A Walk to Remember

Sometimes at night, after my kids have gone down to bed, I creep into their rooms and run my hand lovingly down their soft, cherubic little cheeks. They look so sweet and so innocent I am compelled to take a picture because a) I want to chronicle the moment of peace and b) I've heard that if demonic possession is actually a thing, it can sometimes manifest itself in photography.

The results remain inconclusive.

Today my parents came over and we decided to walk a quarter mile from my house to an Italian restaurant with the kids to get some pizza. My mother had purchased a kid's umbrella for my daughter and she wanted to let her try it out on a little neighborhood walk like an elderly, Asian woman waiting for a bus so we all headed out into the warm Arizona air.

My daughter was completely stoked.

Until she refused to hold the umbrella high enough to see and we had to pluck her out of that rain gutter   you see to her right.

At which point we advised her that if the umbrella was going to be a hinderance to her vision we were going to have to take it away. This prompted a response of, "You can't talk to me! No talking!" and a look of hate so pointed and so well cultivated that I had to give the little shit some props. She definitely knows how to make someone feel like a dick.

My mother then got down to eye level with her and said sweetly, "Well, I expect you to hold that up high or I will be sad. Okay?" and then whispered to me, "I had to get tough with her. Sorry."

I found this rich considering that this was the same woman who'd once swung a vacuum cleaner cord at me after lassoing it psychotically over her head like the Lone fucking Ranger while promising my death if I didn't get the hell away from her but I guess the definition of getting "tough" with a kid could have changed since the early 80's.

The walk continued, until my son decided that he'd had enough and slunk to the ground next to my dad. I picked him up to continue our journey (we'd gone a block. You'd think we had jogged a 5k at this point) and was met with rage that I wouldn't let him down so he could continue to stubbornly refuse to walk and scream "No!" at all of our attempts to nudge him into motion.

I tried reasoning with him.

Which just caused him to go full Chris Brown on me.

The evening ended with us triumphantly reaching our destination only to have my children crawl under the table to sit with "Bapa" because their associations with him are filled with joy and rounds of "This Little Piggie" as opposed to associations with me that include rounds of "If You Say Poop One More Time to the Cashier at Fry's I will Throw Your Donut Out Of The Window on Ray Road When We Get Into The Car."

So I take pictures of them when they're sleeping. Tomorrow is a new day.