids.