Thursday morning I wake up and wander out of my room. Earlier Mac has asked if he and Sailor can get up and play. Not sure why he feels the need to ask for permission. I am greeted by a small voice calling out from the cavernously dark living room. “Good morning, Mommy!”
I return the greeting. Both boys stand before me in their new “elf” pajamas, which we purchased on a bit of a whim last night when the boys “suddenly” remembered that they wanted elf costumes for Christmas. Mac is covered in green fleece. Atop his head is his elf hat, purchased a few years ago but still too big. Atop Sailor’s head, one of our Santa hats. But covering his face is his Darth Vader mask. “I am not Darth Vader,” he informs me. “I am an elf but I am allergic to reindeer.” This mask would help him breathe, apparently.
Earlier in the week Sailor’s friend Sophie D. comes to play. Her mom dropps her off and I drive both kids to school. Sophie is well behaved and Sailor is super-silly. They have a great time together. And I realize this may in fact be Sailor’s first drop-off play date. But I can’t be certain. So "second-child…" Over lunch I notice Sophie has a tattoo stuck to her arm. “It’s a spider,” Sailor says.
“Actually it’s a tarantula,” Sophie corrects. “Tarantulas can attack you,” she continues.
“How?” Sailor asks.
“I don’t know.” Then Sophie consoles, “But you only have a little bit of a chance of being attacked by a tarantula here because most tarantulas live is Texdis.”
“Where?” Sailor asks.
“Texdis?”
“Where?!”
“Austin, Tess-dis. TESS-DIKS! Say it, TESK-DIS!”
Sailor tries but has no idea what Sophie is really trying to tell him. I can’t help laughing at the exchange.
At school Sophie tells everyone that she had a play date with Sailor and that she got to walk to school with him, which I find funny because we drove. The most remarkable part to me is the unlikely pairing of their friendship. While Sailor just turned 4 in September, Sophie celebrated her 5th birthday a few weeks ago. Despite this, the two seem to really like one another. By coincidence, Sophie’s older sister is in Mac’s class.
I think Sailor has picked up on too much label reading of the foods we eat. At soccer on Tuesday I somewhat absentmindedly pick up his gym shoe and look at the size tag inside while I wait for him to put on his soccer uniform. “Is it good for me, mom? Is it ok for me to wear?” he asks.
We rush out of French on Wednesday to do noon hour activities for Mac’s class again this week. I set Sailor at Mac’s desk to eat part of his lunch and then I get busy prepping for the kids. They arrive like bulldozers and within moments I realize that my project is horribly inadequate to fill 20 minutes. Luckily I have brought a Christmas stocking maze for each child to work through, a word find puzzle with this week’s spelling words, which I made myself, and the remaining wooden ornaments from last week’s project. Midway through the activities I look up and see Sailor, still sitting at Mac’s desk. He has been so quiet and well-behaved I forgot momentarily that he is here with me. Mac does not join us for this activity and I wonder at the intelligence of working my butt of to do a project for my son’s class so I can be with him only to have him not show up. I am not truly offended, though.
On Friday after school Mac tells me that despite the intense difficulty of this week’s spelling list, he spelled 11 out of 12 words correctly. I am SO excited for him! We studied hard! I made the word find and a crossword puzzle and drilled him to learn to spell circle not cercol and pencil not pencele and cell not cele. Really, I don’t know where the teacher is getting these words but they are much too difficult and too seemingly random for children who don’t know all the rules of our crazy language.
Mac and I walk over to the children’s hospital, where Mac donates a big bag of stuffed animals and books that his friends brought to his and Sailor’s boys only pj party two weeks ago. I am so proud of my boy I could burst! And so when he asks for a big cookie and hot chocolate from Starbucks of course I say yes.
Sailor seems to be sick when we pick him up from school. His head and tummy hurt so we laboriously make our way home and go right for pajamas and Polar Express on DVD.
“If the Polar Express was real I would hop on!” Mac tells me earnestly.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Week 14 Clean-up in Aisle Three!
Mac has a stomach ache Monday morning. But he doesn’t come down with said stomach ache until I am showered and breakfast is on the table. Sometime closer to the ringing of the alarm clock would have worked a bit better for me. I send him to the sofa. He wants to lie down but then he wants to read and then Sailor wants him to play. Are you feeling better? Do you want to go to school? No! By mid-afternoon I am crazy, as in stir crazy. I have a long list of errands to do today and I am getting antsy and need to get out. So I boil eggs for egg salad. Then I remember I brought our organic mayo down to my parents’ house a few weeks back. I call my mom. “There is only a little bit left,” she tells me. There has to be enough for a bowl of egg salad. There is not. There is so little mayo left in the jar I cannot fathom any reason why my mother even kept it.
I make whole wheat pitas stuffed with cheese instead. We go out after lunch. Library. Target. Craft store. Staples, twice. Tap class. Mac is fine until the last five minutes of tap. He goes pale and the teacher sends him out to me. He sits on the floor with me until class lets out and then he is running around and fine the rest of the night.
Tuesday. Mac again wakes with a stomach ache. I send him back to bed. A few minutes after nine I call school to say he won’t be there again and then in a flurry I herd both kids out the door and make it right on time to Sailor’s soccer class. Mac seems fine so I am having a hard time believing him when he says he doesn’t feel good, which seems to come and go on and off all day.
We have to run up to the DMV after soccer because I have received two tickets two days in a row for expired plates. The kids are well-behaved because I tell them that the people who work here are crabby and we know better than to further piss off crabby people. When we get the sticker I need for the car both boys want to help me put it on the license plate. I tell them how much I appreciate their willingness to help but that I don’t think it will take three of us to affix a 1" sticker. Sailor wants to carry the sticker to the car. The $78 sticker. I carry the sticker to the car.
Once in the car I realize we don’t have enough time to get to our Trader Joe’s so we drive to the closest one. Mac tells me again that his stomach hurts but I forget when we get out of the car. Sailor is asleep but wakes up when I plop him in the cart. We wheel around the crowded store. The kids stop at the “snack bar” and wolf down salami, cheese and crackers. And then as we pass through the frozen food aisle, that which has been hurting Mac’s stomach for two days comes forth. And he vomits. Scattering shoppers. One kind lady, a nurse, brings us paper towels and directs us to the bathroom. I am the picture of extreme calm. And I no longer harbor any doubt that Mac is not feeling well.
At the pediatrician’s office Mac is diagnosed with epigastric pain and given a prescription for an acid reducer. I try not to be worried. It helps that Mac is starving.
Earlier this week the boys were able to pull off the November page of our calendars. “There’s only one page left,” Mac points out. “Then what happens?” Sailor asks, “We die?”
“No!” I practically shout at him, “We get a new calendar and start all over again!”
It snowed today, yesterday, Tuesday night before. I lucked out this year and the kids have double sets of snow pants and Sailor has two winter coats and three pairs of boots. Let’s hear it for hand-me-downs! Walking to school is a long, tiring, wet, and very cold ordeal. And the kids love it!
I spent yesterday morning walking to school and then shoveling the walk and the stairs in front of our house and the next door neighbors'. It’s not right that an old man with a snore strip still affixed to his nose has to assist my efforts. “Where are the 20-somethings when we need them?” At work, of course. But it pisses me off that not one of them can haul their ass out to shovel the snow, leaving it to the little mommy and the old guy in sweats. I am exhausted and dehydrated when I am finished with my task. But I have no time for the quick stop at Starbucks. I pack up lunches and Sailor’s shoes and we head to French class. It’s parents’ week and I get to sit in his class with him for an hour. I am thoroughly impressed by the active roll he takes in class. And I am also amazed at how much better behaved in class he is at 4 than Mac was at the same age. Different child, different temperament. You’d think two kids in the same house would be more similar but they are so different. Mac and Sailor are like night and day. Mac is so well-behaved now. But he can still be so excitable. Sailor vacilates between being great and the biggest challenge ever.
After French class we have 20 minutes to drive to Mac’s school, find parking and set up an art project for the kids in Mac’s class who choose not to play outside at lunch recess. Sailor tells me he is hungry when we are in the classroom. Our lunch is in the car. I swipe a piece of candy from Mrs. S’s desk. Sailor is afraid to eat it. Mac chooses to stay outside and play in the snow rather than come in and do art projects with Mama. But I am ok with this. I see him for a minute when he comes in and I smooch him before I leave. Sailor and I pick up my sister and we run for a quick coffee. It is snowing like crazy. Sailor wants to know what a snow storm is. “This!” I tell him.
The day goes on and on like this. I just want to lie down in my bed. But I don’t. I do paperwork at the art studio while Sailor takes his class, we run like mad to get to school for Mac before he comes out, I take the kids sledding… I blow dry my wet jeans while popping popcorn and helping Mac with his homework. I go out to what should be a relaxing dinner with two girlfriends, except one of them is on her usual roll of bitching about bad life things she would rather bitch about than fix. I work really hard at zoning out mid-rampage. I would order another glass of wine but there are no prices on the menu so I know the prices are not friendly.
On Thursday morning I run around the kitchen making breakfast then run the kids to school. Sailor runs back home with me. I have a late-morning appointment with my gynecologist. Sailor wants to know why he can’t come with. I am thinking of what to tell him. “I can’t hear you!” he shouts. “I’m thinking!” Finally, “I have to get a check up. I have to go to the peeper doctor.”
“The peeper doctor? What’s a peeper?”
“You know. Where your peepee comes out.” What is wrong with me!? I should be better than this at explaining.
“And the doctor is going be there?” he asks, trying to work this out in his 4-year-old mind.
“Yes.”
“And you are going be there?”
“Yes.”
“What’s a check-up?”
“Like when you go to see Dr. Ahlas.”
“I don’t want a shot.”
“No honey, you are not going to see him today.”
“But when I need a shot I don’t want a shot.”
“I am going to see the doctor today, you’re not.”
“She is going check your peeper?”
“Right.”
“She is going look in your peeper?”
“Right.”
“You haf’ take off your underpants?!”
“Yes.”
“So she can look in your peeper?”
Have I told him too much?
“I am not going tell anybody about this that you are going to the peeper doctor. I’m not going tell Nana.”
My beloved OB/GYNE loves this story when I tell her later in the morning.
I also tell her that I am ready to have another baby. She says she will keep her eye out for eligible bachelor physicians. If only she really could set me up with someone. The kids would be thrilled.
I return a toy to Toys R Us and go to Target for more toy shopping on Santa’s behalf. My boys have refused to sit on Santa’s lap so far this season. And they keep changing their minds as to what toys they really want. I finally told them this morning that Santa’s elves are going nuts making them toys and then finding out that they have changed their minds.
Mac and Sailor have decided they want the new Planet Heroes action figures. The one Sailor wants is now in my parents’ house waiting for Christmas day. The one Mac wants is not available anywhere but ebay. Do I bid on it? Why oh why? This part of Christmas is so not fun!
The holiday shopping bills are starting to come. So now I know that on those last few days before Christmas I will be suffering heart palpitations while I pay bills that far exceed my usual credit card bills. Maybe Santa will leave a few hundred extra dollars in my stocking this year!
Before Mac goes to sleep he complains again of stomach pain. Suddenly I am gripped with a sense of fear mixed with sorrow as I have bad feeling that something is wrong with my baby. I look into his beautiful face. His cheeks are red all the way up to his eyes. I pull his head into my lap and hold him close, closer to me, almost as if I could force him back into the safety of my belly. I don’t know what is wrong and I don’t know how to fix his sore tummy. I will call his doctor again tomorrow.
Sailor wakes crying during the climactic moments of ER. The only show I watch all week. I run to his room. He sounds hysterical. I hold him. He kisses my neck. I put him back to bed. Sweet baby.
On Friday morning I wake to realize the boys are playing in their playroom. I am not immediately alarmed. But I should be. I snooze a little longer, waiting for my alarmed clock to go off. And then I remember something. Late last night I pulled hard on an electrical cord sticking out from under my bed hoping to find the other end of my heating pad. I then remembered the heating pad was wrapped up in my closet and so most likely I was pulling on the cord attached to my wall. I stopped pulling and went to sleep. When I remember all this in the morning I fly out of bed to find my alarm clock black. Wondering just how late it is, I hustle out to the bathroom. 7:20. Ok, we can do this. And we do. We get to school on time. Thanks in part to the piddly lunch I pack for Mac: 5 crackers, ½ an apple, 5 baby carrots and a box of milk. I figure he hasn’t been eating more than a few bites of his lunch anyway so why go crazy making him a five course meal.
Sailor and I sit thru a 2 ½ hour long meeting on food allergies, which I find highly educational. In fact, I am so pumped up on adrenaline from all I have learned that I am all ready to stab the next food allergic child I see an EPI pen! Sailor is so well behaved. I have bribed him with the promise that his friend Sofie will come over if he can stay quiet thru the meeting. He is so good. And when we leave the meeting I check my phone and receive a message that Sofie’s mom is sick and they are not coming. To say Sailor is disappointed would be an understatement but he handles it well. We shovel the front walk and steps again and finally head inside for lunch around 12:30. Sailor makes a tent and goes camping in the kitchen while I make some phone calls. My back hurts and I am out of energy so I tell Sailor I am going to take a 20-minute bath. But he wants to join me. I remind him how hot I like the water but he says he’ll be ok. I won’t go into detail about the bubble bath we shared but I will say that I have a very curious 4-year-old and next time I bathe with him I’ll be wearing a bathing suit! Also, when he grows up and becomes a hairy monkey I think he want to consider a career as a gynecologist.
I make whole wheat pitas stuffed with cheese instead. We go out after lunch. Library. Target. Craft store. Staples, twice. Tap class. Mac is fine until the last five minutes of tap. He goes pale and the teacher sends him out to me. He sits on the floor with me until class lets out and then he is running around and fine the rest of the night.
Tuesday. Mac again wakes with a stomach ache. I send him back to bed. A few minutes after nine I call school to say he won’t be there again and then in a flurry I herd both kids out the door and make it right on time to Sailor’s soccer class. Mac seems fine so I am having a hard time believing him when he says he doesn’t feel good, which seems to come and go on and off all day.
We have to run up to the DMV after soccer because I have received two tickets two days in a row for expired plates. The kids are well-behaved because I tell them that the people who work here are crabby and we know better than to further piss off crabby people. When we get the sticker I need for the car both boys want to help me put it on the license plate. I tell them how much I appreciate their willingness to help but that I don’t think it will take three of us to affix a 1" sticker. Sailor wants to carry the sticker to the car. The $78 sticker. I carry the sticker to the car.
Once in the car I realize we don’t have enough time to get to our Trader Joe’s so we drive to the closest one. Mac tells me again that his stomach hurts but I forget when we get out of the car. Sailor is asleep but wakes up when I plop him in the cart. We wheel around the crowded store. The kids stop at the “snack bar” and wolf down salami, cheese and crackers. And then as we pass through the frozen food aisle, that which has been hurting Mac’s stomach for two days comes forth. And he vomits. Scattering shoppers. One kind lady, a nurse, brings us paper towels and directs us to the bathroom. I am the picture of extreme calm. And I no longer harbor any doubt that Mac is not feeling well.
At the pediatrician’s office Mac is diagnosed with epigastric pain and given a prescription for an acid reducer. I try not to be worried. It helps that Mac is starving.
Earlier this week the boys were able to pull off the November page of our calendars. “There’s only one page left,” Mac points out. “Then what happens?” Sailor asks, “We die?”
“No!” I practically shout at him, “We get a new calendar and start all over again!”
It snowed today, yesterday, Tuesday night before. I lucked out this year and the kids have double sets of snow pants and Sailor has two winter coats and three pairs of boots. Let’s hear it for hand-me-downs! Walking to school is a long, tiring, wet, and very cold ordeal. And the kids love it!
I spent yesterday morning walking to school and then shoveling the walk and the stairs in front of our house and the next door neighbors'. It’s not right that an old man with a snore strip still affixed to his nose has to assist my efforts. “Where are the 20-somethings when we need them?” At work, of course. But it pisses me off that not one of them can haul their ass out to shovel the snow, leaving it to the little mommy and the old guy in sweats. I am exhausted and dehydrated when I am finished with my task. But I have no time for the quick stop at Starbucks. I pack up lunches and Sailor’s shoes and we head to French class. It’s parents’ week and I get to sit in his class with him for an hour. I am thoroughly impressed by the active roll he takes in class. And I am also amazed at how much better behaved in class he is at 4 than Mac was at the same age. Different child, different temperament. You’d think two kids in the same house would be more similar but they are so different. Mac and Sailor are like night and day. Mac is so well-behaved now. But he can still be so excitable. Sailor vacilates between being great and the biggest challenge ever.
