We survived the holiday weekend.  Maria’s cousin, Alana stayed with us from Saturday through Monday morning.  I love having her over because the girls get along so well.  They go up to Ri’s room and play barbies or listen to Justin Bieber or play Pet Shop in the basement.  I can actually read a little bit of a book or clean the house without having Maria at my heels asking me to play.  Alleluia.  And I love that they are so close.  I wish I would have been as close to my cousin when I was little.  They are good for each other, too.  Maria shows Alana how to be more daring and Alana shows Maria how to play something for more than three minutes.

Mario stayed at Grandma Ionno’s house on Saturday night until Sunday.  He loves himself some Grandma and Grandpa time because he is all by himself and spoiled to death.  He gets to wrestle, show-off, watch tv, and lay around in his pjs.  Not a bad life.  He did want to come home on Sunday night, however, because he knew Alana would be there.  Jon explained to him that the girls may want alone time and Mario chirped back “Alana will want to play with me because she tells me all the time how cute I am.” Oh, ok…. We gotta watch that head of his.

When he walked in, the girls showered him with hugs and love (no wonder his head is big).  They all went upstairs and played “Big Time Rush”. This game consists of Maria and Alana being themselves and Mario being one of the BTR singers.  He played James when we saw him.  He walked by us with his nose in the air as Maria and Alana fawned over him.  It seemed to come natural to him – scary.

I walked up to Stauf’s to do some reading around 5 pm.  Jon watched the kids.  I got a call around 5:45 from Jon.  “Get home now” he stated firmly.  “Mario punched his window out.” My mind leapt to blood everywhere, glass shattered all over.  Luckily, his had suffered a couple of cuts with no glass in them and the glass mostly landed on the roof.  Jon had already subjected him to the wall when I arrived home.  He held a tissue on his hand.  He looked like a mean mama-jamba.  He looked like a prize-fighter.  Jon and I are in for it.  I made him put alcohol on it so that he felt the sting – until that time, he really didn’t see any negative consequences to his behavior.  After I stung him with the alcohol, he cried and shouted “I don’t want to do that again!”  When Jon asked him why he would want to punch his window, this was his response: “I wanted to get on the news.” Oh, are we truly in trouble.

Mario showing his wounds

After that chaos, the kids fell asleep in Maria’s room; Maria and Alana in the bed and Mario on the floor in his sleeping bag and band-aid. 

On Monday, we all talked about what an incredible figure Martin Luther King was and is in our society.  Both girls knew what he stood for and what he fought against.  I told Maria how we walked across the Broad Street bridge when she was one year old in order to honor him.  She couldn’t remember.  Mario knew that MLK “had a dream.” I told him how I remember going to his classroom when he was two and seeing his picture on the bulletin board.  The teachers had taught the kids about MLK’s famous “I have a dream” speech.  They then had the kids tell them what they dreamed of.  The words underneath Mario’s picture were “I dream of ‘popsicles’!” 

Thanks for giving us dreams, Martin Luther King, Jr.