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Home Alone

I try to tell my children a million times a day how much I love them. (When I am not screaming at them to stop screaming.) Seriously, I want it to be the first thing they hear in the morning and the last thing I say before they fall asleep. Well, last night, my 5-year-old wasn’t having it. “Get away from me,” he cried when I went in for a hug. “I love you,” I said, trying to steal a kiss. He ducked under the covers. This kid was pissed, but I didn’t do anything wrong. He was the one who, moments earlier, knocked his sister to the ground. She is only 3-years-old, but knows how to push his buttons. She was taunting him singing, “Baby, baby, baby.” That being said, he cannot hurt her. So, I put him in time-out. Personally, I think it is a dumb punishment, created by people without kids. It doesn’t work. Imagine telling criminals, “If you rob another bank we are going to make you sit in an uncomfortable chair for 5 minutes!” I am guessing they would be repeat offenders.

He went to the chair, but proceeded to express his disdain for me. “I hate you.” Excuse me? “I wish you died-ed.” Clearly, I can’t go anywhere because he hasn’t mastered the tenses of the English language. “You don’t mean that,” I said. It turned into a scene from Home Alone. “You’d feel pretty sad if you woke up tomorrow morning and you didn’t have a family.” He wasn’t budging. So, it was time for bed. He fell asleep holding a grudge. I couldn’t sleep.

I laid in bed fiddling with my phone and came across an account on Twitter that gave me pause. It belongs to a chronically ill woman. She tweets about living with cancer. She was told just months ago that she wouldn’t have long to live. The end is near yet she is incredibly positive. I wanted to wake my son and share her message. We need to enjoy every moment with the people we love. Who the hell was I kidding? Waking a sleeping child to have a conversation is like trying to unravel Donald Trump’s comb over. It cannot be done. (He must go through a case of Aqua Net a month.) My son is in kindergarten. He won’t learn that lesson for many years. Many of us don’t figure it out until it’s too late…. or until two burglars (one with a shiny gold tooth) try to break into our house, while the rest of the family is in France.

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