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From the time he was an infant, Gabe has carried a blanket around with him. (He’s a bit like Linus.) As he has grown, the blankets he drags about have grown in size with him. I will often find him laying on the wooden floor next to the kitchen table wrapped in the blankets or sheets from his bed. (The soft blue blanket Dines bought him after the fire is the most often used.) Why he wants to lay on a hard wooden floor is beyond my comprehension. Why he likes to drag himself along the floor using a blanket baffles me as well. These actions create an endless source of arguments between us.

“Gabe, the floor has food crumbs, cat hair and dirt from people’s shoes on it. You are getting your bedding all dirty,” I say.

“They’re my blankets. I should be able to lay on the floor with them if I want,” he replies.

And around and around we go with this argument day after day, night after night. The only thing that varies is the blanket he is laying in.

Sometimes Gabe uses Dale’s ‘nap on the couch’ blanket. (This blanket was the replacement for Dale’s green girl which over the years shredded away to nothing.) Sometimes Gabe uses our Army poncho liner which Zeke has claimed as now an essential part of his bed covers. (The Army poncho liner is the most versatile blanket ever created. It is extremely light weight, incredibly durable, provides shelter and warmth, washes and drys quickly, and is good to use as either a picnic blanket or a sick child’s covering.) Once I caught Gabe with my Christmas gift Chicago Bears throw. He told me he couldn’t resist it because it was so fuzzy and soft.

I could see no way out of this daily argument. However, Gabe, being left handed, has come up with a solution for this dilemma, and has added an item to his birthday wish list. The last line now reads:

“Large blanket for dragging on floor.”

Initially, the tooth fairy was quite diligent in our home. Then, she or he became a bit neglectful. The third and fourth child unluckily bear the brunt of the tooth fairy’s poor sense of duty.

A few days ago, Gabe announced loudly for all to hear, “Tell the tooth fairy that I am putting a tooth under my pillow.”

“Yeah, if we see the tooth fairy, we’ll let him or her know,” I replied.

Unfortunately for Gabe, the tooth did not disappear in the night to be replaced by some cash.

“The tooth fairy didn’t show up,” he said the next day and the day after that and the day after that.

I offered him a variety of reasons for the tooth fairy’s negligence. “Maybe she or he is running late. Maybe money is tight right now. Maybe there were an excessive number of lost teeth to be seen to…”

Or maybe the tooth fairy is thinking, “You are almost 12 years old. Shouldn’t you be done losing teeth?”

Many parents try to influence their children to enter the family business; be it a restaurant, pawn shop, or law firm. Both my Mom and Dad served a stint in the Air Force and one brother and I joined the Army. Dale’s Daddy had a military career with combined service in the Air Force and the Army. Dale and three of his siblings joined the Army. His one sister, who did not join the military, has one son in the Army and another son soon to join.

Dale and I are attempting to avoid this parenting path. We have told our children we will not force them into the military.

After Josiah registered to take the ACT, he began receiving admissions info from various universities. Upon receiving material from a college in Vermont, he looked the university up on line and discovered a frequently googled query, “Do only hippies go to this college?”

Yesterday, he received an admissions letter in an embossed envelope with “Your exclusive nomination is enclosed” printed on the outside. He looked at it and set it down. He did not even bother to open it.

The letter was from VMI.

Last night, I was in the kitchen making cookies, and Zeke was in the sun room counting “how many doctors would it take” as he jumped rope. How Cinderella could possibly have kissed a snake has always been a mystery to me.

Suddenly, the phone rang.

It was Josiah calling. Dale thought it clever to set unique ring tones for members of our family. Josiah’s ring tone sounds like a bugler’s rally call to the cavalry for help. I thought, “That’s odd for Josiah to call…where is he right now?…oh yeah…UPSTAIRS.”

Zeke answered the phone and I listened to one half of the conversation incredulously. Zeke hung up the phone and said, “Patches threw up in the hall.”

“Josiah called from upstairs to tell us the cat threw up? He can’t walk over to Abby’s room and get her?” I asked. Zeke looked at me confused. “Go upstairs and get Abby,” I told him.

At this point, Gabe decided to get involved and start the search for the cat vomit. He thudded up the stairs like a herd of elephants. Gabe thuds wherever he goes. Earlier, Zeke was trying to get Gabe to jump rope and I told Zeke to give it up. “Gabe cannot bounce,” I said “He can only thud.” His footfall when running literally pounds the pavement. Gabe is loud in all things. “I found it! I found the vomit!’ he yelled down the steps. Meanwhile, Zeke informed Abby and she cleaned it up.

Later, when Josiah had made it back downstairs, I asked him, “Were you too lazy to get up and walk down the hall to get your sister?”

“No,” he replied, “My door was closed and I didn’t want to go out because I didn’t know where in the hallway she had thrown up .”

My 17 year old son was trapped. Trapped by cat vomit.

Over the weekend, we received a few days of sleet and freezing rain. I made a sleet cake to celebrate and this morning, the kids got a two hour delay for school because of the freezing rain. Not quite the joy that a snow day brings, but two extra hours of sleep certainly brings a smile.

httpv://youtu.be/bj4RcP5Hmks