Activities

I took the kids to see The Muppets Take Manhattan at our new neighborhood revival house on Sunday. The night before we went to a puppet show. I’m glad the kids are still into things like this; Bobby, especially, absolutely loves puppets. I’m curious if he’s going to grow into a hardened, jaded middle schooler who thinks everything is uncool. Or have the generations changed and kids aren’t in such a rush to grow up anymore…? This is the question that plagues me, and only time will tell. I would *think* that Bobby is enough of an iconoclast that he won’t be subject to peer pressure; Theo, I’m not so sure. I personally was not subject to peer pressure and always did what I wanted. We shall see.

Bobby’s armpits have started smelling - I looked at him and said, “are things starting to happen?” and he said yes, that plus some other stuff. I’m going to get him some deodorant today. I gave him a quick lesson on how to most effectively use it (because no one ever explains anything to kids). He still seems like a little boy to me, but that’s probably just my mom lens and the fact that I see him all day so I don’t see him actively growing. I’m trying to push him intellectually - I had him watch Religulous with me and explained how this movie was so instrumental to me when I was struggling with belief in god; I’m trying to talk him into seeing my favorite 60s Japanese art/horror movie, Onibaba, at the revival theater next week, but I don’t think he’ll go only because he doesn’t like horror. 

It occurred to me that in just over two years he’ll be the age I was when I stopped living with my mother and moved in with my sister at fourteen. I thought I was so mature and grown up, like all fourteen-year-olds do. I think when I finally see my fourteen year old child and realize just how young he actually is, I’ll be really horrified that my mother thought it was a good idea for me to essentially be on my own at that age. She got a lot of criticism about it and was always very defensive about it, and as the dutiful daughter I defended her, too. It was fine, I said. Nothing bad happened, I said. And nothing did, not really, but it definitely shaped me in such a way that probably didn’t help me later in life - being hyper vigilant, isolating, being afraid to ask for help, etc etc. Well. The good thing is my sons will have an in-house mother through their teen years whether they want one or not, ha ha!