our doorbell is not loud enough

The other day I ordered groceries from our local delivery service. I picked a morning delivery slot - from 8am to 10am, figuring that Aaron would wake up early and in turn wake me up.* But that morning, he slept in until 9am. (Yes!) And we got up and I waited and waited for the groceries to come. When they didn't show, I went downstairs to see if they got dropped off with our package room, but the doorman informed me that they had come and gone. In fact, he said they had called all our phones, and that he had escorted the delivery man upstairs and that they rang our doorbell and knocked several times, but no one answered, so they assumed we weren't home.

I find this disturbing. How deeply do we all sleep? I mean, I guess the walls are pretty soundproof in our apartment - I can only faintly hear the tv when the bedroom door is closed even though it's right next to the door. And I hardly ever hear our neighbors except through the vents in the bathroom. But I was kinda freaked out! What if there's a fire in our building and we don't find out until it's too late because we were sleeping too deeply??

Eh. I guess the big lesson is...we're not morning people.

*We don't use alarms anymore. We hate waking Aaron up earlier than he plans to, and he usually wakes us up these days. Unlike a clock or phone alarm though, he's not always reliable. Obviously.

**Full disclosure - I looked at the original date on this post and apparently this happened last October. As in October 2009. We started using morning alarms again when Aaron started school in September. These actually wake us up now because we turn them up to max volume and leave them in our room. Plus Aaron is much more excited for "daytime!" than he was a year ago.

ill at ease

I've never been good with kids. Some people are naturally at ease with kids, able to banter and interact with them comfortably, but not me. I think they're cute and all (if they're cute), but I never really know how to talk to or play with them. But for some reason, they seem to like to talk to me!

Case in point: Earlier this week, Aaron and I went to the playground, and we brought a bucket of sidewalk chalk with us. We went during the early afternoon, when it tends to be emptier, and as soon as we got settled with the chalk, the other 4 kids (probably ranging in ages from 5-10) that were at the playground came over, asking if they could play with the chalk too. Of course we shared with them, but soon they wanted me to actively play with them.

"Do you want to play hopscotch? What are you drawing?"

"I'm drawing a road, because he (Aaron) likes to drive his truck in the lines"

"Oh, can I draw too?"

"I can draw a cat. Wanna see?"

"Look! I'm drawing waves! And this is the sun!"

"Look! I drew a bridge!"

"I finished my cat!"

"Look at my shapes! Can you tell what they are?"

(They looked like circles with crosses in them)

And so on and so forth.

I looked around in vain for their caregivers who might be able to give these kids the attention they seemed to crave, but they were all just off in their own corners on their phones or just wandering aimlessly around.

Later one of the other adults came over to me with her kid's coat, "Did you let her borrow your chalk? Look! She got it all over her sleeve!" I thought, "If you're going to have a problem with chalk on your kid's clothing, watch her more closely yourself!" I said, "Oh, ok" and turned around.

This kind of thing has happened in the past at the playground, where kids will ask me to play tag or house with them, and I'll be slightly friendly, and they'll keep coming back and asking me to play more. I'm fine interacting with them, but I'm not there to play with them- I'm there to watch my kid and make sure he's safe.

Today I went to the library with Aaron, and we usually sit and read there for a good 30 minutes or so. We have rounds where we each pick a book, and then I sit down to read them both aloud. This allows him to get his fill of truck books and I get to try and broaden his horizons a little. He's pretty good about sitting for the non-truck book because he knows it's "Mommy's pick" and he has his turn too. So we were into our 2nd round of books when this little girl who was probably around 6 started hovering near us, listening as I was reading. When I finished reading for the round she handed me another book to read. I smiled at her and just told her we were going to get more books to read. So Aaron and I pick our books and start on round 3 and she takes a seat on the other side of me. When I finished reading our books, she handed me the same book again, and I felt bad, so I read it. Of course, reading that one book was the tipping point. After that, she probably read 12 more books with us, of which 4 of them were books she chose.

Keep in mind, the children's section of the library we go to is TINY. It's about 10x12 feet and enclosed by bookshelves. So her nanny/mom was probably at most 10 feet away. I glanced up at her caregiver who was absorbed in her blackberry. She looked up twice and weakly called her over, but didn't bother to get up and intervene or try to read to her instead of letting me do it when I obviously had my own kid to read to. By the end of our reading session, this little girl had made herself comfortable! She was leaning on me, holding onto my arm, trying to hold my hand, and putting her head on my shoulder while I read. I didn't really mind, it was just weird.

BUT, not as weird as this other time I was reading to Aaron in the library and another little girl stood in the corner next to us as we read in the mostly empty room. Suddenly, while we were in the middle of a book, she emerged from the corner, stood 2 feet in front of us, facing us, and started whispering in Chinese while staring at the floor. My Chinese is not very good, and I was trying to pretend nothing weird was happening, so I kept reading. She was whispering very quickly and it sounded like she was repeating an argument. When I finished the story, she whispered, "I'm going to kill you." And then she walked away. Umm. Yea. That was really creepy. I felt like I was living the first act of a horror movie.