After French class we have 20 minutes to drive to Mac’s school, find parking and set up an art project for the kids in Mac’s class who choose not to play outside at lunch recess. Sailor tells me he is hungry when we are in the classroom. Our lunch is in the car. I swipe a piece of candy from Mrs. S’s desk. Sailor is afraid to eat it. Mac chooses to stay outside and play in the snow rather than come in and do art projects with Mama. But I am ok with this. I see him for a minute when he comes in and I smooch him before I leave. Sailor and I pick up my sister and we run for a quick coffee. It is snowing like crazy. Sailor wants to know what a snow storm is. “This!” I tell him.
The day goes on and on like this. I just want to lie down in my bed. But I don’t. I do paperwork at the art studio while Sailor takes his class, we run like mad to get to school for Mac before he comes out, I take the kids sledding… I blow dry my wet jeans while popping popcorn and helping Mac with his homework. I go out to what should be a relaxing dinner with two girlfriends, except one of them is on her usual roll of bitching about bad life things she would rather bitch about than fix. I work really hard at zoning out mid-rampage. I would order another glass of wine but there are no prices on the menu so I know the prices are not friendly.
On Thursday morning I run around the kitchen making breakfast then run the kids to school. Sailor runs back home with me. I have a late-morning appointment with my gynecologist. Sailor wants to know why he can’t come with. I am thinking of what to tell him. “I can’t hear you!” he shouts. “I’m thinking!” Finally, “I have to get a check up. I have to go to the peeper doctor.”
“The peeper doctor? What’s a peeper?”
“You know. Where your peepee comes out.” What is wrong with me!? I should be better than this at explaining.
“And the doctor is going be there?” he asks, trying to work this out in his 4-year-old mind.
“Yes.”
“And you are going be there?”
“Yes.”
“What’s a check-up?”
“Like when you go to see Dr. Ahlas.”
“I don’t want a shot.”
“No honey, you are not going to see him today.”
“But when I need a shot I don’t want a shot.”
“I am going to see the doctor today, you’re not.”
“She is going check your peeper?”
“Right.”
“She is going look in your peeper?”
“Right.”
“You haf’ take off your underpants?!”
“Yes.”
“So she can look in your peeper?”
Have I told him too much?
“I am not going tell anybody about this that you are going to the peeper doctor. I’m not going tell Nana.”
My beloved OB/GYNE loves this story when I tell her later in the morning.
I also tell her that I am ready to have another baby. She says she will keep her eye out for eligible bachelor physicians. If only she really could set me up with someone. The kids would be thrilled.
I return a toy to Toys R Us and go to Target for more toy shopping on Santa’s behalf. My boys have refused to sit on Santa’s lap so far this season. And they keep changing their minds as to what toys they really want. I finally told them this morning that Santa’s elves are going nuts making them toys and then finding out that they have changed their minds.
Mac and Sailor have decided they want the new Planet Heroes action figures. The one Sailor wants is now in my parents’ house waiting for Christmas day. The one Mac wants is not available anywhere but ebay. Do I bid on it? Why oh why? This part of Christmas is so not fun!
The holiday shopping bills are starting to come. So now I know that on those last few days before Christmas I will be suffering heart palpitations while I pay bills that far exceed my usual credit card bills. Maybe Santa will leave a few hundred extra dollars in my stocking this year!
Before Mac goes to sleep he complains again of stomach pain. Suddenly I am gripped with a sense of fear mixed with sorrow as I have bad feeling that something is wrong with my baby. I look into his beautiful face. His cheeks are red all the way up to his eyes. I pull his head into my lap and hold him close, closer to me, almost as if I could force him back into the safety of my belly. I don’t know what is wrong and I don’t know how to fix his sore tummy. I will call his doctor again tomorrow.
Sailor wakes crying during the climactic moments of ER. The only show I watch all week. I run to his room. He sounds hysterical. I hold him. He kisses my neck. I put him back to bed. Sweet baby.
On Friday morning I wake to realize the boys are playing in their playroom. I am not immediately alarmed. But I should be. I snooze a little longer, waiting for my alarmed clock to go off. And then I remember something. Late last night I pulled hard on an electrical cord sticking out from under my bed hoping to find the other end of my heating pad. I then remembered the heating pad was wrapped up in my closet and so most likely I was pulling on the cord attached to my wall. I stopped pulling and went to sleep. When I remember all this in the morning I fly out of bed to find my alarm clock black. Wondering just how late it is, I hustle out to the bathroom. 7:20. Ok, we can do this. And we do. We get to school on time. Thanks in part to the piddly lunch I pack for Mac: 5 crackers, ½ an apple, 5 baby carrots and a box of milk. I figure he hasn’t been eating more than a few bites of his lunch anyway so why go crazy making him a five course meal.
Sailor and I sit thru a 2 ½ hour long meeting on food allergies, which I find highly educational. In fact, I am so pumped up on adrenaline from all I have learned that I am all ready to stab the next food allergic child I see an EPI pen! Sailor is so well behaved. I have bribed him with the promise that his friend Sofie will come over if he can stay quiet thru the meeting. He is so good. And when we leave the meeting I check my phone and receive a message that Sofie’s mom is sick and they are not coming. To say Sailor is disappointed would be an understatement but he handles it well. We shovel the front walk and steps again and finally head inside for lunch around 12:30. Sailor makes a tent and goes camping in the kitchen while I make some phone calls. My back hurts and I am out of energy so I tell Sailor I am going to take a 20-minute bath. But he wants to join me. I remind him how hot I like the water but he says he’ll be ok. I won’t go into detail about the bubble bath we shared but I will say that I have a very curious 4-year-old and next time I bathe with him I’ll be wearing a bathing suit! Also, when he grows up and becomes a hairy monkey I think he want to consider a career as a gynecologist.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Week 12
Mac doesn’t feel well and wants to stay home from school this morning. Given the fact that my left eye is plastered shut with the same goo that ran thru the kids’ eyes a week ago, I am not hard to convince. Besides, after what seems like hours of fidgeting, Sailor finally settles down and falls asleep moments after I slap the 6:35a.m. alarm clock. So we stay in bed til 7:30. And then we dress in clothes I deem inappropriate for the outside world. A.k.a. sweats. Or as my kids like to call them, soft clothes.
I serve breakfast packed with whole grains and vitamin C. Mac works at finishing off his short vowels workbook. Sailor writes a very nice capital T and an accompanying lower case t, after a perfectly lovely P.
We clean up the kitchen, take out the garbage, mop, vacuum until the vacuum cleaner konks out (listen! I have scrounged to find enuf cash to put Mac in new car seat so that Sailor may have Mac’s, given the fact that Sailor is about 1/4” away from being too tall for his, and it expired this year anyway; enough money to replace my barely 4 ½-year-old printer; possibly put a new digital camera in my own stocking from Santa, and still buy everyone their Christmas gifts. What I do NOT have money for at this time is a new vacuum cleaner! So I clean out the filter, shaking concentrated house dust into my smooth pink lungs. I saw away at the long hairs wrapped around the roller and brushes. And I leave the vacuum cleaner in the playroom to rest. Maybe it will feel more like cleaning up my whole house in a few hours.), bring all the discarded debris up from our stairs, do an art project, make the stove shine, and at 10:45 after much deliberation and discussion, I let the boys fall onto the couch and watch a bit of TV. Educational TV, of course.
“Can we watch Rescue Heroes?”
“No.”“Can we watch Curious George?”“No. That’s not educational.”
“Yes it is. We learned one lesson from Curious George.”“What’s that?”“Never bring a monkey into your home.”
They watch some old Barney videos and Free to Be You and Me. After this I will propose a nap. Which I know won’t go over well at all. But still, if we are home on a sick day, I have to try!
Ok, I am going to call this next section “Did you know?”
Did you know…
That if you charge things on your Visa card and then return them, you have to pay for them anyway if you returned them after your statement was printed? And don’t ask me what “printed” really means because I do my Visa cards online to save paper.
Did you know… that if you buy a jog stroller from Baby Trend the front wheel is supposed to be in the locked position when you walk outside? Otherwise the stroller wiggles and wobbles and shakes and shimmies and gives your child a very rough ride, not to mention it becomes impossible to push. And if you do lock that front wheel there is no way you can push without having to lift the front of the stroller every time you so much as want to move an inch to the side!
Mac says to me tonight, “Mommy, even when you are mean to me, I love you.” WHAT?!! MEAN????!!!!! I wait a few minutes before explaining to him that while I think he is trying to say something nice he didn’t and I want to know what he meant by “mean.” “Spanking,” he says. I have not had reason to spank him in quite some time. I then explain the concept of discipline. It’s crazy when he says stuff like this becuz a day ago he told me I was the nicest mommy in the world.
Tomorrow Mac will be 6 ½. Today he opens his mouth and I find his 2nd new tooth, hanging out behind his lower left front tooth, soon to be his 2nd loose tooth. Speaking of which, he told me yesterday that he lost his tooth fairy money in the wash. I’ll have to check with my mom on that one.
We spend nearly $30 at Whole Foods gathering Half-Birthday dinner and cake supplies on Wednesday evening. It’s a cold, rainy evening, and the kids are tired and hungry. I am disoriented, as we are not in our usual store and since I am still wearing my glasses waiting for my eye infection to completely clear up, I am having trouble seeing the broad picture of everything around me. It’s like some sort of weird sensory overload. Nonetheless we make it out and back to the art studio to drive my sister home and get dinner on the table at a reasonable hour. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving so getting to bed on time is not a major issue.
Thanksgiving day we bake and cook things to bring down to dinner at 3:00. We stay in our pj’s all day until noon or so when it’s time to get washed and dressed up. Before we are out of bed it starts to snow. “Look!” Sailor shouts. “It’s snowing!” I can’t see because I haven’t put on my glasses yet. Sailor hands them to me. “See those white balls?!” Indeed it is snowing, but Sailor is disappointed because our first snow of the season is not sticking to the ground yet. Mid-morning the back porch begins to hold a light dusting of white. I call the kids over to the kitchen window, (which reminds me that I have yet to put away all our summer things from the porch – the wicker couch cushions, the bubbles and bubble wands, the kid-sized chairs and tables). They are amazed, especially Sailor, who is still little enough for these yearly experiences to seem if not brand new then still excitingly unfamiliar. “That’s so ‘mazing!” Sailor says with a tone of awe in his voice. I just LOVE his innocence. Mac doesn’t understand why the snow is sticking to the back porch and not the front. I try to explain how some places are just colder than others and that the front sidewalk is wet and still has leaves all over. “So only our back porch has snow?!” I guess I didn’t explain that well. Thanksgiving with my family goes well. It’s nice. I fill up on cauliflower and avoid the turkey. Late in the evening the boys are playing nicely in my parents’ den. Mac has already been warned about behaviour and he has decided to listen to me and behave. My mother gets a great idea and sends them to the living room and commands my dad’s magician friend to perform for the boys. Which gets them all excited. Next thing we know there is much laughter, squealing even. And my dad is shooting me looks. Then the magician starts in with a very loud voice. “What’s he doing?” I ask my sister. We are perusing the newspaper circulars doing some pre-day-after-Thanksgiving shopping. I check in the living room a few times but see no jumping from furniture or climbing on old folks so I decline to intervene. Until my father tells me to control my children. “What are they doing?” I ask. He gets flustered and doesn’t answer, as if I should know. I repeat the question and he repeats the fluster. I tell my sister her prediction that we will leave in a huff was right and we split.
Later my dad comes up to talk to the children and I again ask what it is they were doing. This time the answer contradicts what I saw going on. The magician riled them up, I say. But then he stopped, my dad counters. They are children, I say. And the more I think about all of this the more unfair I think it has been on my kids. They did nothing wrong and yet they are blamed. All they were doing was playing in the den. It was not their idea to command a magic show from the musician!
It’s Sunday night. Mac is in bed. Sailor is lying in his bed beside me here. He is talking to himself. Or maybe to me. But I have ceased to listen because it is 8:30 and I wanted these kids in bed by 7pm. Mac has been home with us for 5 days. And he has not stopped talking the whole time. Chatter, chatter, chatter. And funny little noises. Like all little boys make. Shooting sounds, and car sounds, and whatever. I remember these sounds from the boys in my 7th grade class. How many more years will I have to endure this here at home? And then I feel a sense of guilt for being annoyed. I have just finished reading the book Laci Peterson’s mother wrote about her daughter, who was murdered by her own husband. And I am not stupid enough to think that it could not happen to me one day that I am sitting here wishing with every fibre of my being to hear my child’s voice, even if it’s just to hear his noisy chatter.
My dilemma this evening is the boys’ playroom. Which started out clean when we started our day 13 hours ago. And then Sailor cut some paper. And then Mac wanted me to make him an office. And then I pointed out how messy their office was and that they would never get any work done in a sloppy business. And then I take a look at my own workspace, which is in such a bad state that I have my laptop on the dining room table and have set up my new printer on a dining chair. I challenge them to clean their office space while I clean mine. Mac says we’d get more done if we work together. Except I don’t want help. Sailor explains that this is true and that this is the way they clean up at school: together. I am being challenged with reasonable challenges by a 4- and 6-1/2-year-old. What to do! I don’t give in.
But I do find on my desk a bill that is due today. So I make the call to pay by phone and am told that the bill cannot post today, as it is the weekend. Then don’t give me a bill with an invalid due date! I was supposed to have paid it on Friday, I am told by the quickly irate woman on the customer dis-service end of the phone. But the bill doesn’t say “Due Date 11/25/07 but we really mean 11/23/07.” I rant and rave and call my sister who recommends I call back and so I do. I ask for the guy in charge and am told by the Account Manager that he can help. So I tell my story and then ask for the guy in charge again. He offers a supervisor. No, I tell him, I want the president of the bank. The Account Manager says he is just in a call center and doesn’t know where the big cheese is. So I talk. And talk. And talk. And then I talk some more. I talk until I wear the man down and he finally gives me exactly what I want because he feels sorry for me, a broke single mom with two little boys running around and making a lot of noise in the background. I tell him he is the only person from his entire company who has ever been nice to me. You rock! I say. He asks if I want to tell his supervisor who he puts on the phone in record speed. I think she is in the call center somewhere in India.
And when I am done with all of this? The playroom is a mess still, Mac is reading a book in his room and Sailor has gone to take a snooze in his bed. So now it is past bedtime and I am tired. I don’t know why other than I think I may be tired in anticipation of the 6:30am alarm. After all, I went to bed after midnight for the past few nights and have not been tired on either the falling asleep end or the waking up end. But here it is, Sunday night, and I am like the guy who has to get up for work on Monday morning for the job he hates, and I am tired! I want to go to bed. But I promised the boys their playroom would be devoid of all the toys left on the floor if they didn’t pick them up. All day, from 10am until we left for dinner at 4:30 we argued about the toys. But now I not only don’t have the energy to clean up the playroom, I don’t have anywhere to put the confiscated toys. All my spare hiding spots are filled with Christmas gifts.
Right. Today is November 25th. One month til Christmas and I am not only practically done with my Christmas shopping but I am already bagging up things to return to stores so that I can get some money back. I have no idea how much money I spent (ok, that’s not true, I do have an idea – but it’s not an idea I am comfortable with) and I am even less clear of an idea where I am going to get enough money to pay the bills when they come in. Christmas shopping should be fun. But it has really stressed me. Oh, except the shopping at Target part. Walking into Target is like Nirvana and I suddenly feel as if anything were possible when I see so many people milling around in search of electronics, clothes, toothpaste, cheese, toys, slippers, strollers. It’s all there to be had. And it’s like a drug! As is, “I’m checking into rehab to try to conquer my Target habit.”
The hardest part about shopping this weekend was the fact that due to the eye infection I have had to wear my glasses. I can’t see quite as well wearing my glasses as I can with my contacts. So I am challenged by a strange sensory issue. We are in the bathroom at Kohl’s on Friday morning after Thanksgiving and I look in the mirror and see not just the glasses (which take me back to my so many years as a geek in jumbo frames) but some seriously bad hair that needs to be cut, styled and quenched. I sigh and exit the bathroom with the boys. And am greeted just moments later by our local new team. Do I want to tell all of Chicago what I am shopping for this year? I would love to.
During the year, as I approach my 40th birthday (still more than 2 months away) I have lost my prettiness. I am no longer pretty, sexy, or a hot mom. I am a tired, mousy-haired, glasses-wearing (for the moment), wrinkly, acne spotted, baggy-eyed, almost-40-year-old mom. I am no longer fit to smile and flirt with cute guys – er, men. There is nothing for them to see in me. My sister politely – albeit slowly – says she disagrees. But I see it. I see my own face. I see that I don’t get the make-up right anymore and that what make-up I do get to stick doesn’t last long or create a youthful effect.
Sailor, my little love, also disagrees. He tells me, “You are pretty, Mommy.” And he doesn’t stop there. “Your eyes are pretty. Your lips are pretty. Your hair is pretty. Your nose is pretty.” It is early morning when he is telling me this. We are still in my bed and my hair is tousled and my infected eye is crusty. “Your hands are pretty.” Ok, now I know he is full of hooey. My hands are not now nor never have been pretty, having been inherited directly from my paternal grandmother (the irony of which is that my father has the most beautiful hands). Or maybe my little son is just full of love for his crabby, wrinkly mama.
