That's my girl.

For the entirety of their lives, I have given my kids a hard time whenever they try to talk to me through the bathroom door. Sometimes I say, "Not when I'm in the bathroom!", "I'll talk to you when I come out!", or "I'm in the bathroom!" Because, dammit, those two minutes are my me-time, and I deserve it. Generally speaking, they don't need to be reprimanded much anymore: "Mom?" "Bathroom!" "Oh," and little (and now? notsolittle) feet patter away.

This was the conversation this evening:

Connor: Where did Mom go?
Emily: She's going to the bathroom! Is that okay with you?

Ah, grasshopper.

We interrupt this blog for a bit of fiction from Connor (a finish-the-story assignment):

Suddenly, he tripped and the men were on top of him, hitting him repeatedly. When he was bruised and bloodied, they dragged him back to the cottage. They tied him to a stake in the front yard by his hands and feet so tight he could not move an inch.
The old woman came out and cackled madly. "In the morning, boy, in the morning," spittle going down her chin and her eyes wide and quite mad. The boy stared at her for a moment, fear in his eyes, before he drifted into unconsciousness.
When he woke up, he was being dragged away by the men. By now he was barely conscious and when they dropped him, he could barely move at all, let alone get away. They looked at him for a moment, then, grinning evilly, they said, "Good bye, boy." They pushed him down, and soon he was suffocating on dirt.
He struggled for a second, then he lived no more.

No Beer This Time

Sam is testing Ethan on spelling. "Curl."
Ethan responds, "c-u-r-l."
Next Sam says, "Bitch."
Beat.
Beat.
I look at him, befuddled. Ethan starts giggling.
"Huh?" Sam says as if it had come from someone else. He rechecks the paper. "Oh. Birth."
I think Sam's cold meds are slowing his brain down a bit.