Why?

But why Mom? Last week we took a little trip to Utah for my nephew David's wedding. I thought the trip was fairly routine, I mean, its become fairly common place over the last year for us to pack up and make the not-so-difficult trip to see family in that part of the country. So it came as somewhat of a surprise that Luke seemed to have serious difficulty internalizing the fact that we were taking this little trip.

For several days he repeatedly asked me "why are we going to Utah?" and then seemed to have a very puzzled look on his face. These incessant "why's" became even more persistent once our trip finally commenced. It seemed that nearly every few minutes he quizzed us yet again why we were going to Utah and more pointedly why we were NOT going straight to Aunt Cindy's house, which certainly was difficult to comprehend because why would we go anywhere before going to the Mecca of all things wonderful which is Aunt Cindy's house? It took a while for it to dawn on me that when I answered that we were going to his cousin's wedding he really had no idea what that meant.

Okay, I get it that when I glance at my nine year-old daughter and see that she is mesmerized by the beautiful bride and realize that all the years of playing with Barbie dolls have really just been the beginning phase of her planning her own great and glorious day as a bride, I'm not happy about that realization, but I get it. It just hadn't occurred to me that my boys are wired so differently that through all the years of being ordered to play house by their sister that they still might not understand what it means to get married and frankly I didn't want to really have that conversation with them just yet. So when Luke asked for the twenty fourth time why we were going to David's wedding and I asked him if he knew what it means to be married and he said no I decided it was time to ask him if he knew that his mom and dad were married. Well, no in fact, he didn't know that but apparently now, after our conversation, he does know that you get married so you can be a mom and dad. I expect that the next time he sees David he will ask him if he's a dad yet.

But the why's have not ended. No, in fact they might have increased in their frequency. Why are we going here? Why do I have to go to bed? Why do I have to brush my teeth? Why is Aunt Debbie coming for Thanksgiving? Why are we having Thanksgiving? Why is it almost Mitchell's birthday? Why is it not my birthday? Why do I have to eat my dinner? Why can't I stick my finger in nose? Now they have elevated to the following conversation:

Luke: Mom, can I color?
Me: Yes, of course.
Luke: Can I color in a coloring book?
Me: Sure (and in my head I'm thinking as long as you're happily occupied and not coloring on the walls coloring on almost anything is fine.)
Luke: Can I get the crayons out?
Me: Yes.
Luke:Why?
Me: Um.....because you asked.

Seriously.....Why?

But in all of this I think that William has begun to question why about a few things in his life. Well, only one thing really. You see, Mitchell is about to turn seven and we are having a birthday party. Only, Mitchell's birthday happens to fall on a weekday that is a really busy day for us this year. We have basketball and singing class and church responsibilities and on and on. So we decided that we would have his "friend" party on Saturday and I was all ready to fit it in after his actual birthday but the lady doing the scheduling at the pool (ahh the pool, yes this year because of a happy little thing called joining the gym we were given three free pool parties) suggested maybe the Saturday before his birthday would be a good day. Several times I asked William if this would be okay because, after all, it was the day of the big game, the holy war, the BYU-Utah game. And he assured me that Saturday would be great. The party would be over a couple hours before the game and he would have time to settle in with his clam dip and even enjoy the pre-game because we don't have tickets to actually go to the game this year.

And then he was offered the company tickets to the game.

I imagine he's wondering why? Why couldn't he just go and leave the party thing to me? Why couldn't the tickets have been offered before we planned this party? Why did he have to be a good father on this one day? Why does life have to be so unfair? Sort of like with Luke, I don't really want to have that conversation.