Mac is not happy to be going back to school tomorrow. I am happy only because it will give him something to do. I have run out of money so I cannot take the kids to go do anything. They were stir-crazy today. It is much too cold to go outside to play. But he says he hates school. I want to give in and tell him he doesn’t have to go. No matter that I love doing his homework with him and helping him with his spelling words and making his lunch… I just want him to be happy.
This morning Mac wanted to see all his Christmas books, so I brought them down from the high shelf in the cabinet for him. “Oh!” he exclaims, the pile of books in his lap in the living room (or the “liv-room” as Sailor calls it), “This is a funny one, If You Take a Mouse to the Movies!” Sailor, not understanding that this is the book’s title replies in part statement, mostly question, “You will get in trouble?”
I serve breakfast packed with whole grains and vitamin C. Mac works at finishing off his short vowels workbook. Sailor writes a very nice capital T and an accompanying lower case t, after a perfectly lovely P.
We clean up the kitchen, take out the garbage, mop, vacuum until the vacuum cleaner konks out (listen! I have scrounged to find enuf cash to put Mac in new car seat so that Sailor may have Mac’s, given the fact that Sailor is about 1/4” away from being too tall for his, and it expired this year anyway; enough money to replace my barely 4 ½-year-old printer; possibly put a new digital camera in my own stocking from Santa, and still buy everyone their Christmas gifts. What I do NOT have money for at this time is a new vacuum cleaner! So I clean out the filter, shaking concentrated house dust into my smooth pink lungs. I saw away at the long hairs wrapped around the roller and brushes. And I leave the vacuum cleaner in the playroom to rest. Maybe it will feel more like cleaning up my whole house in a few hours.), bring all the discarded debris up from our stairs, do an art project, make the stove shine, and at 10:45 after much deliberation and discussion, I let the boys fall onto the couch and watch a bit of TV. Educational TV, of course.
“Can we watch Rescue Heroes?”
“No.”“Can we watch Curious George?”“No. That’s not educational.”
“Yes it is. We learned one lesson from Curious George.”“What’s that?”“Never bring a monkey into your home.”
They watch some old Barney videos and Free to Be You and Me. After this I will propose a nap. Which I know won’t go over well at all. But still, if we are home on a sick day, I have to try!
Ok, I am going to call this next section “Did you know?”
Did you know…
That if you charge things on your Visa card and then return them, you have to pay for them anyway if you returned them after your statement was printed? And don’t ask me what “printed” really means because I do my Visa cards online to save paper.
Did you know… that if you buy a jog stroller from Baby Trend the front wheel is supposed to be in the locked position when you walk outside? Otherwise the stroller wiggles and wobbles and shakes and shimmies and gives your child a very rough ride, not to mention it becomes impossible to push. And if you do lock that front wheel there is no way you can push without having to lift the front of the stroller every time you so much as want to move an inch to the side!
Mac says to me tonight, “Mommy, even when you are mean to me, I love you.” WHAT?!! MEAN????!!!!! I wait a few minutes before explaining to him that while I think he is trying to say something nice he didn’t and I want to know what he meant by “mean.” “Spanking,” he says. I have not had reason to spank him in quite some time. I then explain the concept of discipline. It’s crazy when he says stuff like this becuz a day ago he told me I was the nicest mommy in the world.
Tomorrow Mac will be 6 ½. Today he opens his mouth and I find his 2nd new tooth, hanging out behind his lower left front tooth, soon to be his 2nd loose tooth. Speaking of which, he told me yesterday that he lost his tooth fairy money in the wash. I’ll have to check with my mom on that one.
We spend nearly $30 at Whole Foods gathering Half-Birthday dinner and cake supplies on Wednesday evening. It’s a cold, rainy evening, and the kids are tired and hungry. I am disoriented, as we are not in our usual store and since I am still wearing my glasses waiting for my eye infection to completely clear up, I am having trouble seeing the broad picture of everything around me. It’s like some sort of weird sensory overload. Nonetheless we make it out and back to the art studio to drive my sister home and get dinner on the table at a reasonable hour. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving so getting to bed on time is not a major issue.
Thanksgiving day we bake and cook things to bring down to dinner at 3:00. We stay in our pj’s all day until noon or so when it’s time to get washed and dressed up. Before we are out of bed it starts to snow. “Look!” Sailor shouts. “It’s snowing!” I can’t see because I haven’t put on my glasses yet. Sailor hands them to me. “See those white balls?!” Indeed it is snowing, but Sailor is disappointed because our first snow of the season is not sticking to the ground yet. Mid-morning the back porch begins to hold a light dusting of white. I call the kids over to the kitchen window, (which reminds me that I have yet to put away all our summer things from the porch – the wicker couch cushions, the bubbles and bubble wands, the kid-sized chairs and tables). They are amazed, especially Sailor, who is still little enough for these yearly experiences to seem if not brand new then still excitingly unfamiliar. “That’s so ‘mazing!” Sailor says with a tone of awe in his voice. I just LOVE his innocence. Mac doesn’t understand why the snow is sticking to the back porch and not the front. I try to explain how some places are just colder than others and that the front sidewalk is wet and still has leaves all over. “So only our back porch has snow?!” I guess I didn’t explain that well. Thanksgiving with my family goes well. It’s nice. I fill up on cauliflower and avoid the turkey. Late in the evening the boys are playing nicely in my parents’ den. Mac has already been warned about behaviour and he has decided to listen to me and behave. My mother gets a great idea and sends them to the living room and commands my dad’s magician friend to perform for the boys. Which gets them all excited. Next thing we know there is much laughter, squealing even. And my dad is shooting me looks. Then the magician starts in with a very loud voice. “What’s he doing?” I ask my sister. We are perusing the newspaper circulars doing some pre-day-after-Thanksgiving shopping. I check in the living room a few times but see no jumping from furniture or climbing on old folks so I decline to intervene. Until my father tells me to control my children. “What are they doing?” I ask. He gets flustered and doesn’t answer, as if I should know. I repeat the question and he repeats the fluster. I tell my sister her prediction that we will leave in a huff was right and we split.
Later my dad comes up to talk to the children and I again ask what it is they were doing. This time the answer contradicts what I saw going on. The magician riled them up, I say. But then he stopped, my dad counters. They are children, I say. And the more I think about all of this the more unfair I think it has been on my kids. They did nothing wrong and yet they are blamed. All they were doing was playing in the den. It was not their idea to command a magic show from the musician!
It’s Sunday night. Mac is in bed. Sailor is lying in his bed beside me here. He is talking to himself. Or maybe to me. But I have ceased to listen because it is 8:30 and I wanted these kids in bed by 7pm. Mac has been home with us for 5 days. And he has not stopped talking the whole time. Chatter, chatter, chatter. And funny little noises. Like all little boys make. Shooting sounds, and car sounds, and whatever. I remember these sounds from the boys in my 7th grade class. How many more years will I have to endure this here at home? And then I feel a sense of guilt for being annoyed. I have just finished reading the book Laci Peterson’s mother wrote about her daughter, who was murdered by her own husband. And I am not stupid enough to think that it could not happen to me one day that I am sitting here wishing with every fibre of my being to hear my child’s voice, even if it’s just to hear his noisy chatter.
My dilemma this evening is the boys’ playroom. Which started out clean when we started our day 13 hours ago. And then Sailor cut some paper. And then Mac wanted me to make him an office. And then I pointed out how messy their office was and that they would never get any work done in a sloppy business. And then I take a look at my own workspace, which is in such a bad state that I have my laptop on the dining room table and have set up my new printer on a dining chair. I challenge them to clean their office space while I clean mine. Mac says we’d get more done if we work together. Except I don’t want help. Sailor explains that this is true and that this is the way they clean up at school: together. I am being challenged with reasonable challenges by a 4- and 6-1/2-year-old. What to do! I don’t give in.
But I do find on my desk a bill that is due today. So I make the call to pay by phone and am told that the bill cannot post today, as it is the weekend. Then don’t give me a bill with an invalid due date! I was supposed to have paid it on Friday, I am told by the quickly irate woman on the customer dis-service end of the phone. But the bill doesn’t say “Due Date 11/25/07 but we really mean 11/23/07.” I rant and rave and call my sister who recommends I call back and so I do. I ask for the guy in charge and am told by the Account Manager that he can help. So I tell my story and then ask for the guy in charge again. He offers a supervisor. No, I tell him, I want the president of the bank. The Account Manager says he is just in a call center and doesn’t know where the big cheese is. So I talk. And talk. And talk. And then I talk some more. I talk until I wear the man down and he finally gives me exactly what I want because he feels sorry for me, a broke single mom with two little boys running around and making a lot of noise in the background. I tell him he is the only person from his entire company who has ever been nice to me. You rock! I say. He asks if I want to tell his supervisor who he puts on the phone in record speed. I think she is in the call center somewhere in India.
And when I am done with all of this? The playroom is a mess still, Mac is reading a book in his room and Sailor has gone to take a snooze in his bed. So now it is past bedtime and I am tired. I don’t know why other than I think I may be tired in anticipation of the 6:30am alarm. After all, I went to bed after midnight for the past few nights and have not been tired on either the falling asleep end or the waking up end. But here it is, Sunday night, and I am like the guy who has to get up for work on Monday morning for the job he hates, and I am tired! I want to go to bed. But I promised the boys their playroom would be devoid of all the toys left on the floor if they didn’t pick them up. All day, from 10am until we left for dinner at 4:30 we argued about the toys. But now I not only don’t have the energy to clean up the playroom, I don’t have anywhere to put the confiscated toys. All my spare hiding spots are filled with Christmas gifts.
Right. Today is November 25th. One month til Christmas and I am not only practically done with my Christmas shopping but I am already bagging up things to return to stores so that I can get some money back. I have no idea how much money I spent (ok, that’s not true, I do have an idea – but it’s not an idea I am comfortable with) and I am even less clear of an idea where I am going to get enough money to pay the bills when they come in. Christmas shopping should be fun. But it has really stressed me. Oh, except the shopping at Target part. Walking into Target is like Nirvana and I suddenly feel as if anything were possible when I see so many people milling around in search of electronics, clothes, toothpaste, cheese, toys, slippers, strollers. It’s all there to be had. And it’s like a drug! As is, “I’m checking into rehab to try to conquer my Target habit.”
The hardest part about shopping this weekend was the fact that due to the eye infection I have had to wear my glasses. I can’t see quite as well wearing my glasses as I can with my contacts. So I am challenged by a strange sensory issue. We are in the bathroom at Kohl’s on Friday morning after Thanksgiving and I look in the mirror and see not just the glasses (which take me back to my so many years as a geek in jumbo frames) but some seriously bad hair that needs to be cut, styled and quenched. I sigh and exit the bathroom with the boys. And am greeted just moments later by our local new team. Do I want to tell all of Chicago what I am shopping for this year? I would love to.
During the year, as I approach my 40th birthday (still more than 2 months away) I have lost my prettiness. I am no longer pretty, sexy, or a hot mom. I am a tired, mousy-haired, glasses-wearing (for the moment), wrinkly, acne spotted, baggy-eyed, almost-40-year-old mom. I am no longer fit to smile and flirt with cute guys – er, men. There is nothing for them to see in me. My sister politely – albeit slowly – says she disagrees. But I see it. I see my own face. I see that I don’t get the make-up right anymore and that what make-up I do get to stick doesn’t last long or create a youthful effect.
Sailor, my little love, also disagrees. He tells me, “You are pretty, Mommy.” And he doesn’t stop there. “Your eyes are pretty. Your lips are pretty. Your hair is pretty. Your nose is pretty.” It is early morning when he is telling me this. We are still in my bed and my hair is tousled and my infected eye is crusty. “Your hands are pretty.” Ok, now I know he is full of hooey. My hands are not now nor never have been pretty, having been inherited directly from my paternal grandmother (the irony of which is that my father has the most beautiful hands). Or maybe my little son is just full of love for his crabby, wrinkly mama.
Mac is not happy to be going back to school tomorrow. I am happy only because it will give him something to do. I have run out of money so I cannot take the kids to go do anything. They were stir-crazy today. It is much too cold to go outside to play. But he says he hates school. I want to give in and tell him he doesn’t have to go. No matter that I love doing his homework with him and helping him with his spelling words and making his lunch… I just want him to be happy.
This morning Mac wanted to see all his Christmas books, so I brought them down from the high shelf in the cabinet for him. “Oh!” he exclaims, the pile of books in his lap in the living room (or the “liv-room” as Sailor calls it), “This is a funny one, If You Take a Mouse to the Movies!” Sailor, not understanding that this is the book’s title replies in part statement, mostly question, “You will get in trouble?”
Week 11. It’s Christmastime in the City – No Wait, Thanksgiving is Next Week!
Week 11. It’s Christmastime in the City – No Wait, Thanksgiving is Next Week!
Wednesday. It is Parents Week at soccer this week and as Sailor takes two classes a week I already know that I will be hot and tired when I am done playing with the little tikes. So today I opt for more appropriate clothing and suit up in a two-piece terry cloth outfit from the GAP (which I feel compelled to mention, lest I sound like I am wearing something better suited for a two-year-old). The outfit is brown and I have a bright pink t-shirt under the jacket. At breakfast Sailor approaches and surveys and offers me a very generous, “Mama, you look like a monkey.”
I need to go change my outfit.
On the way out to take Mac to school I ask the boys if they have to use the bathroom. “No!” cries Sailor, “I went potty at school.”
“That was yesterday,” I remind him.
Nearly a week has passed since our favorite French family cancelled their after school play with us because the French children inexplicably did not want to play with my children. Unreasonably, I am sure, I continue to be despondent over this. First that the French children flat-out stated that they don’t want to play with my children. And second, that their mother told me so. It’s devastating. Or maybe just disappointing.
Wednesday. It is Parents Week at soccer this week and as Sailor takes two classes a week I already know that I will be hot and tired when I am done playing with the little tikes. So today I opt for more appropriate clothing and suit up in a two-piece terry cloth outfit from the GAP (which I feel compelled to mention, lest I sound like I am wearing something better suited for a two-year-old). The outfit is brown and I have a bright pink t-shirt under the jacket. At breakfast Sailor approaches and surveys and offers me a very generous, “Mama, you look like a monkey.”
I need to go change my outfit.
On the way out to take Mac to school I ask the boys if they have to use the bathroom. “No!” cries Sailor, “I went potty at school.”
“That was yesterday,” I remind him.
Nearly a week has passed since our favorite French family cancelled their after school play with us because the French children inexplicably did not want to play with my children. Unreasonably, I am sure, I continue to be despondent over this. First that the French children flat-out stated that they don’t want to play with my children. And second, that their mother told me so. It’s devastating. Or maybe just disappointing.
WEEK 10
Mac spends his “sick day” off bowling and checking out books and videos at the library. We enjoy the day and I am happy to have my child home with me for an extra day.
Tuesday we return to our normal routine. We drive Mac to school to save time and because Sailor has soccer at 9:30. We wait thru 4 cycles of a traffic light before we can make a left turn and by the time we get to school the bell has rung. I pull up at the corner and ask Mac if he can walk to the door on his own. He is only slightly timid when he says yes. He exits the car and I begin to visualize all sorts of accidents befalling him: He trips on his shoelace and falls on his face; he crashes into someone and falls on his face; he stumbles up the stairs and falls on his face; he is crying and embarrassed and bleeding. And where am I? Cozy in my car at the corner. Not escorting him to the door as a good mom should. Ok, who am I kidding? I have born witness to many a parent let a tiny offspring run across the street from their car and head into school alone. I am well within reason dropping him off at the corner and letting him walk a few paces alone.
After he disappears from my sight our friends who also have a Mac tap our car window. I offer them a ride home. It’s suddenly become quite blustery outside. As I pop the trunk to move the day’s worth of errands to be run out of the front seat the little girl goes into a panic. Only later do I learn from her mother that she thought we were opening the trunk to put her inside!
After soccer we head to Target to – um – start our Christmas shopping. Yes, I know. It’s only November 6th.
Thursday
I have to go to school to give Mac eye drops every day. Not that I mind at all! I love to see him. He doesn’t seem to mind, or care. He is just being disrupted; I don’t belong there.
He got his 1st report card today. All A's except a B in listening. Apparently he goes off in his own world sometimes and doesn't pay enuf attention. That's my boy. She said he is a slow worker, too. Yep, he's the one who takes 90 minutes to eat breakfast and 30 to get dressed. And don't even get me started on the amount of time it takes him to poop!
He has his 1st spelling test tomorrow. The words range from "fun" to "transportation." He knows them all but we'll see how he does on the actual test.
And for Sailor I am trying to decide if it's worth the effort to look for JK for him next year or if I should just leave him in his current preschool. So much to think about.
