oh, say can you see...

When I saw Catcher's "guys" lined up along his headboard one morning--from left to right that's Franklin 1, Wild Thing, Franklin 2 and Margarita (formerly Sydney)--I laughed quietly (but not that quietly) to myself. I found the arrangement funny because one of Catcher's chores, now that he's a mature kindergartner, is making his bed every morning. I like that he took the time to set up his guys before leaving for school. But there's another reason, the actual reason, that seeing the characters placed just so caused me to laugh out loud.

To understand, I have to tell you that Catcher is learning the Star Spangled Banner in music class at school. He's becoming quite the patriot and insists that we sing it every night as part of our bedtime routine. The other morning I caught him lining up his guys on the bed and serenading them with our national anthem, as Catcher usually refers to it. He then informed me that I would be performing the number for all of them before bed. I missed the part about the "ramparts we watched" and had to start over following Catcher's rules for singing the national anthem before bed. By the end of my third try my throat was getting sore and I was feeling less patriotic and more dispirited. My brain is mush at the end of the day. And it's a pretty tricky song to sing. Luckily my frustration didn't rub off on Catcher, though. I could hear his falsetto echoing through the room after I had closed the door and he belted "and the rocket's red glare..."