death and dying and crying

I don't know what's wrong with my kids. 

Today, they packed up Henry's old backpack with their own homemade 'tornado survival kit'.  They included some stuffies and blankets, and at my suggestion, they added a couple granola bars, a bottle of water and a few flashing light things for their bikes that they got at this year's neighborhood block party.

(Note to self, supervise how many your children shove into their pockets without your knowledge when the police officer dumps out the entire contents of her bag and says "take it all, I've had a really bad day". Unsupervised pillaging leads to you owning approximately 2.3 billion little blinky flashy light things that all say 'Centerpoint Energy' on them.  This is enough to create a runway in our backyard to land the occasional, off-course airplane).

Back to my point, the boys are currently obsessed with death and dying and what if we all die.

Last night, as we dined at Costco.  (Yes, I'm fancy... I know.  I can't deny that I like spending less than 5 bucks for dinner, where I can split a ginormous slice of pizza, a Diet Coke and still get a swirl cup of ice cream.)  Sitting there with the spoon dangling from his mouth Wyatt wondered about him going into Kindergarten next week.

"Are you going to cry, Mom?"

"Perhaps," I replied.  "only because I know what a big change it will be.  You'll officially be spending more time with your teacher than with me... and that's sad."

Wyatt ponders that for a moment, "So, will you be really sad when we are all teenagers?  Will we make you cry all the time?"

I giggled at the thought of this and answered with a knowing smile, "Yes, probably."

Wyatt moves forward and says in his little serious voice, "Would you cry if Daddy died?  Without pause, he continues...  "that means if Daddy died, you would have to be the nice one - and that would probably make you cry the most of all!"

Of course, he's probably right, being 'the nice one' would probably kill me.