Tuesday we return to our normal routine. We drive Mac to school to save time and because Sailor has soccer at 9:30. We wait thru 4 cycles of a traffic light before we can make a left turn and by the time we get to school the bell has rung. I pull up at the corner and ask Mac if he can walk to the door on his own. He is only slightly timid when he says yes. He exits the car and I begin to visualize all sorts of accidents befalling him: He trips on his shoelace and falls on his face; he crashes into someone and falls on his face; he stumbles up the stairs and falls on his face; he is crying and embarrassed and bleeding. And where am I? Cozy in my car at the corner. Not escorting him to the door as a good mom should. Ok, who am I kidding? I have born witness to many a parent let a tiny offspring run across the street from their car and head into school alone. I am well within reason dropping him off at the corner and letting him walk a few paces alone.
After he disappears from my sight our friends who also have a Mac tap our car window. I offer them a ride home. It’s suddenly become quite blustery outside. As I pop the trunk to move the day’s worth of errands to be run out of the front seat the little girl goes into a panic. Only later do I learn from her mother that she thought we were opening the trunk to put her inside!
After soccer we head to Target to – um – start our Christmas shopping. Yes, I know. It’s only November 6th.
Thursday
I have to go to school to give Mac eye drops every day. Not that I mind at all! I love to see him. He doesn’t seem to mind, or care. He is just being disrupted; I don’t belong there.
He got his 1st report card today. All A's except a B in listening. Apparently he goes off in his own world sometimes and doesn't pay enuf attention. That's my boy. She said he is a slow worker, too. Yep, he's the one who takes 90 minutes to eat breakfast and 30 to get dressed. And don't even get me started on the amount of time it takes him to poop!
He has his 1st spelling test tomorrow. The words range from "fun" to "transportation." He knows them all but we'll see how he does on the actual test.
And for Sailor I am trying to decide if it's worth the effort to look for JK for him next year or if I should just leave him in his current preschool. So much to think about.
Week 9 Happy Halloween
Week 9 Happy Halloween
Sunday night. 11:11
I am waiting (sort of) to see if the principal of Mac's school is going to email me his article for the school's PTA newsletter, which I am the editor (aka responsible party) of. It's due at 9:00 tomorrow morning to go to the basement and be run off in time to be distributed Wednesday. If I don't get it in on time it won't go out on time and the PTA prez will have something else to harp on me about (she didn't like the fab style of the newsletter last month even tho I have had LOTS of compliments!). But I can't go to press without the principal's letter! And even if he sends it to me this night I can't print on my printer so I will need to go down to my parents' house and print there, which I can certainly not do before 9am tomorrow! As always, this sucks, but you know, it's just not really worth getting upset about, cuz there is nothing I can do! (Tho this glitch will add a bit of flurry to my already over-packed day tomorrow!)
I woke up from a dream last night thinking how I wanted my own place and then I realized I actually am an adult with my own place. I guess this just isn't quite the "place" I have in my mind ... or maybe it's just not really "mine" but a mess of "ours" and I never get to relax here on my own and just sip tea and read (it's not like sitting here online at 11pm with my kids sleeping in my bed behind me is "alone time").
Monday
There is nothing more ego crushing, more totally devastating, more utterly depressing than having your 4-year-old react to your cheerful, “Dinner is ready!” with, “You are a very big problem for me. I wish I sis not ever get born.” It’s enuf to make you sit thru the entire meal in a stupor. Whether he is old enough to understand what he said, and whether he meant it or not, it cuts to the bone. Nonethless, you go forward and bake two batches of ghost-shaped pumpkin muffins for his Halloween party at preschool tomorrow. Yet it is not enough to convince even your hearty, intelligent self that you are not the suckiest mother on the face of the earth, if for no other reason than because your 4-year-old said so.
I do often believe that the sole purpose of my 4-year-old’s existence here in my life is to make me question my every move.
We wake up early this morning after I am used as a pillow by one child and a bed by another. Do not want to be late for school. It’s freezing out. But the house is not too cold. I instruct Mac into the shower while I get Sailor dressed. Sailor is dressed. Mac is still pooping. One for my favorite reasons for not being married is that I don’t have to share the bathroom with a man because men take too long to poop. Sometime within the past year or so Mac has learned to poop like a man. Which is much to the dismay of both Sailor and me. Because we only have one bathroom.
We are halfway to school when Mac notices – probably because of the vast number of families we have to walk slowly behind - -that we are not late! Hurray.
Mac’s animal report on the brown bear is ready to be turned in on time today. I hope he gets an A. I am clearly realizing how important his grades are going to be for me. I helped him with the research so I did not help with the spelling. There is enough that is parent driven about a 1st grader’s homework without my doing the whole thing for him.
There’s a commercial on the only cable channel we watch where a man says, “I look like Britney Spears.” My boys have been trying on their Halloween costumes this week going, “I look like Pripme Spears.”
Sailor is still awake. Gnawing loudly on a pacifier that may quite possibly be older than he is. He spits it to the floor. “This is giving me a sore mouth.” “You’re not supposed to chew on it you are supposed to suck on it,” I tell him. “Oh. Is dat why dey call it a sucker?”
Pardon me while I go ransack the house for Halloween candy. Halloween is Wednesday, by the way, and already I think I have gained 5 pounds. And I have not even bought any candy for the trick-or-treaters, because none come by our house (and even if they did, we are not home to greet them). I have made up a new Halloween candy rule: The children (and I) may eat all (and I do mean ALL) the candy they want on Halloween. But on November 1st, it will all disappear. I explained this to Mac today and he seems ok with it. My sister thinks I suck.
I am starting to notice an annoying pattern to our lives that we never had before. It’s the early-to-rise scenario. I do not like getting up at 6:30 am in the dark to hustle myself and the children to eat, shower, get dressed and walk quickly to school every day. And as it gets colder outside it will only get worse, I fear. I never liked my alarm clock. It’s all more morning effort than I am up for. Sigh. Maybe we should home school. Mac is doing well with the workbooks again and I am sure we could get where he is supposed to be without the help of his lying, teasing, manipulating classmates in 1st grade. I don’t like his class this year. Not as much as I liked his class last year, anyway. One of his so called best friends is going to be a bad influence and get him in trouble, either at school or with me. So today I asked Mac to please not play with this boy. I just have a really bad feeling about him.
Tuesday
I just sat thru the entire DVD of Chariots of Fire, you know, the 1981 Academy Award winning movie, only to not get to hear “the music” til the closing credits. I did not actually watch the movie, which I missed the first time around in the theatre, because I am busy working on Sailor’s preschool class list for his teacher. I have no idea if this was a good movie or not, but 2 hours and 9 minutes later I am regretful that I was not able to pay even a minute of attention to the TV screen. The boys wanted to stay up and watch with me, but it was already past 7:15 when I started the movie. They were not happy when I turned it off to let them have a chance to fall asleep. They really wanted to watch “Chicken Fire,” which is what they heard me say when I told them the name of the movie.
Wednesday
The best night of the year – Halloween!
I have rearranged my afternoon and, with my sister’s invaluable assistance, juggled my children so that I may be in Mac’s classroom for the afternoon of festivities. I dress as a pirate and run to school wearing my boots. We parade, we snack, we color, we decorate cookies – I learn about Mrs. S’s weakness for icing. And at 3:45 we are home and ready to set out on our trick-or-treating odyssey. Except it takes us until 5:30 to get out the door. Sailor’s make-up needs a touch-up (this morning he put on his waaaay too small clown costume and announced that he no longer wanted to be Harry Potter), Mac needs to put his costume back on (why he took it off after school I don’t know), we have to order pizza to be delivered later, and so on. Our friends who have come with us are none too pleased that we have asked the pizza place to deliver at 7:30. They want it here earlier, but it’s 5:15, I explain, and we are not likely to be back in two hours. I sense some dissatisfaction with the evening. I guess we can’t expect so much from people we hardly know, but I thought Halloween was sort of a free-for-all night when all bets are off in terms of junk food consumption, early dinner and bed time routines. Apparently there is some disagreement, but since it is my house, essentially I call the shots. More or less. The pizza does not arrive until almost 8pm. Our guests are more than a bit disgruntled and are threatening to leave. Meanwhile the boys are in the playroom making a great big messy potion out of milk, juice and Halloween candy. It’s a good use of all the candy they will not be allowed to eat after tomorrow. And it makes the floor sticky. And my sister gets mad that they have used up al the M&Ms.
I have told the kids they cold eat much candy as they want today, as it will all be gone tomorrow. “Eat til you throw up!” I tell them. Around 8:30 at night Mac walks into the dining room unwrapping his umpteenth KitKat bar. And with a quite serious tone he informs me, “I haven’t thrown up yet.” He pops the chocolate into his mouth.
Thursday the kids are tired. No wonder.
Friday there is no school for Mac and we run around doing errands and then Mac invites my mom to join us for lunch. Mid-afternoon I notice some goop coming out of Sailor’s right eye. I dismiss it. But by the end of lunch Mac’s eyes are red and I realize we have a couple of eye infections on our hands. Our outstanding pediatrician suggests I put tea bags on the boys’ eyes. This is met with much fuss from both kids and offers no relief to their eyes. On Saturday morning I page our pediatrician again and get his again fabbo bedside manner. I call the pharmacy to call the pediatrician for eye drops. Which are antibiotics. Meaning the boys have to be on them for 48 hours before they are able to interact with their peers. In other words, Mac gets Monday off school. To which he replies, “Yes!” Every once in a while he comes back to me with the whole, I’m bored-thing. I don’t know what to think. Will have to talk to his teacher next week on report card pick-up. And so we sped the weekend administering eye drops to alternately squeamish, tantrum-throwing and brave boys. Both of them. It’s such fun, four times a day.
Sunday night. 11:11
I am waiting (sort of) to see if the principal of Mac's school is going to email me his article for the school's PTA newsletter, which I am the editor (aka responsible party) of. It's due at 9:00 tomorrow morning to go to the basement and be run off in time to be distributed Wednesday. If I don't get it in on time it won't go out on time and the PTA prez will have something else to harp on me about (she didn't like the fab style of the newsletter last month even tho I have had LOTS of compliments!). But I can't go to press without the principal's letter! And even if he sends it to me this night I can't print on my printer so I will need to go down to my parents' house and print there, which I can certainly not do before 9am tomorrow! As always, this sucks, but you know, it's just not really worth getting upset about, cuz there is nothing I can do! (Tho this glitch will add a bit of flurry to my already over-packed day tomorrow!)
I woke up from a dream last night thinking how I wanted my own place and then I realized I actually am an adult with my own place. I guess this just isn't quite the "place" I have in my mind ... or maybe it's just not really "mine" but a mess of "ours" and I never get to relax here on my own and just sip tea and read (it's not like sitting here online at 11pm with my kids sleeping in my bed behind me is "alone time").
Monday
There is nothing more ego crushing, more totally devastating, more utterly depressing than having your 4-year-old react to your cheerful, “Dinner is ready!” with, “You are a very big problem for me. I wish I sis not ever get born.” It’s enuf to make you sit thru the entire meal in a stupor. Whether he is old enough to understand what he said, and whether he meant it or not, it cuts to the bone. Nonethless, you go forward and bake two batches of ghost-shaped pumpkin muffins for his Halloween party at preschool tomorrow. Yet it is not enough to convince even your hearty, intelligent self that you are not the suckiest mother on the face of the earth, if for no other reason than because your 4-year-old said so.
I do often believe that the sole purpose of my 4-year-old’s existence here in my life is to make me question my every move.
We wake up early this morning after I am used as a pillow by one child and a bed by another. Do not want to be late for school. It’s freezing out. But the house is not too cold. I instruct Mac into the shower while I get Sailor dressed. Sailor is dressed. Mac is still pooping. One for my favorite reasons for not being married is that I don’t have to share the bathroom with a man because men take too long to poop. Sometime within the past year or so Mac has learned to poop like a man. Which is much to the dismay of both Sailor and me. Because we only have one bathroom.
We are halfway to school when Mac notices – probably because of the vast number of families we have to walk slowly behind - -that we are not late! Hurray.
Mac’s animal report on the brown bear is ready to be turned in on time today. I hope he gets an A. I am clearly realizing how important his grades are going to be for me. I helped him with the research so I did not help with the spelling. There is enough that is parent driven about a 1st grader’s homework without my doing the whole thing for him.
There’s a commercial on the only cable channel we watch where a man says, “I look like Britney Spears.” My boys have been trying on their Halloween costumes this week going, “I look like Pripme Spears.”
Sailor is still awake. Gnawing loudly on a pacifier that may quite possibly be older than he is. He spits it to the floor. “This is giving me a sore mouth.” “You’re not supposed to chew on it you are supposed to suck on it,” I tell him. “Oh. Is dat why dey call it a sucker?”
Pardon me while I go ransack the house for Halloween candy. Halloween is Wednesday, by the way, and already I think I have gained 5 pounds. And I have not even bought any candy for the trick-or-treaters, because none come by our house (and even if they did, we are not home to greet them). I have made up a new Halloween candy rule: The children (and I) may eat all (and I do mean ALL) the candy they want on Halloween. But on November 1st, it will all disappear. I explained this to Mac today and he seems ok with it. My sister thinks I suck.
I am starting to notice an annoying pattern to our lives that we never had before. It’s the early-to-rise scenario. I do not like getting up at 6:30 am in the dark to hustle myself and the children to eat, shower, get dressed and walk quickly to school every day. And as it gets colder outside it will only get worse, I fear. I never liked my alarm clock. It’s all more morning effort than I am up for. Sigh. Maybe we should home school. Mac is doing well with the workbooks again and I am sure we could get where he is supposed to be without the help of his lying, teasing, manipulating classmates in 1st grade. I don’t like his class this year. Not as much as I liked his class last year, anyway. One of his so called best friends is going to be a bad influence and get him in trouble, either at school or with me. So today I asked Mac to please not play with this boy. I just have a really bad feeling about him.
Tuesday
I just sat thru the entire DVD of Chariots of Fire, you know, the 1981 Academy Award winning movie, only to not get to hear “the music” til the closing credits. I did not actually watch the movie, which I missed the first time around in the theatre, because I am busy working on Sailor’s preschool class list for his teacher. I have no idea if this was a good movie or not, but 2 hours and 9 minutes later I am regretful that I was not able to pay even a minute of attention to the TV screen. The boys wanted to stay up and watch with me, but it was already past 7:15 when I started the movie. They were not happy when I turned it off to let them have a chance to fall asleep. They really wanted to watch “Chicken Fire,” which is what they heard me say when I told them the name of the movie.
Wednesday
The best night of the year – Halloween!
I have rearranged my afternoon and, with my sister’s invaluable assistance, juggled my children so that I may be in Mac’s classroom for the afternoon of festivities. I dress as a pirate and run to school wearing my boots. We parade, we snack, we color, we decorate cookies – I learn about Mrs. S’s weakness for icing. And at 3:45 we are home and ready to set out on our trick-or-treating odyssey. Except it takes us until 5:30 to get out the door. Sailor’s make-up needs a touch-up (this morning he put on his waaaay too small clown costume and announced that he no longer wanted to be Harry Potter), Mac needs to put his costume back on (why he took it off after school I don’t know), we have to order pizza to be delivered later, and so on. Our friends who have come with us are none too pleased that we have asked the pizza place to deliver at 7:30. They want it here earlier, but it’s 5:15, I explain, and we are not likely to be back in two hours. I sense some dissatisfaction with the evening. I guess we can’t expect so much from people we hardly know, but I thought Halloween was sort of a free-for-all night when all bets are off in terms of junk food consumption, early dinner and bed time routines. Apparently there is some disagreement, but since it is my house, essentially I call the shots. More or less. The pizza does not arrive until almost 8pm. Our guests are more than a bit disgruntled and are threatening to leave. Meanwhile the boys are in the playroom making a great big messy potion out of milk, juice and Halloween candy. It’s a good use of all the candy they will not be allowed to eat after tomorrow. And it makes the floor sticky. And my sister gets mad that they have used up al the M&Ms.
I have told the kids they cold eat much candy as they want today, as it will all be gone tomorrow. “Eat til you throw up!” I tell them. Around 8:30 at night Mac walks into the dining room unwrapping his umpteenth KitKat bar. And with a quite serious tone he informs me, “I haven’t thrown up yet.” He pops the chocolate into his mouth.
Thursday the kids are tired. No wonder.
Friday there is no school for Mac and we run around doing errands and then Mac invites my mom to join us for lunch. Mid-afternoon I notice some goop coming out of Sailor’s right eye. I dismiss it. But by the end of lunch Mac’s eyes are red and I realize we have a couple of eye infections on our hands. Our outstanding pediatrician suggests I put tea bags on the boys’ eyes. This is met with much fuss from both kids and offers no relief to their eyes. On Saturday morning I page our pediatrician again and get his again fabbo bedside manner. I call the pharmacy to call the pediatrician for eye drops. Which are antibiotics. Meaning the boys have to be on them for 48 hours before they are able to interact with their peers. In other words, Mac gets Monday off school. To which he replies, “Yes!” Every once in a while he comes back to me with the whole, I’m bored-thing. I don’t know what to think. Will have to talk to his teacher next week on report card pick-up. And so we sped the weekend administering eye drops to alternately squeamish, tantrum-throwing and brave boys. Both of them. It’s such fun, four times a day.
