Just When You Think You Are an Awesome Parent.......

8:47pm Monday night - I am watching Downton Abbey (oh my word.......that music.....it starts and I am transported to a different time and place and I am sucked into the vortex of 1922 England.   Seriously, it's somewhat jarring to me when the credits come on and the black screen replaces the beautiful scenery of the Abbey......what? where am I?  what on earth am I doing in this bed wearing my tattered, old pajama pants and hair wrapped up in a towel and who is this young child peering at me in the darkened room......where is the abbey?  Mary?  Tom?  Mrs. Hughes? Mr. Carson?  Where did you all go?)

Nico (holding an ENORMOUS book of science experiments from the library......his other book choices?  Several Scooby-doo, a book about scoliosis, an atlas and a book about ohio - all picked out with quite a bit of care and deliberation) :  Mom.  Mom.  Mom.

Me (waking from my DA fog):  What? Yes.  Ok.  Ummmm, what?

Nico:  Mom, you have to see this experiment.  Can we do it?  Can we try this?

Me:  Ok, show me, buddy.  What did you find?

Nico:  It's a really good one........with birds.  See.  Right here.  You need a whole bunch of stuff.

Me:  Ok, buddy.  I think we have all this stuff, we can do this.  It's a homemade bird bath.

Nico:  Well, we would need a grown up to fill the water every day.  That would be you, mom.  You are home all day.  We aren't.  Francesca will have school, too.  So you can fill it up.  Well.......until you are dead.  I will probably be in college (All the while please picture that my precious boy whom I cherish has a big smile on his face and is taking this all very seriously but in that goofy, excited way he has when in the midst of planning and creating).  I will be grown up and then I can take care of it.  I probably won't even remember you............we will be so far apart. (more rambling about me being gone and him carrying on without a care in the world)

Me:  Huh. (thinking of that little boy who still requires cuddle time in the morning when he wakes up, wanting to curl into me while he adjusts to the HARSH, COLD world........far apart, not remembering me, WHATEVER.......oh he will remember me......I start plans of my own..........)

Nico: (more talk of planning and what he is going to do..............)

Me:  Well, that's a good plan buddy.  We will have to work on that tomorrow. (both of us will........operation remember mama will be in full effect)



And the other one.....................


Francesca:  Mom........mom............what you think I should be when I growed up - God or a horse rider?

Me: (stunned silence)

And as always in moments like this with Francesca.........I wonder how we ended up with a mini female version of Uncle Anthony.......... :)  Oh, by the way, the silence did end and I told her she couldn't be God, there is only one God and she wasn't it.

I am not sure that she believed me..............................