On time & healing.

Brennan would have been 10 years old today.  A full decade has passed and I don't know if it's a tribute to my busy days or perhaps actual healing but I didn't think about it until Thursday afternoon, April 3rd, when I was staring at my calendar trying to sort out weekend plans.  Used to be I'd take April 4th, 5th, and 6th off because I couldn't stand to be around people who weren't rending their garments and wailing but I haven't for two or three (?) years now.  Vacation time is precious.  I'd stopped making The Saddest Cake even a couple years before that (more out of deference to my slowing metabolism & the scale but it counts, dammit).

Nor do I get agitated when people ask me how many children I have.  I say two and there's a little part of me that still waits for the adrenaline but my body has stopped reacting.

I am, however, having increasing difficulty remembering how old my two are.  I was in the middle of something at work a bit ago and exchanging pleasantries with someone on the phone when it came up.  I may or may not have mentioned fictional children two years younger than the actual ones residing in my  home.  Not ghost children, just a freak glitch in the time space continuum.  Someone should call Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

For the record, The Boy is finishing third grade and going into fourth.  FOURTH GRADE.  He'll be turning NINE years old next month, an astounding fact which I still feel compelled to fact check with him.  He plays outside unsupervised, googles rocket building, and cringes when I sing in the car.  Thirty seconds from now he'll be double digits and tomorrow morning he may just move out and go off to college.

We watch Cosmos together Sunday nights, he is obsessed with Minecraft, we finished Harry Potter and have moved on to Percy Jackson, and in addition to rocket building he's taken up cooking.  Today he made pancakes for breakfast and then a chocolate cake.  Yes, I know ladies, please restrain your daughters.

The Girl will be turning SIX this summer.  I still feel new to this special needs world but perversely I hardly ever think about her as having a disability.  She is funny, adorable, demanding, and woe to the poor soul that comes between her and -depending on the day- her Mickey, Sofia, or Doc McStuffins.

I think she's going to be effectively non-verbal and I suspect there will be many future soul crushing moments on the playground but she communicates just fine with me at home with ASL and her teachers rave about how fast she's picking up her speech app.  She acts out stories and tells me jokes and while not the norm, it works.  Her "where are your glasses?" routine, by the way, is hys-TER-ical.

We go on walks, have tea parties, and "go to the store" up and down the hallway and thru the kitchen on her tricycle, which she's somehow outgrown.  She's become obsessed with "pretty dresses" (I blame Princess Sofia) and rather particular about which ones are up to her standards. She insists on two books at bedtime, unless they are Sandra Boynton in which case she wants three.  When I come back from running she tries to clean me up with baby wipes.

Y'all are catching me on a good day.  The thing is I did give birth to three children and every now and then I wonder what Brennan thinks of the giggles and snuggles down here.  I hope he's in a good place.   I think we are.