Week 8
It’s Tuesday evening.
So far the highlights of this week (a.k.a. why I still hate first grade)…. Mac tells me this morning that he saw a monkey thermos in the lost-and-found yesterday. It had the first three numbers of our phone number on it. And our street name. So he reports. Why didn’t he bring it home? It didn’t have his name on it; it wasn’t his. Where is our other monkey thermos? No one seems to know. Sailor and I run into school to see for ourselves. But lost-and-found is empty. The contents have been donated. To? The security guy is uncertain. Another expensive, non-chemical-leaching thermos gone.
I make Mac's lunch and put it in the lunch box that has been labeled “babyish” by Mac’s “best friend.” His face grows dim. He doesn’t want the lunch box. He is afraid of the scorn. I have already talked to the boy’s mom about this. I want to take my baby out of this school and away from these mean boys. But it is probably this attitude of mine that gets him picked on. By his friends. His “best” friends. After school Mac is half starved to death. The reason? He could not get his food thermos open. He blames me for tightening it too much again. But I didn’t, I explain. I actually left it rather loose this morning because he had some trouble yesterday. “By the time I got Matt W. to open it lunch was over,” he tells me, while wolfing down quesadillas and rice with alarming speed. I ask questions to cover my tears of dismay. Is there no one to help you? What if you raised your hand? Of course he couldn’t have climbed from his sardine-can-tight seat to get to a teacher. He didn’t drink his milk, so preoccupied with his effort. What about the cookie in the ziplock baggie? I ask. I am surprised that he has even passed that up. “I know I am not supposed to eat the cookie til I eat my other food.” My heart breaks. But I also know I have raised a child not unlike myself and I am proud of him for understanding the rules, tho wishing slightly he could understand when it’s ok to bend them. He is me.
Mac is playing in the playground after school today. “Shoot! I forgot my pink t-shirt at school!” He goes on to explain that one of his so-called best friends (I am REALLY starting to dislike these little brats – I mean, boys) was making fun of the shirt because it was pink. So he took it off and put it in his desk. I remind Mac that his friend didn’t know about the kindergarten pink shirt day last year because he is new to the school. I want to call the boy’s mother. Have I mentioned that I am REALLY starting to dislike these little boys? Have I mentioned that I am really really really really getting sick of this 1st grade crap? When we get home Sailor shows Mac the Halloween spider webbing we have stretched across the front yard gate. This seems to be the most popular Halloween décor this year. It’s everywhere. Ours looks good. But Sailor notices some yellow on the corner. “What is that lellow?” I inspect. “Dog pee!” How RUDE!!!
This morning we get up at 6:30 instead of the usual 6:45-snooze-til-7:10. It is still dark out. The boys think it is still the middle of the night! Wednesday morning seems like so many hours ago. It’s 10:50pm and I am still up (obviously). And hungry. As usual.
We wake up at 6:30 and get right out of bed. We have time to sit on my bedroom floor and play a game of Uno, which Sailor has never played before. It is really really nice. After we play I shower and then the boys ask for another breakfast. Guess what? We are late for school again! Mac does make it into the front door before it is locked. Sailor and I follow to track down the monkey thermos. The engineer lady has a huge garbage bag of lost-and-found items to be donated. We stand in the parking lot while I sort thru the bag. I am appalled by all the lunch boxes, many with children’s names written right on them, and all the clothes. One lunch box, when opened, reveals so much black mould I cannot even identify the contents. Many boxes have lunch still in them. This is appalling (did I mention that already!?). The monkey thermos is not there but I return an old book to a kindergartener and take three lunchboxes home with me. It’s not stealing.
Sailor is in French class and I am in the adjacent nail salon getting my nails redone from yesterday’s salon excursion with my mom. If I pay for a manicure I want it to look better than when I do it myself. And right now it does not. My phone rings but I do not answer. When I check the message 20 minutes later I hear the nicer of the two school secretaries telling me that Mac is not feeling well. I fly out of the salon and run to my car. I have Mac a few minutes later. He wants to go home and lie in his bed and have a cold glass of water. But we have to get Sailor and bring him to soccer. Where we stay with the other boy named Mac, who is also sick, and who hovers way too close for my comfort. My Mac does not seem to be sick as he finishes his lunch completely, or when he monkeys around, or when he asks to go to art class with Sailor. I think he just needed some time home with us. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t care. He is with us today, where he belongs.
I work on the school newsletter. I realize that it is taking a lot of my energy to be disgruntled all the time. Thing is, they always say that if you don’t like something, fix it. But the roads toward solution are not paved to be passable and so I am stuck. I think everyone from the room mothers to the principal at the school hate me. I am their worst nightmare. I look into Montessori school for my boys for next year. While I did attend a Montessori preschool in the early 1970s, which would likely help me get my boys in, I lack the $15,000 for the year’s tuition.
The boys are exhausted and want to take a nap at 4:00 so I suggest they put on their pajamas. They play. We eat a multi-course meal because nothing is ready when it is meant to be. Their dad comes to see them. They play a little, read some stories and he leaves early enough for them to be in bed reasonably. But they mess around and Sailor is going insane in my bed. I have to swat his little bottom – as in “snap out of it!” – and then he curls up at my side and falls asleep straight away. And now my babies are asleep here with me. Where I love them to be.
6:30am is fast approaching and I really want to be on time to school tomorrow morning.
We are on time to school on Thursday morning. In fact we are early. Because we drive. I have decided to make a trek to the nearby ‘burbs for a couple of cases of taffy apples. When I park outside school to take Mac to his line I am dreadfully embarrassed by the condition of our car, which is going to be 11 years old next month. Funny, when I bought this car I had absolutely NO intention of driving it up through my 40th birthday. But that is what is going to happen if I don’t get a new car before January 31st. Which, unless Oprah steps in, is absolutely not going to happen. Sailor and I drive the looooong way to get to the taffy apple factory because there is construction on the expressway. But so many people are avoiding the expressway there was absolutely no traffic. So I wasted 45 minutes driving to a destination a mere 15 minutes away. Which sets me into a panic, feeling so far away from Mac. Until I realize I could be home in 15 minutes if I need to be. In the car Sailor hears a Halloween costume commercial for the Party City store. “What should I be for Halloween?” I ask him. “I don’t know what to be yet.” “You should go to Party City,” he suggests. Wise boy. Good listener. A few minutes later he is singing a song from school. “Remember this song about the Polar constrictor?” I don’t remember the song. Then, “What’s a Polar Constrictor?” Sailor spends the day telling me he does not want to go to school, but when it is time to drop him off he is fine. I have told him that I will be picking him up early from school today. “When it’s not over yet?” After school we go to a birthday party for one of Mac’s classmates. It’s at one of those new inflatables places. We jump, slide, climb, sweat, laugh ourselves to the point of exhaustion and starvation. We have a blast! And when we get home it’s 6:45pm. We have 15 minutes to get to bed. Like that is likely to happen. Mac has a page of math homework, a couple pages of writing work he didn’t complete when he was absent the other day, two books to read, the animal report due on Monday, a Halloween costume to make before Mac leaves for school tomorrow … and Mac definitely needs a bath. I am way too tired to do anything and when he calls me a “meany” for not letting him eat popcorn before his homework is done (per my mother, who has stopped up to make said popcorn with her popcorn blower that has been living on my kitchen table for a week) I put his homework away and send him to bed. What a perfectly BAD ending to a perfectly good day. Urgh! I hate when I do that. But you know, good children like Mac understand when they have crossed the line and the lesson was learned. Minutes later he has come out to hug and kiss me and tell me how much he loves me. They say children need discipline, which I firmly believe. And while I think I may be a little too hard on Mac sometimes I also think I have helped make him a conscientious, caring, kind young boy. He knows that I won’t tolerate the bad behaviour. Now if only I could get his little brother to understand. His little brother, by the way, has been really well-behaved these past few days. I have no idea why, but I am thoroughly enjoying him!
Tomorrow is Mac’s Halloween party after school. We are talking about one of the girls in his class who is not American. “She is a nun girl,” Mac informs me, leading me to believe she must wear a veil. “Her mom is a nun,” he continues. I know for a fact that her mother is pregnant and most certainly not a nun but I find this so funny I can’t bear to correct him.
So far the highlights of this week (a.k.a. why I still hate first grade)…. Mac tells me this morning that he saw a monkey thermos in the lost-and-found yesterday. It had the first three numbers of our phone number on it. And our street name. So he reports. Why didn’t he bring it home? It didn’t have his name on it; it wasn’t his. Where is our other monkey thermos? No one seems to know. Sailor and I run into school to see for ourselves. But lost-and-found is empty. The contents have been donated. To? The security guy is uncertain. Another expensive, non-chemical-leaching thermos gone.
I make Mac's lunch and put it in the lunch box that has been labeled “babyish” by Mac’s “best friend.” His face grows dim. He doesn’t want the lunch box. He is afraid of the scorn. I have already talked to the boy’s mom about this. I want to take my baby out of this school and away from these mean boys. But it is probably this attitude of mine that gets him picked on. By his friends. His “best” friends. After school Mac is half starved to death. The reason? He could not get his food thermos open. He blames me for tightening it too much again. But I didn’t, I explain. I actually left it rather loose this morning because he had some trouble yesterday. “By the time I got Matt W. to open it lunch was over,” he tells me, while wolfing down quesadillas and rice with alarming speed. I ask questions to cover my tears of dismay. Is there no one to help you? What if you raised your hand? Of course he couldn’t have climbed from his sardine-can-tight seat to get to a teacher. He didn’t drink his milk, so preoccupied with his effort. What about the cookie in the ziplock baggie? I ask. I am surprised that he has even passed that up. “I know I am not supposed to eat the cookie til I eat my other food.” My heart breaks. But I also know I have raised a child not unlike myself and I am proud of him for understanding the rules, tho wishing slightly he could understand when it’s ok to bend them. He is me.
Mac is playing in the playground after school today. “Shoot! I forgot my pink t-shirt at school!” He goes on to explain that one of his so-called best friends (I am REALLY starting to dislike these little brats – I mean, boys) was making fun of the shirt because it was pink. So he took it off and put it in his desk. I remind Mac that his friend didn’t know about the kindergarten pink shirt day last year because he is new to the school. I want to call the boy’s mother. Have I mentioned that I am REALLY starting to dislike these little boys? Have I mentioned that I am really really really really getting sick of this 1st grade crap? When we get home Sailor shows Mac the Halloween spider webbing we have stretched across the front yard gate. This seems to be the most popular Halloween décor this year. It’s everywhere. Ours looks good. But Sailor notices some yellow on the corner. “What is that lellow?” I inspect. “Dog pee!” How RUDE!!!
This morning we get up at 6:30 instead of the usual 6:45-snooze-til-7:10. It is still dark out. The boys think it is still the middle of the night! Wednesday morning seems like so many hours ago. It’s 10:50pm and I am still up (obviously). And hungry. As usual.
We wake up at 6:30 and get right out of bed. We have time to sit on my bedroom floor and play a game of Uno, which Sailor has never played before. It is really really nice. After we play I shower and then the boys ask for another breakfast. Guess what? We are late for school again! Mac does make it into the front door before it is locked. Sailor and I follow to track down the monkey thermos. The engineer lady has a huge garbage bag of lost-and-found items to be donated. We stand in the parking lot while I sort thru the bag. I am appalled by all the lunch boxes, many with children’s names written right on them, and all the clothes. One lunch box, when opened, reveals so much black mould I cannot even identify the contents. Many boxes have lunch still in them. This is appalling (did I mention that already!?). The monkey thermos is not there but I return an old book to a kindergartener and take three lunchboxes home with me. It’s not stealing.
Sailor is in French class and I am in the adjacent nail salon getting my nails redone from yesterday’s salon excursion with my mom. If I pay for a manicure I want it to look better than when I do it myself. And right now it does not. My phone rings but I do not answer. When I check the message 20 minutes later I hear the nicer of the two school secretaries telling me that Mac is not feeling well. I fly out of the salon and run to my car. I have Mac a few minutes later. He wants to go home and lie in his bed and have a cold glass of water. But we have to get Sailor and bring him to soccer. Where we stay with the other boy named Mac, who is also sick, and who hovers way too close for my comfort. My Mac does not seem to be sick as he finishes his lunch completely, or when he monkeys around, or when he asks to go to art class with Sailor. I think he just needed some time home with us. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t care. He is with us today, where he belongs.
I work on the school newsletter. I realize that it is taking a lot of my energy to be disgruntled all the time. Thing is, they always say that if you don’t like something, fix it. But the roads toward solution are not paved to be passable and so I am stuck. I think everyone from the room mothers to the principal at the school hate me. I am their worst nightmare. I look into Montessori school for my boys for next year. While I did attend a Montessori preschool in the early 1970s, which would likely help me get my boys in, I lack the $15,000 for the year’s tuition.
The boys are exhausted and want to take a nap at 4:00 so I suggest they put on their pajamas. They play. We eat a multi-course meal because nothing is ready when it is meant to be. Their dad comes to see them. They play a little, read some stories and he leaves early enough for them to be in bed reasonably. But they mess around and Sailor is going insane in my bed. I have to swat his little bottom – as in “snap out of it!” – and then he curls up at my side and falls asleep straight away. And now my babies are asleep here with me. Where I love them to be.
6:30am is fast approaching and I really want to be on time to school tomorrow morning.
We are on time to school on Thursday morning. In fact we are early. Because we drive. I have decided to make a trek to the nearby ‘burbs for a couple of cases of taffy apples. When I park outside school to take Mac to his line I am dreadfully embarrassed by the condition of our car, which is going to be 11 years old next month. Funny, when I bought this car I had absolutely NO intention of driving it up through my 40th birthday. But that is what is going to happen if I don’t get a new car before January 31st. Which, unless Oprah steps in, is absolutely not going to happen. Sailor and I drive the looooong way to get to the taffy apple factory because there is construction on the expressway. But so many people are avoiding the expressway there was absolutely no traffic. So I wasted 45 minutes driving to a destination a mere 15 minutes away. Which sets me into a panic, feeling so far away from Mac. Until I realize I could be home in 15 minutes if I need to be. In the car Sailor hears a Halloween costume commercial for the Party City store. “What should I be for Halloween?” I ask him. “I don’t know what to be yet.” “You should go to Party City,” he suggests. Wise boy. Good listener. A few minutes later he is singing a song from school. “Remember this song about the Polar constrictor?” I don’t remember the song. Then, “What’s a Polar Constrictor?” Sailor spends the day telling me he does not want to go to school, but when it is time to drop him off he is fine. I have told him that I will be picking him up early from school today. “When it’s not over yet?” After school we go to a birthday party for one of Mac’s classmates. It’s at one of those new inflatables places. We jump, slide, climb, sweat, laugh ourselves to the point of exhaustion and starvation. We have a blast! And when we get home it’s 6:45pm. We have 15 minutes to get to bed. Like that is likely to happen. Mac has a page of math homework, a couple pages of writing work he didn’t complete when he was absent the other day, two books to read, the animal report due on Monday, a Halloween costume to make before Mac leaves for school tomorrow … and Mac definitely needs a bath. I am way too tired to do anything and when he calls me a “meany” for not letting him eat popcorn before his homework is done (per my mother, who has stopped up to make said popcorn with her popcorn blower that has been living on my kitchen table for a week) I put his homework away and send him to bed. What a perfectly BAD ending to a perfectly good day. Urgh! I hate when I do that. But you know, good children like Mac understand when they have crossed the line and the lesson was learned. Minutes later he has come out to hug and kiss me and tell me how much he loves me. They say children need discipline, which I firmly believe. And while I think I may be a little too hard on Mac sometimes I also think I have helped make him a conscientious, caring, kind young boy. He knows that I won’t tolerate the bad behaviour. Now if only I could get his little brother to understand. His little brother, by the way, has been really well-behaved these past few days. I have no idea why, but I am thoroughly enjoying him!
Tomorrow is Mac’s Halloween party after school. We are talking about one of the girls in his class who is not American. “She is a nun girl,” Mac informs me, leading me to believe she must wear a veil. “Her mom is a nun,” he continues. I know for a fact that her mother is pregnant and most certainly not a nun but I find this so funny I can’t bear to correct him.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Week 7 Important Lessons
Here are the important lessons I learned today:
If you are carrying something very heavy and want to move quickly, do not ask your 4-year-old to help you.
If your mother (a.k.a. Nana) needs something heavy carried, she may ask the aforementioned 4-year-old for help and will receive it.
¼ cup of Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream is not enough ice cream, even you are in a relatively decent mood.
Purchasing strawberries in October and then leaving them in your car all day will certainly guarantee you a batch of mostly moldy strawberries.
