LIFE 'ND STUFF 6 - repost

    

Sonny and Hanah

  Sonny loved and doted on Hanah since he was a toddler. When she fell asleep on the floor, he would drag a blanket over her. Sometimes he'd cover her head instead. He would put his toys on top of her head area and play quietly, forgetting that she was under there.
   My kids were quite easy going. Well, Sonny went through this phase when he'd bang his head on the floor if he wasn't happy with his life. Then there was his allergy to being woken up. It was not the same child in the morning or after the nap! He even now has a formidable stubborn streak. It’s a surprise that he grew up and I didn't kill him on one of those mornings when he refused to budge, to move his arm to put on a shirt or to move his legs toward the elevator. My sister once had a dubious pleasure of bringing him

from our apartment to my parents' through the lo-o-o-ong corridor of the apartment building where we lived. Do you know, how many places there are in such a place for a child to grab and hold on to in an effort to stop the life and get off? I saw my sister after that, she looked extremely pop-eyed, and the steam came off her, like from a water buffalo. There were countless times when I came to pick him up after the nap in preschool, only to find him quietly smearing snot and tears into the massive thigh of his long-suffering teacher. And yet, on many occasions, if we just left him alone and went on with a conversation, I would, suddenly, feel him tugging on my sleeve: "Come on, Mommy, I'm OK now!"
   The situation between Mom and Grisha and Lera, finally, deteriorated to the point when they decided to move into their own apartment across the road from us. We moved them in, had a house-warming party, they lived there for half a year and then,

Grisha up and left for Denmark! Drama was a mother's milk for him. Actually, he found out that their apartment in Copenhagen was being dismantled by the tenants to whom they subleased it.