A Farewell to Teens

So, here’s a little update for all of you who are following my personal saga:

The number of occupants in my dorm has shrunk once again. Malu and Anglea, my two beautiful thirteen-year-olds, have left us. They moved to the next dorm up two weeks ago, and have spent the last week since then been running around with other children their age and behaving like the litter teenagers they are with people who are equipped to deal with age group (i.e., not me). And while I’m so happy for them, because their just so much happier in that dorm and they seem so giddy about it, I’m a little sad too. So here’s a list of things I miss about having Malu and Angela in my room with me, and hopefully once I get this off my chest I’ll be able to be fully happy for them instead of partially bummed that they could leave us so easily.

1.    The quality of music played in the dorm

I don’t know how many of you have little teens, but if you do you maybe have some idea of what kind of music gets played when their around. We would listed to quite a bit of Christian hip-hop and things with thumping dance beats when Malu was around, and while I wasn’t a fan of it at the time, I’m finding I miss those tunes. They sure beat Ada’s off-key rendition of “Love is An Open Door” (I feel for you, all the other moms of the world, because my children are also completely obsessed with Frozen) being sung at the top of her lungs…

2.    Late-night Zombie chase

At the time, I was not actually a fan of this game. It all started when Angela saw this picture (which is highly amusing and the background of my ipod):

Everytime they see my
ipod, at least one of my kids asks me if those are my fingers.

For some reason, she thought it was the funniest thing she had ever saw. That night, she decided to wander around the room, acting like a zombie. Which was fine, you know, funny and whatnot-until she started chasing me. And not like, ha-ha-I’m-chasing-you type of thing. No, she launched herself at me, and every time she caught me, she would try to eat me.

I (eventually) persuaded the zombie child to go to bed. And while I don’t miss that painful game, I do miss that creative, precocious girl that played it.

3.    Impromtu stairwell dancing

I don’t think I’ve said much about Malu in this blog, mainly because she’s a pretty mellow kid and kind of does her own thing, but one of the things about her that you might guess from her musical choices is that she love to dance. And, not bragging, the kid is good. What’s more than that, is Malu was very much the captain of our little girl ship-which is a nice way of saying that the little girls did anything she told them. One of Malu’s more brilliant ideas was teaching the little girls (Evelyn, Ada, Karla and Ale) an original dance she had made up.

It was a good dance, too, by my standards anyways. However, Malu is  perfectionist, and since it was her dance, it needed to be perfect. So she made the little ones practice in the morning before school and in the afternoon after school, as well as before bed. It got to the point where anytime they didn’t have anything they needed to be doing, they were practicing that dance. Which leads to stairwell dancing.

One morning, I walked out of our dorms to find four little girls dancing in the stairwell, in perfect unison (which was rare) with Karla counting “One-two, one-two aaaaaand twist” in her high-pitched little voice.

I wish you could have seen it. It was amazing.

And all because of Malu.

4.    Angela’s Famous Ridiculous Responses

Angela is a ham. She’s hilarious, and though she sometimes gets shy with people she doesn’t know, in private she just keeps going until she has the whole room in stitches. One of the things we know Angela for is for her ability to give unexpected responses in an incredulous tones of voice. That, combined with her amazing acting talent, is a humor gold mine.

I’m going to draw up a typical Angela-related scene for you:

Alisha finishes reading the story of Rumplestiltskin of the girls.

Alisha: So, what can this story teach us?

Ada: Don’t eat straw! (she had fallen asleep and missed a big chunk of a fairy tale)

Karla: Don’t lie!

Angela: (dead pan) Learn martial arts so if some short guy comes to steal your baby you can kick him really hard and he’ll go bother someone else.

Maybe you had to be there.

I was wrong. This list didn’t make me feel better at all.

Anyways, I love those girls. I miss them a lot more than I thought I would, although I am happy that they’re happy. And if anyone’s getting anxious that my room is getting low on little girls (since Dani also left in April, we’re now down to five), a little birdie informs me that I will soon have some new little girls to tell you about.

For the time being, I’m enjoying the peace and quiet that comes from having a seven-year old, an eight-year-old, two ten-year-olds and ONLY ONE thirteen-year-old.

It’s a very busy kind of peace, and a very loud sort of quiet.