If you tell just one parent that the date and/or the time of your 1st-graders Halloween party may have to be changed, the entire class worth of parents will hear this “rumor” and not RSVP to your 1st-grader's Halloween party.
Little boys (mine, anyway), if given the choice between TV and playing with their father, will choose tv.
If you let the aforementioned, aforementioned 4-year-old carry heavy things for his Nana, he will complain later than his back hurts. And that his sore back precludes his ability to eat his dinner. And that he would rather just go to bed than eat. And that he cannot take Tylenol because he knows you told him it has bad ingredients in it. But that he really does like the Motrin.
Finishing off the aforementioned pint of Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream will only make you want more Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream.
My 4-year-old does not need a reason to cry, fuss, whine, or otherwise disagree with what I want. It is simply his birthright to do so. Apparently.
Just because it is mid-October and you were wearing a short skirt and tank top a week ago and mittens and a hat a few days ago does not mean you will be wearing either a short skirt and tank top or mittens and a hat today. If you live in Chicago.
My world revolves around food. Making a good hearty breakfast to keep the boys well-nourished until lunch. Filling a lunchbox with tempting foods that Mac will have time to eat before he is shooed out to recess. Preparing a version of dinner that includes lots of side dishes, given our aversion to meat. Cooking, preparing, washing, shopping (not in that order, right). From the girl who hated cooking to the mom who is all about the food!
And no matter how nice I make these lunches, Mac still wants to eat hot lunch because, “it is SO delicious, Mom!”
“But you never say that about my lunches, which I work so hard to make for you.”
“Oh, Mom, your lunches are the best!” Oh Mac, you are so diplomatic.
That no matter how much I yell at my 6-year-old and no matter how much I yell at my 4-year-old, my 6-year-old will remain an extremely well-behaved child, when I really step back and look at him, and my 4-year-old will remain a spoiled little ….
Suggesting painting of a bedroom on the upcoming Friday off to your 6- and 4-year-olds will not be met with enthusiasm.
It is a very bad sign when you ask your sister for her opinion on your hair – meaning the hideous new shade of brown you just colored it – and her only comment is, “Well, it just looks like it’s growing out,” even tho you just had it cut two weeks ago. (Also Learned: I do not like how I look as a brunette.)
A loose tooth can start being loose in August and still be loose in mid-October.
Whether you like it or not, you cannot choose which children your 1st-grader will play with at school.
Finding 10 dimes to send to school with your child as part of a homework assignment this week is only slightly less challenging than finding 10 nickels was last week.
There is no limit (apparently) to the number of times you can load, run and unload your dishwasher in a day.
The chorus to the mid-1980s top 40 hit “Walk Like an Egyptian” will, if put in your head, remain there.
Waking up at 6:45 and starting my day at full-speed every day (with the added bonus of a 4-year-old starting and maintaining his day at full-whine) renders me completely incapable of any type of human function past 8pm.
And I have learned that school is not about me, the mom. It is about the 6-year-old. And his world while he is there is not a world I have any control over. And so I must bite my tongue and resist making suggestions when Mac reports that, “Joseph spit on me,” and “Nich wants me to have hot lunch or he won’t be my friend,” and the like. I am no longer there to guide my son thru his days. Only to prepare him for the day each morning and help him ease out of the day each night.
It’s Friday afternoon. 1:02 pm. Mac has a friend over. A mild-mannered, freckle-nosed boy from first grade. The boy is not in his class, but he has come highly recommended as a friend from two of Mac’s favorite girl friends. In an hour or so some other friends will be by to play. There is some talk that the next segment of the day will include pizza and wine. Now, while I am adequately sated from the French toast and hash browns I ate about 2 hours ago at the pancake house (Mac wanted to take Sailor and me out for breakfast this morning), the thought of the wine is so tempting I am sucking down hot tea in anticipation of the rest of the afternoon. For this “mild-mannered” boy is anything but and I am coming to realize that boys will be boys but I wish they would do so anywhere than inside my house. I also think my friend Anna has the right idea that all toys requiring batteries (to make requisite annoying noises) should be banned from the confines of my home.
So much for a fabulous day off spent with my children. We should have just hung out and watched tv instead. Sigh…
Oh, how does this fabulous day off end? Well, by 2pm I am on the phone to the boy’s nanny. “I think this play date has run its course,” I tell her, and ask her to come for the child. Half an hour later she is here. One hour later he is still here. He refuses to leave. “We just started a new game,” is among his most convincing protest. He is better behaved while the nanny is here. Sort of. Except that he won’t leave. I finally suggest the nanny call the boy’s mother. When she arrives she is none too pleased and ends up hauling her boy out under one arm. I expect her to call later in the evening to apologize again for her child’s behavior and/or find out exactly what went on here this afternoon. She does not. Her child has just lost any and all invitations to come to our house to play.
During the above ordeal, Sailor finds his way to the bathroom. He calls for my help. “Look at my pants,” he says, from atop the porcelain throne. I inspect carefully to find a couple drops of what appear to be spit-up. “What happened?” “I gagged a little and some throw-up comed out.” Why did he gag? “Because my poops smell yucky!” This from the small boy who has a self-declared “allergy to poop.”
Our friends coming for wine and pizza blow us off. Without calling. I only learn of their decision not to come when I call them 2 hours after they are due here.
My sister comes over and we attempt to make a healthful version of popcorn balls, which is an oxymoron at best. They are sticky, messy, and gross. I eat them anyway but the kids decline.
But there is one good thing that happens at the end of this disastrous day. The boys are watching a video that I wanted to watch but then do not like. I tell them they don’t have to watch but when Mac jumps up and flies out of the room Sailor bursts into tears and we rejoin him to watch with him. Then suddenly from his spot on the floor Mac cries out, “My tooth is about to fall out!” And so it is. The tiny tooth is literally hanging from a thread. I try to pull it but it is still attached. I tell Mac he has to pull it out. He does. He hands me the tooth, which I clutch like the Hope Diamond it is. And he throws himself into my arms and burst into tears. I cry with him for a moment and then stop, not exactly sure why we are crying. Or even if we should be. We wash his mouth and rinse the tooth. We have to go down to show my parents right away. And then Mac leaves the tooth under his pillow. In my bed. I am worried that it will not survive the night with all three of us vying for space in there. I call my parents, "So how does this tooth fairy thing work?" My dad is trying to explain but then passes the phone to my mom, who wants me to put a note from the tooth fairy under the pillow on Mac's bed explaining that she heard about a tooth but he was in the wrong bed.... As if I would punish him that way! When Mac wakes in the wee hours he finds a note wrapped around two gold coins. The note thanks him for his beautiful tooth, congratulations him and is signed, “Love, Tooth Fairy.” “The Tooth Fairy is real!” His doubt has been completely erased.
Minutes later Sailor finds us in the bathroom. “I looked under Mac’s pillow but there is nothing there.” Ah, I tell him, but when Mac looked under Mac’s pillow… Mac and Sailor trot off to see the coins.
And while the loss of my first child's first tooth is no big deal to the rest of the free world, it is a major event in our little world. I document it in his baby book. I wrap the tooth in saran wrap and label it before we slip it under the pillow. Really label it: Mac's 1st tooth. Bottom right. October 19, 2007, 7:45 pm. Really. Because this is the tiny tooth that made its apearance in my 8-month-old first born's mouth on February 6, 2002, and to me this is a very big deal!
If you are carrying something very heavy and want to move quickly, do not ask your 4-year-old to help you.
If your mother (a.k.a. Nana) needs something heavy carried, she may ask the aforementioned 4-year-old for help and will receive it.
¼ cup of Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream is not enough ice cream, even you are in a relatively decent mood.
Purchasing strawberries in October and then leaving them in your car all day will certainly guarantee you a batch of mostly moldy strawberries.
If you tell just one parent that the date and/or the time of your 1st-graders Halloween party may have to be changed, the entire class worth of parents will hear this “rumor” and not RSVP to your 1st-grader's Halloween party.
Little boys (mine, anyway), if given the choice between TV and playing with their father, will choose tv.
If you let the aforementioned, aforementioned 4-year-old carry heavy things for his Nana, he will complain later than his back hurts. And that his sore back precludes his ability to eat his dinner. And that he would rather just go to bed than eat. And that he cannot take Tylenol because he knows you told him it has bad ingredients in it. But that he really does like the Motrin.
Finishing off the aforementioned pint of Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream will only make you want more Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream.
My 4-year-old does not need a reason to cry, fuss, whine, or otherwise disagree with what I want. It is simply his birthright to do so. Apparently.
Just because it is mid-October and you were wearing a short skirt and tank top a week ago and mittens and a hat a few days ago does not mean you will be wearing either a short skirt and tank top or mittens and a hat today. If you live in Chicago.
My world revolves around food. Making a good hearty breakfast to keep the boys well-nourished until lunch. Filling a lunchbox with tempting foods that Mac will have time to eat before he is shooed out to recess. Preparing a version of dinner that includes lots of side dishes, given our aversion to meat. Cooking, preparing, washing, shopping (not in that order, right). From the girl who hated cooking to the mom who is all about the food!
And no matter how nice I make these lunches, Mac still wants to eat hot lunch because, “it is SO delicious, Mom!”
“But you never say that about my lunches, which I work so hard to make for you.”
“Oh, Mom, your lunches are the best!” Oh Mac, you are so diplomatic.
That no matter how much I yell at my 6-year-old and no matter how much I yell at my 4-year-old, my 6-year-old will remain an extremely well-behaved child, when I really step back and look at him, and my 4-year-old will remain a spoiled little ….
Suggesting painting of a bedroom on the upcoming Friday off to your 6- and 4-year-olds will not be met with enthusiasm.
It is a very bad sign when you ask your sister for her opinion on your hair – meaning the hideous new shade of brown you just colored it – and her only comment is, “Well, it just looks like it’s growing out,” even tho you just had it cut two weeks ago. (Also Learned: I do not like how I look as a brunette.)
A loose tooth can start being loose in August and still be loose in mid-October.
Whether you like it or not, you cannot choose which children your 1st-grader will play with at school.
Finding 10 dimes to send to school with your child as part of a homework assignment this week is only slightly less challenging than finding 10 nickels was last week.
There is no limit (apparently) to the number of times you can load, run and unload your dishwasher in a day.
The chorus to the mid-1980s top 40 hit “Walk Like an Egyptian” will, if put in your head, remain there.
Waking up at 6:45 and starting my day at full-speed every day (with the added bonus of a 4-year-old starting and maintaining his day at full-whine) renders me completely incapable of any type of human function past 8pm.
And I have learned that school is not about me, the mom. It is about the 6-year-old. And his world while he is there is not a world I have any control over. And so I must bite my tongue and resist making suggestions when Mac reports that, “Joseph spit on me,” and “Nich wants me to have hot lunch or he won’t be my friend,” and the like. I am no longer there to guide my son thru his days. Only to prepare him for the day each morning and help him ease out of the day each night.
It’s Friday afternoon. 1:02 pm. Mac has a friend over. A mild-mannered, freckle-nosed boy from first grade. The boy is not in his class, but he has come highly recommended as a friend from two of Mac’s favorite girl friends. In an hour or so some other friends will be by to play. There is some talk that the next segment of the day will include pizza and wine. Now, while I am adequately sated from the French toast and hash browns I ate about 2 hours ago at the pancake house (Mac wanted to take Sailor and me out for breakfast this morning), the thought of the wine is so tempting I am sucking down hot tea in anticipation of the rest of the afternoon. For this “mild-mannered” boy is anything but and I am coming to realize that boys will be boys but I wish they would do so anywhere than inside my house. I also think my friend Anna has the right idea that all toys requiring batteries (to make requisite annoying noises) should be banned from the confines of my home.
So much for a fabulous day off spent with my children. We should have just hung out and watched tv instead. Sigh…
Oh, how does this fabulous day off end? Well, by 2pm I am on the phone to the boy’s nanny. “I think this play date has run its course,” I tell her, and ask her to come for the child. Half an hour later she is here. One hour later he is still here. He refuses to leave. “We just started a new game,” is among his most convincing protest. He is better behaved while the nanny is here. Sort of. Except that he won’t leave. I finally suggest the nanny call the boy’s mother. When she arrives she is none too pleased and ends up hauling her boy out under one arm. I expect her to call later in the evening to apologize again for her child’s behavior and/or find out exactly what went on here this afternoon. She does not. Her child has just lost any and all invitations to come to our house to play.
During the above ordeal, Sailor finds his way to the bathroom. He calls for my help. “Look at my pants,” he says, from atop the porcelain throne. I inspect carefully to find a couple drops of what appear to be spit-up. “What happened?” “I gagged a little and some throw-up comed out.” Why did he gag? “Because my poops smell yucky!” This from the small boy who has a self-declared “allergy to poop.”
Our friends coming for wine and pizza blow us off. Without calling. I only learn of their decision not to come when I call them 2 hours after they are due here.
My sister comes over and we attempt to make a healthful version of popcorn balls, which is an oxymoron at best. They are sticky, messy, and gross. I eat them anyway but the kids decline.
But there is one good thing that happens at the end of this disastrous day. The boys are watching a video that I wanted to watch but then do not like. I tell them they don’t have to watch but when Mac jumps up and flies out of the room Sailor bursts into tears and we rejoin him to watch with him. Then suddenly from his spot on the floor Mac cries out, “My tooth is about to fall out!” And so it is. The tiny tooth is literally hanging from a thread. I try to pull it but it is still attached. I tell Mac he has to pull it out. He does. He hands me the tooth, which I clutch like the Hope Diamond it is. And he throws himself into my arms and burst into tears. I cry with him for a moment and then stop, not exactly sure why we are crying. Or even if we should be. We wash his mouth and rinse the tooth. We have to go down to show my parents right away. And then Mac leaves the tooth under his pillow. In my bed. I am worried that it will not survive the night with all three of us vying for space in there. I call my parents, "So how does this tooth fairy thing work?" My dad is trying to explain but then passes the phone to my mom, who wants me to put a note from the tooth fairy under the pillow on Mac's bed explaining that she heard about a tooth but he was in the wrong bed.... As if I would punish him that way! When Mac wakes in the wee hours he finds a note wrapped around two gold coins. The note thanks him for his beautiful tooth, congratulations him and is signed, “Love, Tooth Fairy.” “The Tooth Fairy is real!” His doubt has been completely erased.
Minutes later Sailor finds us in the bathroom. “I looked under Mac’s pillow but there is nothing there.” Ah, I tell him, but when Mac looked under Mac’s pillow… Mac and Sailor trot off to see the coins.
And while the loss of my first child's first tooth is no big deal to the rest of the free world, it is a major event in our little world. I document it in his baby book. I wrap the tooth in saran wrap and label it before we slip it under the pillow. Really label it: Mac's 1st tooth. Bottom right. October 19, 2007, 7:45 pm. Really. Because this is the tiny tooth that made its apearance in my 8-month-old first born's mouth on February 6, 2002, and to me this is a very big deal!
Week 6 Happy Columbus Day!
Two minutes before 8pm and my kids who “go to bed at 7:00” are still awake. Mac just came out of bed with the all-important tattle, “Sailor just bit me on the hand and choked me!”
Sailor was right on his heels with a gesturing finger at the end of an outstretched arm, “But I said I’m sorry!”
“Why did you do it in the first place?” How do I make them understand that they can’t hurt each other at will and then just say they are sorry to make it right?
“Beez it’s my day to go first and I want to sleep in the middle.” He is speaking, of course, of my bed. Each boy wants a chance to sleep in the middle, which places them next to me. Why don’t I make it easy on them both and sleep in the middle myself? Because then I am a Mommy-wich and I get no sleep at all. Plus the lamp and alarm clock are not positioned in the middle.
“How about if I send you both back to your own beds?”
“NO!” they chorus. We have a problem here, I know. And I also know that I am (at least) 1/3 of the problem.
“Settle it yourselves.” They run back to my bed. But after a few moments of quiet chatter Mac emerges. “When Sailor choked me he almost killed me. And it hurts.” He returns to his own bed. There is so little use in yelling at anyone anymore. It’s just too sad to yell at Mac and too frustrating to yell at Sailor.
Which is why I grounded them from their playroom over the weekend. A friend asked me what I plan to do to keep them busy if they don’t have their toys. She feared I might have to entertain them myself. While we have been quite busy the past few days, the kids have had some idle time. Together Mac and I worked some math problems and a word find from among his many unfinished summer workbooks and today we all colored together. I'll have to tell my friend that having to “entertain them” isn’t such a bad thing after all.
And about this weekend. It was hot. So hot that our city’s marathon was called off mid-run. So hot that there was a ridiculousness about attending a fall fest at the farm in 90 degree heat that made us long for the beach while we choose our fall pumpkins and wash off itchy face paints.
