Living the Good Life

Chang and I went out on another date night the other night. We watched Slumdog Millionaire. I had no idea what the movie was about and we were about 15 minutes late going into it, so I was a little lost in the beginning. But it sucks you in immediately. Both Chang and I think it is one of the best movies we have seen in a long time. During and at the end of the movie, I got very choked up. The movie is about two brothers who grew up orphaned in the slums of India, and then were taken in by a gangster who took homeless children under his wing and forced them to beg for him.

There were some disturbing scenes and all the while, I couldn't help but think of my kids. They are truly living the good life. Chang and I have talked about the lack of struggles our kids will experience by not being children of immigrant parents, by not growing up poor, by not being forced to do manual labor to help the family business. It is not that I want my children to suffer, but there is a part of me that worries about them. I mean, come on...they have the perfect parents (natch), they live in a house in LA, they want of nothing...this is why I am so hard on them. Yup, if life circumstances do not cause them to suffer, then I, as their thoughtful mother, see it as my duty to be a tiny bit hard, impatient, snarly. When, in the future after years of therapy, they overcome their embittered childhood memories, they will thank me for not spoiling them with loving-kindness and understanding. Life has to suck, one way or another, in order to grow up grounded, you know?

In other news, Sam is becoming a bear to handle. That willfulness is kicking in like a toddler high on chocolate milk and gummy bears. When he doesn't want to eat something anymore, he squeals and tosses it from the high chair, or spits it out if it is already in his mouth. Like Elysha when she was this age, he throws himself to the ground when he is upset. Man, I thought I got lucky with this child, but that crazy gene that all my kids possess must have just been dormant in him.