End of Week Miscellany

Has this been one hell of week for anyone else? One of those seems so long, but sort of flew by kind of weeks...looking forward to the weekend something fierce.

Commander in Chief
As is quite typical for Mom in Progress and me, we're impulsive people. There's no hemming or hawwing in this household. One of us says "We should (fill in the blank)" and so then we usually just do it. We've bought houses and home electronics that way, had children that way (hi Mom!), the list goes on and on. So last weekend, I said "We should really look into a new car." My lease is up in April, and I was feeling a little fidgety, so I focused on car research over the Christmas break. So we went and test drove a car, while Mom in Progress sat in the van with sleeping children (car dealers really need to have car seats for test driving) and we went inside and sealed the deal. One of the things I love about us is what a great team we are. Being in PR, I can play sort of interested but skeptical, seem informed and researched, yet open to salesmanship. And my wife is all about the bottom line. So we're an awesome match for any car salesman. While I don't mind playing the game, I also get bored easily, so I lose interest in the back and forth and check out. So I was happy to let my wife do the dirty work, and was so proud of her negotiation. We are the proud owners of a 2007 Jeep Commander. I wonder what diversion we'll jump into next...

The Art of Fine "Mah-shaj"
My youngest daughter has taken an interest in back rubbing. Anyone who knows me knows this is a real perk, as I'm the biggest backrub/back scratch mooch in the world. I even stop by the corner of a doorframe and do the reverse hump to cop a backrub or reach an itch (which I learned from my mom). So Fiona likes to give us "mah-shaj-es" and she does a terrific job. She gets us lying flat, hops on top of our lower back and goes to work on the back, then shoots on up to the shoulders, all the while asking "How's that feel?" So I've been loving life lately. The other night I said "I bet I know who taught you to give a good backrub...must be Poppy (my dad)'cause he's a good back rubber." She said "You know who else is a good backrubber? Me!" She certainly is her daddy's girl. And so the mah-shajes have been a great source of entertainment. The other night I said "Maybe you ought to be a masseuse when you get older." And she said "Yeah, except for I want to be a vet-in-arian." So I said, "Well, that's terrific, but a veterinarian could be a part-time masseuse." And she said "Well...(long pensive pause), maybe I can just be somoene who rubs animals."

Oh My God, They're Growing Up Too Fast
We have entered the life question stage and it's scaring the hell out of us. My older daughter was telling my sister-in-law about our neighbor having a baby in her tummy, and then said "How does that baby get in her tummy?" which was so totally awesome because we've had that question before, but watching Auntie Nelle's eyes grow big as saucers as she sputtered and spun and finally say "I'm going to let your mommy and daddy answer that" was priceless. Upon returning from school Monday, my first grader said they had "a moment of silent" at the end of the day "because the president of Ford died." My youngest then asked my wife later "Mommy, am I going to die someday? Because that's scary and I don't want to die." The next night, she told my wife "I love being a kid. I don't ever want to grow up and be an adult." I feel that way sometimes, too.