And then a day off. Not anticipating the summer-like weather we planned a day at the science museum where there is a very overpriced exhibit about StarWars. The kids are enthralled. We learn all about robotic arms and the living climate of Wookies and how we might use our own robots in the future. But what strikes me as particularly bizarre is the way the narrators of all the short films playing throughout the exhibit talk about the StarWars characters as if they are actual, real, live beings. Reality check, people! This is MAKE BELIEVE!
What is not make believe are the prices in the gift shop. Litesabers, $6.99 at Target, are going for $12. Costumes that cost about $19.99 in the real world are inflated to double or more. Galactic Heroes mini-packs of tiny StarWars guys, normally $5.85 at Target are $11. We spend $7 on 2 postcards, a pencil, stickers and tattoos. And that is with the member discount!
Some funny things my children have said recently:
Sailor: "Something smells funny. Let I smell Mac. Mac is fine. Let I smell me."
Sailor [who has unfortunately caught me peeing when I have my period]: What is that?!
Mommy: Blood.
Sailor: WHY?
Mommy: Because I am not having a baby.
Sailor: Does blood smell yucky? [Sailor gags.]
Mommy: Yes. It’s ok.
Sailor [trying, I think, to make me feel better]: It looks like strawberries.
Sailor: Can I marry you, Mommy?
Mac: You can’t marry Mommy.
Mommy: You can want to marry me, Sailor.
Sailor: But I forgot, is I am the one who has the baby or do you have the baby?
Listening to the Mix&Match radio show last night while putting away clothes in Mac’s room, Mac seriously suggests, “You should go on that, Mom.”
"I think I may be too old," I tell him.
“You could go on and find us a new dad,” he continues. I think about this, in terms of his dad. “What would we do with your old dad?” I ask, lightheartedly, to gauge his response.
“Well, I just assume our old dad and our new dad will just have to get along with each other.” How old is this child?!
Friday morning I am reminded of something I have felt for years: I hate field trips. I hate going on them. I hate the children who go on them. I hate the parents and teachers who run them. And I think they are the single most ineffective use of a school day. Especially in the city, where I live, where we are cultured, have money, take our children to more than just Chuck E. Cheese’s for adventure and experience. Today Mac’s class is going on a field trip. And I get to come along. Why? Because several weeks ago I let his teacher know in no uncertain terms that if I don’t go, Mac doesn’t go. In fact, I used those exact words. And so for punishment she assigns me five boys. I spend my morning walking. Freezing. And calling out to five 6-year-old boys who think they were on a free-for all. Led, no less, by Mac. It goes something like this: "Brian, come back here. Kevin and Brian come here! Mac, get down from there. Nich and Mac, I have told you three times to stay on the path. Kevin and Brian come here! Hey! Stop at the street! We are a group. Stick together! Mac do you want me to call GrandDad to come get you? Where is Nich?" And once in awhile, "Jack, you're right beside me. Thank you!" Toward the end of the neverending trek around the park I look around nad see only Mac, Brian, Kevin and Jack. That's good enough, I think. Four out of five. Only a moment later I realize that I am insane!
By the way, no one still names their children Brian and Kevin, not even the moms of the boys in Mac's class. But if I write their real names here their moms might read this and think that I think their little boys are brats.
Sailor was right on his heels with a gesturing finger at the end of an outstretched arm, “But I said I’m sorry!”
“Why did you do it in the first place?” How do I make them understand that they can’t hurt each other at will and then just say they are sorry to make it right?
“Beez it’s my day to go first and I want to sleep in the middle.” He is speaking, of course, of my bed. Each boy wants a chance to sleep in the middle, which places them next to me. Why don’t I make it easy on them both and sleep in the middle myself? Because then I am a Mommy-wich and I get no sleep at all. Plus the lamp and alarm clock are not positioned in the middle.
“How about if I send you both back to your own beds?”
“NO!” they chorus. We have a problem here, I know. And I also know that I am (at least) 1/3 of the problem.
“Settle it yourselves.” They run back to my bed. But after a few moments of quiet chatter Mac emerges. “When Sailor choked me he almost killed me. And it hurts.” He returns to his own bed. There is so little use in yelling at anyone anymore. It’s just too sad to yell at Mac and too frustrating to yell at Sailor.
Which is why I grounded them from their playroom over the weekend. A friend asked me what I plan to do to keep them busy if they don’t have their toys. She feared I might have to entertain them myself. While we have been quite busy the past few days, the kids have had some idle time. Together Mac and I worked some math problems and a word find from among his many unfinished summer workbooks and today we all colored together. I'll have to tell my friend that having to “entertain them” isn’t such a bad thing after all.
And about this weekend. It was hot. So hot that our city’s marathon was called off mid-run. So hot that there was a ridiculousness about attending a fall fest at the farm in 90 degree heat that made us long for the beach while we choose our fall pumpkins and wash off itchy face paints.
And then a day off. Not anticipating the summer-like weather we planned a day at the science museum where there is a very overpriced exhibit about StarWars. The kids are enthralled. We learn all about robotic arms and the living climate of Wookies and how we might use our own robots in the future. But what strikes me as particularly bizarre is the way the narrators of all the short films playing throughout the exhibit talk about the StarWars characters as if they are actual, real, live beings. Reality check, people! This is MAKE BELIEVE!
What is not make believe are the prices in the gift shop. Litesabers, $6.99 at Target, are going for $12. Costumes that cost about $19.99 in the real world are inflated to double or more. Galactic Heroes mini-packs of tiny StarWars guys, normally $5.85 at Target are $11. We spend $7 on 2 postcards, a pencil, stickers and tattoos. And that is with the member discount!
Some funny things my children have said recently:
Sailor: "Something smells funny. Let I smell Mac. Mac is fine. Let I smell me."
Sailor [who has unfortunately caught me peeing when I have my period]: What is that?!
Mommy: Blood.
Sailor: WHY?
Mommy: Because I am not having a baby.
Sailor: Does blood smell yucky? [Sailor gags.]
Mommy: Yes. It’s ok.
Sailor [trying, I think, to make me feel better]: It looks like strawberries.
Sailor: Can I marry you, Mommy?
Mac: You can’t marry Mommy.
Mommy: You can want to marry me, Sailor.
Sailor: But I forgot, is I am the one who has the baby or do you have the baby?
Listening to the Mix&Match radio show last night while putting away clothes in Mac’s room, Mac seriously suggests, “You should go on that, Mom.”
"I think I may be too old," I tell him.
“You could go on and find us a new dad,” he continues. I think about this, in terms of his dad. “What would we do with your old dad?” I ask, lightheartedly, to gauge his response.
“Well, I just assume our old dad and our new dad will just have to get along with each other.” How old is this child?!
Friday morning I am reminded of something I have felt for years: I hate field trips. I hate going on them. I hate the children who go on them. I hate the parents and teachers who run them. And I think they are the single most ineffective use of a school day. Especially in the city, where I live, where we are cultured, have money, take our children to more than just Chuck E. Cheese’s for adventure and experience. Today Mac’s class is going on a field trip. And I get to come along. Why? Because several weeks ago I let his teacher know in no uncertain terms that if I don’t go, Mac doesn’t go. In fact, I used those exact words. And so for punishment she assigns me five boys. I spend my morning walking. Freezing. And calling out to five 6-year-old boys who think they were on a free-for all. Led, no less, by Mac. It goes something like this: "Brian, come back here. Kevin and Brian come here! Mac, get down from there. Nich and Mac, I have told you three times to stay on the path. Kevin and Brian come here! Hey! Stop at the street! We are a group. Stick together! Mac do you want me to call GrandDad to come get you? Where is Nich?" And once in awhile, "Jack, you're right beside me. Thank you!" Toward the end of the neverending trek around the park I look around nad see only Mac, Brian, Kevin and Jack. That's good enough, I think. Four out of five. Only a moment later I realize that I am insane!
By the way, no one still names their children Brian and Kevin, not even the moms of the boys in Mac's class. But if I write their real names here their moms might read this and think that I think their little boys are brats.
Week 5 – Or, “We’re Outa Here!”
Not really. But nearly. And quite frankly this 1st grade year has been so dismal already that I feel absolutely no desire to relive it thru my fingertips on the keyboard. Nor do I feel the need to do so, as I have done my fair share of bitching and moaning to everyone who will listen, including my unfortunately over-friendly bank tellers.
So the highlights (or, more accurately, the low-lights – which reminds me… that I got my hair cut last week. By a man who had a better head of curls than any woman I know. He insisted that my hair color is all wrong and that I really need to make it a little darker to match my complexion. I explained to the pockmarked, crooked-teeth’ed, chin-and-eyebrow-pierced probable drag queen, that I really like my hair color, but that as my tan has faded a bit I do realize that I should make my hair a little darker. Soon. When I am really and truly ready to look like total winter crap and have zero self-esteem left. But he went on and on. And on. About the chocolates I should add and the lowlights and highlights. And when a client walked by with foils in her hair to make the top of her head match the sooty grey-green locks that hung down her back, I vowed I would never again be insulted when the professionals ask me, “You do your own color, don’t you?).
Anyway, where was I? Yes, our wonderful week. Let’s start at the beginning. At least as far back as I am willing to recall. (These weeks are LONG!) Monday. Right. I think that was the morning my mom had to drive my almost-ex and me downtown for a court date. He was a nervous wreck, which made me the calm one. I don’t think I did much after that. I hate going downtown so that zapped my umph for the day. In the afternoon Sailor and Mac and went to tap. Except Sailor didn’t want to go to tap. He wanted to scream and cry and make an enormous fuss. That lasts most of the class. When he does finally get his tap shoes back on and rejoin the class he taps only a short while before wetting his pants and most of the dance floor. Which I have to clean up with those brown paper towels that are truly more suitable for writing stories on. Then we try to pay for Mac to take the class but after 15 minutes I get fed up with the office girl’s inability to do math. Somewhere between the dance class and home we lose Mac’s lunch box. The new Spiderman one. With the $15 Spiderman thermos inside.
Sailor throws no fewer than 5 tantrums on Tuesday. It's a fun day. All day. I shoe-shop, but come home empty-handed, while Sailor is at school. I pick up Mac. Which, instead of being the highlight of my day, turns out to be the absolute low point of the entire past month. All over chocolate milk. Which Mac want. In a box, not from Starbucks, after school. My boys love Starbucks as much as I do. So he cries. I lose it. Completely. “Are you actually bitching at me for wanting to do something nice for you and take you to Starbucks?!” He keeps crying. I am incredulous.
We turn a corner, both physically and emotionally. “Can’t I ever do anything right for you kids?!” I scream. Have I mentioned that at this point I have lost all control? Right. I have. Mac starts to cry. And he takes my hand and we walk all the way home this way. I give him the box of chocolate milk I have in my bag for Sailor. But then we have to stop home for another for Sailor so that I don’t have to listen to yet another fuss on the way home from preschool. I want this day to get better. But at preschool Sailor runs right into Mac’s arms and completely ignores me!
I am beside myself and drop my ungrateful offspring with my parents. I am on the phone seaking solace from one of my best friends when my mom comes up. She wants to take me for coffee. I know I am the worst mother ever.
Mac gives exhaustion as his reason for his unfortunate behavior. I give the fact that I have realized we’ve been unhappy for 4 weeks as the reason for mine. Sailor gives his personality as his.
Wednesday morning we putter. I have no energy to prod the boys to get ready quickly. I am still reeling from last night and Mac remains upset as well. We spend long minutes just hugging and trying to fill the space between us with love and understanding. Sometimes being a mom feels a bit like being a wife. Except the (little) guy is, thankfully, much more understanding and forgiving. Sailor won’t get dressed, and I truly want to keep Mac with me today, so I don’t insist on anything. We arrive at school some time after 9:00. Mac is given a tardy pass and I am told he is to walk upstairs to his classroom. Alone. I am more than a little unsettled by the office lady’s tone. So I ignore her completely and acquiesce when Mac says he is scared and wants me to walk him up. He is 6. He is small. He has never been late to school before. (And he will never be late again, after this experience.) We are almost to the 2nd floor when we are stopped. I have been followed. I am told parents cannot be on the classroom floors. I tell her, in no uncertain terms, that Mac is MY CHILD! And that "you people can’t keep telling me what to do with him!" It is a beautiful moment of how not to behave at your child’s school in front of your child. I offer Mac the option of coming home with me. He declines. I kiss him and Sailor and I leave. I am sobbing. Sailor is as furious as I am. “Those people owe you a serious apology for making you cry, Mommy!”
I find out late in the day that I have inadvertently blown off a meeting with the principal. “I never got confirmation,” I email him.
The only thing that makes the day halfway decent is that Sailor is well-behaved. And I find metal thermoses at Borders for $6. By the time I get Mac from school late in the afternoon I have already arranged to take him on a tour of a charter school on Thursday morning.
Which Mac is uncertain about. “I have to miss school?”
I decide that he will have the whole day off. With me. Without Sailor. We visit the school. Mac says he likes the new school. But he prefers his own school. I decide it’s his call. We go to lunch. Mac buys flowers for my mom. We buy jibbitz from a very cool new kids’ book store. And some books. Mac chooses a book on slavery and for Sailor we choose a book on finger painting. We play in a small park district playground and Mac makes friends with a few little boys. We go inside to use the bathroom. We buy a necklace for Mac’s kindergarten teacher from last year who is about to have her 1st baby and will be leaving our school for good on Friday. We drive to Target. We have a very nice day together. I realize just how big is this child, whom I insist is still just a baby, when I see toddlers lunching with their mothers. My child seems large. Slightly messy with his crazy hair and glasses, and just out of place. I enjoy my time with him immensely while also longing for those days of our original togetherness.
Thursday relaxes us. We are together. We settle our decision about school. We don’t have to listen to Sailor whine about anything. And so it goes.
We have all learned some important lessons on how to treat one another this week. Sailor runs right to me at pick-up: “My mommy is here!”
Some time during the week Mac brings a form home in his folder that says we are poor enough to receive not the reduced price hot lunch but the free hot lunch. I am mortified. I can afford the full price of $1.85 a day on the rare day that I allow Mac to eat a coveted hot lunch. And I can certainly afford the 40 cents of the reduced price. But based on the numbers I supplied (no, I did not lie) Mac can get his lunch for free anytime he wants to.
At another point my mom brings up some groceries from Coscto. Or more accurately Sailor brings them up.
“Nana is very nice to bring us food,” Mac says.
“That’s beez she is our gather fooder,” Sailor says.
At another point Sailor suddenly decides he needs crutches. “Croutches,” he calls them. “Here’s my croutch!” he says, picking up a tube of cardboard. I am laughing hysterically. I have not heard that word since I was 7 and had a strangely dysarthric friend.
I bring Sailor to the PTA meeting on Friday morning where he earns a well-behaved child comment and gives me an excuse to leave early. We gift Mrs. K and she cries. I cry. Sailor refuses to take a photo with her or of us. We cry some more. I pass on some unsolicited advice regarding epidurals, wipes warmers and strollers. We say goodbye. And then I come back to tell her one more thing, “More important than goodbye is thank you.” This one will be sorely, sorely missed!
We book- and shoe-shop (I am sensing a trend here, are you?) but forego lunch (Sailor has been on a long hunger strike) and play in a playground. It’s summer-warm outside. I am exhausted when we get Mac from school and take the kids to the playground near school. I have no plans to stay up past 8:00 tonight. We are watching StarWars. I won’t give the boys back their lightsabers, despite their daily requests. So they are “battling” with lightsabers they’ve made from a connecter toy. It’s been a long and very stressful week.
So the highlights (or, more accurately, the low-lights – which reminds me… that I got my hair cut last week. By a man who had a better head of curls than any woman I know. He insisted that my hair color is all wrong and that I really need to make it a little darker to match my complexion. I explained to the pockmarked, crooked-teeth’ed, chin-and-eyebrow-pierced probable drag queen, that I really like my hair color, but that as my tan has faded a bit I do realize that I should make my hair a little darker. Soon. When I am really and truly ready to look like total winter crap and have zero self-esteem left. But he went on and on. And on. About the chocolates I should add and the lowlights and highlights. And when a client walked by with foils in her hair to make the top of her head match the sooty grey-green locks that hung down her back, I vowed I would never again be insulted when the professionals ask me, “You do your own color, don’t you?).
Anyway, where was I? Yes, our wonderful week. Let’s start at the beginning. At least as far back as I am willing to recall. (These weeks are LONG!) Monday. Right. I think that was the morning my mom had to drive my almost-ex and me downtown for a court date. He was a nervous wreck, which made me the calm one. I don’t think I did much after that. I hate going downtown so that zapped my umph for the day. In the afternoon Sailor and Mac and went to tap. Except Sailor didn’t want to go to tap. He wanted to scream and cry and make an enormous fuss. That lasts most of the class. When he does finally get his tap shoes back on and rejoin the class he taps only a short while before wetting his pants and most of the dance floor. Which I have to clean up with those brown paper towels that are truly more suitable for writing stories on. Then we try to pay for Mac to take the class but after 15 minutes I get fed up with the office girl’s inability to do math. Somewhere between the dance class and home we lose Mac’s lunch box. The new Spiderman one. With the $15 Spiderman thermos inside.
