Taking a Bite Out of a Girl Sandwich

Early Monday morning, before my eyes were even fully open, I was lying in bed under the comforter when I heard the door to my room softly open. In my groggy state I heard a pair of giggling voices coming across the carpet towards me. A few seconds later I felt the thump of multiple soft objects landing on me. Then with more giggles, another round of objects were heaped onto me.

Alter Ego #1

I stayed in bed through all this, motionless without opening my eyes. The voices left the room, then returned about a minute later, repeating the entire process, with louder giggles this time. Finally after a third round of giggling and heaping, I realized it was time to take action.

With a great thundering roar I raised myself up in the bed and threw back the comforter.

The giggles exploded into the chorus of great laughter. Around me on the bed and on the floor were dozen of stuffed animals of various sizes, color and species, horses being the dominant one.

"Uncle Ma-a-a-tt!!" they voices cried out in unison, as if scolding me.

It was the usual custom of my twin nieces to do this each time I stayed at their house. They would even tell me about the night before. "We're going to come into your room and pile animals on you," they said.

"You better," I replied. It was one of my favorite things in the whole world. I looked forward to it each time.

One notable change during this visit was the use of the word "animals" rather than "aminals." They were growing up, now eight years old as of last week, and the correct use of this word was but one of several "grown up" changes I noticed about them since my last visit in May.

The day before---Sunday---had been their official birthday party, as they had been on vacation in the Ozarks during the actual day of their birthday. They hadn't known I was coming, or that I was even in town. My visit from Portland had been in stealth mode. I had told my sisters about it only at the last minute.

Anne had picked me up at the Hilton on Sunday morning and driven me down to Westminster in their Honda Pilot. I entertained her own young children---ages six and (almost) four---on the way. When we got to Westminster, my nieces were stunned to the point of confusion to see me walking up the driveway. Since it was their birthday, for old times sakes, I picked them and threw them into the air, catching them on the way down, as I have done since I saw them in Massachusetts when they were only three years old, and when I stayed above their garage like Fonzie, as my brother-in-law called me.

But they are getting too big and too heavy for this. The days when I can do this are numbered.  In fact I dare say that this might have been the last time for that particular activity, at least for the taller and heavier one of the two.

The birthday party itself, already in progress when we arrived, was a chaos of little girls from their school, and a few boys too, but they were in the basement together most of the time. Because of this, I got to spend the best part of the afternoon catching up with my sisters and my two brothers-in-law.

Not so for the next couple days during my visit to Westminster. From Monday onward, I was in nearly constant demand by my nieces as a playmate and plaything. They have a repetoire of specialized games and physical activities that they insist I participate in during each visit. They start asking for these within minutes of my arrival.

The old standards include "horsie" (self explanatory---and hard on my knees) and "clock" (where I hold them upside-down by their ankles and swing them while making ticking noises until the chimes of the hour). Other activities of more recent vintage include hoisting them up to the cross bar of the back yard swing set, and supervising them as they hang from it and shimmy sideways along from one end of the set to the other. The variations they invent for this are amazing. Sometimes I pretend I am a gruff Romanian gymnastics coach giving them harsh training instructions. They like that kind of attention.

As always, we invented new activities this time, such as pretending they are both food items in the refrigerator. For example, one of them is bread, the other peanut butter. I then"sliced" one of them up and "scooped" from the other to make a sandwich. Then I took a "bite" out of both them. Once we established this pattern it was a good solid hour of them demanding that this be repeated in various other combinations of things found in their pantry. They got very creative with their cuisine. At times I "microwaved" them by poking them in rapid succession with my fingers. No doubt they will remember this new activity next time as well. "Let's play food!"

Look at me, y'all, I'm rum-be-ando!

One of their latest passions, which they insisted on my watching, was performing along to Just Dance 4 on their basement Wii. Their best number is "Call Me Maybe," for which they know all the words by heart, followed by "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)." I did my best with a rendition of "The Ketchup Song."

Fun as it is, all this physical play is a bit taxing on me at times. Who can keep up with eight-year-olds?  Like a withered old man, I am constantly having to plead that I have run out of strength, that further repetitions would be dangerous, given the fatigue of my muscles. Most of the time when I say this it is true. I love every minute of all of it, of course. But they are almost always willing to keep going on and on.

Moreover during my visit this time, I spent much of the daylight hours deep in my job for the Big Publishing Company, hunched over my laptop in my bed or on the sofa, answering East Coast emails from the moment I woke up, and also working late into the night after the New Yorkers had gone to bed.

Alter Ego #2

At work we had recently changed the servers of the publishing app over to a new configuration, and things were still not operating smoothly.  The book editors were frantic about missing deadlines for their various projects. Although this wasn't my fault, it was certainly my obligation to fix it.

So during my stay this time I found myself being somewhat of a grump, having to turn down many of my nieces' pleas for another round of each play activity. I found myself relieved when they were tuckered out and just wanted to veg and watch  My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, of which they have many episodes stored on TiVo.

At the start of each episode of this, they deem it important to announce which pony they are, although I've yet to figure out the significance of this.

"I'm Twilight Sparkle."

"I'm Rarity---no, Pinkie Pie---no, I mean Rarity."

"Which pony are you, Uncle Matt?"

Applejack, of course. I'm Applejack.