This is a repost of an entry from my kids' blog:
**********
Kids- today we went to church. It was a good meeting and I think classes went well for kids and adults alike. After we went to your dad's parents' home to hang out with that whole side of the family. They had a ping pong ball set up out back and adults guarded the pool. Evan you played with Cannon and I was very impressed! We all ate lots of yummy food. Brandon steals the show with his prize desserts every time! Zane only had one time out (maybe two) so that's great! I think Evan only cried once (or twice) so that's good. And Sylvie only pooped once! So all in all it was not a stressful parenting operation.
Tonight Evan fell asleep on the way home. Sylvie was in jammies and ran out into the livingroom after she was put to bed. Mike was on a call and told me to put on CNN Osama Bin Laden was dead. I had read it on CNN but didn't think a lot about the headline until I put on CNN. Zane stayed up and watched the President speak. What a huge moment in history. The news channel showed people in DC cheering and celebrating. The word 'dead' doesn't make me want to cheer.
Zane asked me how I felt. That is a huge communication step for him- he does not ask others what they are feeling very often at all. He asked why people were cheering.
I was honest. I told him that death makes me feel a little bit sad. He asked why since it was a bad guy. I confirmed he was a bad guy, but there are still people that are sad and love him and will miss him. But I was glad he would not be able to hurt people anymore or teach other people to hurt him and that I wished they had been able to capture him instead of kill him.
I did explain that he was the man who made the planes crash into buildings and taught a lot of people to kill and hurt lots of people, so it is a really good thing he is not able to do that anymore. I told him that our military has been working very hard to find him for a very long time and I was so glad they found him and the hunt is over! I told him to remember this day, that it will be in his history book.
I never know if I am saying/ feeling the right things he needs to hear for his age. Sometimes I think I am too honest with him, but he is so smart it's easy to forget he is only 6. I wonder what he will remember about our conversation when he is older and sitting in class and flips his history book page to this story. Will he remember Sylvia was in her striped jammies laying in my lap. Will he remember my words? Will he remember the faces of the newscasters? Will he remember my conflicted feelings I tried to explain? Or will he just remember Brandon's cupcakes?
