Being a parent is SO frigging hard.

They're boys.
And they wrestle.
Fight.
Get on each other's nerves and have it out, physically.

Mostly I understand that.
But mostly I don't like it.

I don't like the look in their eyes when they go at each other. The anger. The coldness. The mean-ness.

I never know if I should interfere or let them deal with their disagreements themselves. Sometimes I get involved. Sometimes I don't. I never win, regardless of my choice of action.

Sometimes their fights end up in good natured wrestling matches. But not lately. Lately the violence has been escalating, with both of them being experts of the other's hot buttons. And when to press them.

I, of course, would prefer, we stay far away from each other's buttons and just love each other. Maybe that's a girl thing?

In church on Father's Day, one of the young dads shared what it means to be a father. Amongst other things, he reminisced about being one of three sons and how his dad and brothers and him would wrestle in the house. And how his mom could not handle it. She would wait it out in their trailer. "It's what boys do," he shared. "It's part of the growing up process."

So, with his words rather fresh in my mind, I walked away today when they started up, sad that this is the way disagreements get handled, and worried that this will become a habit. That when they get married, they won't know how to resolve conflict any way other than wrestling.


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I love my laptop.
My camera and my laptop are my two most favorite possessions.
I feel rich because I have them.

I love that all my photos are on my laptop. It's like an electronic photo album that I can take anywhere. And I do. Out for coffee with friends. To work; where I use it as an MP3 player (I put ear phones in and have Windows Media Player shuffle through my playlist). On holidays where I use it as a DVD player to watch movies on. In bed, where I blog from. I love that it was THE laptop that was able to present the slideshow at Drew's grad. I love that I am able to burn DVD's on it in less than 4 minutes. I love that I wrote my Herald article on it beside the pool in Arizona. I love it.

I love that I got new software installed. Graphic design software. Photography software. I love that Clint said I could borrow his Adobe tutorial DVD's so that I could learn how to use the new software. I was looking forward to a summer of learning and playing.


I was starting to worry that I was loving it too much.
That it was becoming too important to me.
That I was making it too big a part of my life.
That I was too possessive of it.

So I tried very hard not to get all freaky when one of the boys unplugged it from "my" spot and used it for MSNing on the couch while watching TV. Or when they took it over to the Nintendo area to use it to look up cheats online while playing the Wii. Or when they started downloading their stuff onto it.

I hated that I didn't want them using it. I was embarassed at my selfishness. I was disappointed that I wasn't generous in spirit. I'm not usually like this - why was I so all "it's mine, get your own" about this particular item?

I had a sick feeling that because I loved it so much, my time with it was going to be limited. This feeling was the result of the foreshadowing I received from some friends. "Yeah, it got stepped on, and the screen was too expensive to replace, so we don't have a laptop anymore." "He dropped it off the table and the screen smashed. Way too expensive to replace, so we just use our PC now."

I got the laptop last year as a birthday gift from my parents and kids. On my birthday. Which was at the beginning of June 2006. They opted not to buy the extended warranty, so every month that we got closer to the beginning of June 2007, I hugged it a little tighter.

Today was the 27th of June, and all one year warranties and guarantees have expired.

Drew and Max were fighting. Physically, as mentioned above and my laptop was in the middle of it.

Yes.

It got dropped. The screen is cracked. And my heart is broken.