Sailor throws no fewer than 5 tantrums on Tuesday. It's a fun day. All day. I shoe-shop, but come home empty-handed, while Sailor is at school. I pick up Mac. Which, instead of being the highlight of my day, turns out to be the absolute low point of the entire past month. All over chocolate milk. Which Mac want. In a box, not from Starbucks, after school. My boys love Starbucks as much as I do. So he cries. I lose it. Completely. “Are you actually bitching at me for wanting to do something nice for you and take you to Starbucks?!” He keeps crying. I am incredulous.
We turn a corner, both physically and emotionally. “Can’t I ever do anything right for you kids?!” I scream. Have I mentioned that at this point I have lost all control? Right. I have. Mac starts to cry. And he takes my hand and we walk all the way home this way. I give him the box of chocolate milk I have in my bag for Sailor. But then we have to stop home for another for Sailor so that I don’t have to listen to yet another fuss on the way home from preschool. I want this day to get better. But at preschool Sailor runs right into Mac’s arms and completely ignores me!
I am beside myself and drop my ungrateful offspring with my parents. I am on the phone seaking solace from one of my best friends when my mom comes up. She wants to take me for coffee. I know I am the worst mother ever.
Mac gives exhaustion as his reason for his unfortunate behavior. I give the fact that I have realized we’ve been unhappy for 4 weeks as the reason for mine. Sailor gives his personality as his.
Wednesday morning we putter. I have no energy to prod the boys to get ready quickly. I am still reeling from last night and Mac remains upset as well. We spend long minutes just hugging and trying to fill the space between us with love and understanding. Sometimes being a mom feels a bit like being a wife. Except the (little) guy is, thankfully, much more understanding and forgiving. Sailor won’t get dressed, and I truly want to keep Mac with me today, so I don’t insist on anything. We arrive at school some time after 9:00. Mac is given a tardy pass and I am told he is to walk upstairs to his classroom. Alone. I am more than a little unsettled by the office lady’s tone. So I ignore her completely and acquiesce when Mac says he is scared and wants me to walk him up. He is 6. He is small. He has never been late to school before. (And he will never be late again, after this experience.) We are almost to the 2nd floor when we are stopped. I have been followed. I am told parents cannot be on the classroom floors. I tell her, in no uncertain terms, that Mac is MY CHILD! And that "you people can’t keep telling me what to do with him!" It is a beautiful moment of how not to behave at your child’s school in front of your child. I offer Mac the option of coming home with me. He declines. I kiss him and Sailor and I leave. I am sobbing. Sailor is as furious as I am. “Those people owe you a serious apology for making you cry, Mommy!”
I find out late in the day that I have inadvertently blown off a meeting with the principal. “I never got confirmation,” I email him.
The only thing that makes the day halfway decent is that Sailor is well-behaved. And I find metal thermoses at Borders for $6. By the time I get Mac from school late in the afternoon I have already arranged to take him on a tour of a charter school on Thursday morning.
Which Mac is uncertain about. “I have to miss school?”
I decide that he will have the whole day off. With me. Without Sailor. We visit the school. Mac says he likes the new school. But he prefers his own school. I decide it’s his call. We go to lunch. Mac buys flowers for my mom. We buy jibbitz from a very cool new kids’ book store. And some books. Mac chooses a book on slavery and for Sailor we choose a book on finger painting. We play in a small park district playground and Mac makes friends with a few little boys. We go inside to use the bathroom. We buy a necklace for Mac’s kindergarten teacher from last year who is about to have her 1st baby and will be leaving our school for good on Friday. We drive to Target. We have a very nice day together. I realize just how big is this child, whom I insist is still just a baby, when I see toddlers lunching with their mothers. My child seems large. Slightly messy with his crazy hair and glasses, and just out of place. I enjoy my time with him immensely while also longing for those days of our original togetherness.
Thursday relaxes us. We are together. We settle our decision about school. We don’t have to listen to Sailor whine about anything. And so it goes.
We have all learned some important lessons on how to treat one another this week. Sailor runs right to me at pick-up: “My mommy is here!”
Some time during the week Mac brings a form home in his folder that says we are poor enough to receive not the reduced price hot lunch but the free hot lunch. I am mortified. I can afford the full price of $1.85 a day on the rare day that I allow Mac to eat a coveted hot lunch. And I can certainly afford the 40 cents of the reduced price. But based on the numbers I supplied (no, I did not lie) Mac can get his lunch for free anytime he wants to.
At another point my mom brings up some groceries from Coscto. Or more accurately Sailor brings them up.
“Nana is very nice to bring us food,” Mac says.
“That’s beez she is our gather fooder,” Sailor says.
At another point Sailor suddenly decides he needs crutches. “Croutches,” he calls them. “Here’s my croutch!” he says, picking up a tube of cardboard. I am laughing hysterically. I have not heard that word since I was 7 and had a strangely dysarthric friend.
I bring Sailor to the PTA meeting on Friday morning where he earns a well-behaved child comment and gives me an excuse to leave early. We gift Mrs. K and she cries. I cry. Sailor refuses to take a photo with her or of us. We cry some more. I pass on some unsolicited advice regarding epidurals, wipes warmers and strollers. We say goodbye. And then I come back to tell her one more thing, “More important than goodbye is thank you.” This one will be sorely, sorely missed!
We book- and shoe-shop (I am sensing a trend here, are you?) but forego lunch (Sailor has been on a long hunger strike) and play in a playground. It’s summer-warm outside. I am exhausted when we get Mac from school and take the kids to the playground near school. I have no plans to stay up past 8:00 tonight. We are watching StarWars. I won’t give the boys back their lightsabers, despite their daily requests. So they are “battling” with lightsabers they’ve made from a connecter toy. It’s been a long and very stressful week.
Week 4
Mac calls home from the school office during lunch recess. He hurt his cheek. He wants me to pick him up. The office lady assures me he is fine and I convince him to stay the last 2 hours.
8:30 pm. He should be sound asleep. He is hysterically in tears. “I had a hard day at school today,” he cries, “and I don’t like being at school for so long. I don’t get to see you too often,” he wails.
He has suffered the following assaults today: he banged into a pole in the playground and smacked his cheek, one of the French girls stepped on his foot, and the librarian elbowed him in the head, “but she said she was sorry.” Oh, and his new glasses are broken.
I look at him tonight in bed and see such a very little boy. Who in their right mind sends a child this small away for the whole day? Who? I ask! Who?! It’s insane, is what it is!
“I have one foot out the door already,” I tell Mrs. K. She is nearing the end of her pregnancy and will be leaving soon. “Race you!” I say, only half joking.
While Mac is at school I spend the day playing with Sailor. Literally. We drawk (former Mac-speak for “draw with chalk”), blow bubbles, play tag (really! Mommy running! in sandals), learn about funnels, and play a car game in the playroom. I realizedjust how much harder it would be to be single mom to one child than two. And I also remember what it was like when I had just Mac and had time to spend with him. No business to run, no PTA newsletter to get out, no little brother to distract him with StarWars play, no… crazy life. It was a joy to spend my day playing with my child.
Sailor started tap class this afternoon. He loves it. Mac makes the official decision to drop out of TaiKwonDo. “I thought about it while I was sitting on the bench after I hurt my cheek,” he tells me, “and I decided I am just absolutely not doing it.” Alrighty then.
Welcome to another Monday in Hell – I mean 1st grade.
And now it’s Friday. I hate school so much I don’t even want to write about it.
The best part of the week was when Sailor asked for a gumball for lunch and when I tell him I don’t know where to get one he tells me, “the Laundromat,” remembering the gumball I let him have last week when we were washing our comforters.
Have to go write checks to the school…picture day, I chose the $17 package; and the classroom wants $20 for upcoming events, but I told the room mother we should just call it even since I just paid $23 to replace Mac's stolen lunchbox! I can't wait to see what she says!
8:30 pm. He should be sound asleep. He is hysterically in tears. “I had a hard day at school today,” he cries, “and I don’t like being at school for so long. I don’t get to see you too often,” he wails.
He has suffered the following assaults today: he banged into a pole in the playground and smacked his cheek, one of the French girls stepped on his foot, and the librarian elbowed him in the head, “but she said she was sorry.” Oh, and his new glasses are broken.
I look at him tonight in bed and see such a very little boy. Who in their right mind sends a child this small away for the whole day? Who? I ask! Who?! It’s insane, is what it is!
“I have one foot out the door already,” I tell Mrs. K. She is nearing the end of her pregnancy and will be leaving soon. “Race you!” I say, only half joking.
While Mac is at school I spend the day playing with Sailor. Literally. We drawk (former Mac-speak for “draw with chalk”), blow bubbles, play tag (really! Mommy running! in sandals), learn about funnels, and play a car game in the playroom. I realizedjust how much harder it would be to be single mom to one child than two. And I also remember what it was like when I had just Mac and had time to spend with him. No business to run, no PTA newsletter to get out, no little brother to distract him with StarWars play, no… crazy life. It was a joy to spend my day playing with my child.
Sailor started tap class this afternoon. He loves it. Mac makes the official decision to drop out of TaiKwonDo. “I thought about it while I was sitting on the bench after I hurt my cheek,” he tells me, “and I decided I am just absolutely not doing it.” Alrighty then.
Welcome to another Monday in Hell – I mean 1st grade.
And now it’s Friday. I hate school so much I don’t even want to write about it.
The best part of the week was when Sailor asked for a gumball for lunch and when I tell him I don’t know where to get one he tells me, “the Laundromat,” remembering the gumball I let him have last week when we were washing our comforters.
Have to go write checks to the school…picture day, I chose the $17 package; and the classroom wants $20 for upcoming events, but I told the room mother we should just call it even since I just paid $23 to replace Mac's stolen lunchbox! I can't wait to see what she says!
Week 3
Monday afternoon I finally have an audience with the Pope. I mean, with Mac’s teacher. We talk about shoes. We talk about the weather. We get down to business. We talk for nearly 45 minutes while my boys play in the school playground with a friend and her daughters. I feel I have made progress. Halfway thru our conference I am asked, “So what is it you want here?” “This,” I tell the teacher, indicating out little tete-a-tete. I just want to know her. To know who has my child all day. And I want her to know me. To know whose child she has. To understand that I think my child really belongs home with me, although I understand intellectually that he belongs in this school. Maybe not this school, though… I am starting to think…
Tuesday. Summer is back. It's warm out! I want to be out getting ice cream or reading on the back porch even now!
School is going somewhat better but I am hearing from parent after parent that they are not happy with 1st grade, that it needs an overhaul, that there is a lot of teasing already, etc. Makes me sad. But my little bespectacled 1st grader seems to be doing much better since I let him stay home last Thursday to recuperate from just being too tired. And we have started a 7pm bedtime, which helps also, tho it makes it a little crazy to try to visit with him, do homework, eat dinner and get to bed and then I have so little time with my little man! That's barely 4 hours (if we read for 1/2 an hour) plus 2 hours in the morning, which means THE DAMN TEACHER HAS MY CHILD MORE THAN I DO! I HATE THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!! But what am I to do? And then to make it worse, I have to work a lot on Saturdays now! And I have NO time that is just for Mac and me, except our 30 minute walk to get Sailor on Tuesdays! No, I am not complaining, just coming to a clearer understanding that soon my baby will be in college and I will only see him on holidays, and then he will get married and I will see him a few days a week if I am lucky! I need to have more babies!
Sailor went for his shots today he cried bravely when he learned he had to have them but then stopped when I explained that he needed them so he would not get very sick. He actually watched the 1st two and DID NOT CRY! But the 3rd one stung and he cried in earnest, as if he'd been truly hurt, either physically or emotionally (and he lamented later that he was in fact not brave because he did cry). He has the most beautiful crying face, when it just crumples.
I have been working on the school newsletter (I am the new editor this year -- yay me!), which seems to basically be a public thank you note from the PTA president. And I have a sinus infection so I think I am going to have some hot tea and go to bed!
Thursday
I would like to know how many times in a row I have to listen to Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girls.” I would also like to know why my 4-year-old has consistently chosen this song, on repeat, as his regular night time “lullaby” music.
Mac cried thru TaiKwonDo today.
Mac’s lunchbox was stolen yesterday. From his locker. Sailor and I spend half an hour looking everywhere in the school where Mac could possibly have accidentally left it yesterday. I even send Sailor into the boys’ bathroom. Nothing. Now a lunch box can be had for $4 or $5 right now, depending on where you shop. The metal thermos inside, however, is $15 if you can even find one. That’s the part that has my panties in a twist! That and one of the teachers denouncing Mac’s claim of theft with a perky, “Now I am sure it will turn up in a few days.” Turn up? From where? From the lunch box dimension, perhaps? Thank goodness Mac reports having actually eaten everything I packed him yesterday. Lest there be festering carrots and a mouldy pbj rotting in his box when and if we ever do find it. So Sailor and I go to Target and buy a new lunch box. Spiderman. Guaranteed not to be the focal point of recent teasing as his Little Einsteins box has been. Thermos: $15. I even go so far as to question whether or not Mac himself had anything to do with the box’s mysterious disappearance, as his claims of teasing (“That’s a babyish lunchbox,” as heard from other 1st grade children who are supposed to be his friends.) have worsened again over the past couple of days. I mean, who could blame the boy if he really wanted to get rid of such the object of ridicule? Though Mac should know I would buy him a new one if he were to have asked. He denies any involvement in the box’s disappearance. As does his pretty but surly locker partner.
Friday night. 6:40 pm. I want to go for ice cream. It’s 89 degrees outside. Instead I am trapped in my living room with Luke Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi. I can hear normal, non-StarWars-obsessed children playing outside. It’s been a long and exhausting week. For the children. For me. I have had a sinus infection or maybe just a cold since Tuesday and have been dragging myself around from one activity to the next, one chore to another. I feel like crap. The school principal emailed me to tell me he was out sick. How nice for him. Mommies – especially single mommies – don’t get sick days. And no matter how I try to explain my physical lack of well-being to my children they persist in insisting I do everything here at home. Sailor’s birthday party is on Sunday and I have NOTHING done for it and somehow the house is still a mess.
Ah, our good news for the day is the return of the lunch box. “A third-grader gave it to me,” Mac tells me. Not sure where this third-grader got my child’s lunch box. Of course he now prefers his new Spiderman lunchbox anyway, but at least I have the $15 thermos back.
Sailor has a new nickname at home, which he despises. It’s Beez-I, which is how he says, “Because I.” I think he thinks I am calling him Bee’s Eye.
We play in the nearby playground after school today. I find it interesting how much better the children play and get along when they are not on school property. We play til 5:00, which leaves us 2 hours to walk home, eat dinner, and do whatever. The kids choose StarWars as their Friday night video and I am tempted to let them see it thru to the end. Because I love letting my kids watch people shoot each other up with “blasters,” StarWars’ code word for guns. But now it’s 7pm and bedtime rules prevail. Mac asks to still go for ice cream. I want to say yes. Should I? Maybe the kids would sleep slightly later in the morning if we go to bed at 8 instead of 7 on a Friday night. Hmmm….
Saturday morning the tasks of mounting Sailor’s birthday party tomorrow are daunting. So I fuss at the boys all morning and threaten Sailor with a party cancellation if they won’t help me. Then I leave for work for the better part of the day. When I return I am full of energy until I step into my house and see just how much really still is left to be done. I want to call up a girlfriend and have her join me for a bottle of wine and a cheesy flick so we can do the goody bags and piñata. My wonderful mom surprises me with a kindly offer to come up for an hour and spends the whole afternoon. We bake, we clean, we iron, we organize, we plan and brainstorm. We order pizza and drink wine and it is perhaps the best afternoon I have spent with my mom in a very long time.
Mac and Sailor help a little and play. Then I hear Sailor follow Mac into the bathroom. “Do you have to just go pee?” Sailor is asking. I do not hear Mac’s reply but then Sailor says, “Cuz I don’t’ want to smell your poop!” Sailor has a self-proclaimed allergy to poop. Poor boy gags at the smell of his own poop!
Later I send the kids to the bathtub with my father to supervise. I assure him they can do the bath themselves. They starte the bath playing something cute. Sailor asks what he is supposed to say and Mac tells him to say whatever comes out of his imagination.
But soon enough, my dad comes out in disgust.
“They are peeing in the water.”
I assure him they frequently do this. “You were a little boy once,” I begin.
“We never peed in our bath!” Ah to have been a child growing up in the perfect 1930s. “Then they were drinking the water,” he goes on. I have told them a million times not to do that.
"You have to tell them not to do that!” I make them apologize to my dad for harassing him.
By a little after 8:30 both boys are miraculously asleep and I am just about ready for the party at 10:00 tomorrow morning. 13 children ranging in age from 2 to 6 will be here, assumedly all dressed up in real party clothes (as specified on our invitation – as if one should have to specify dressing in party clothes for a party!!!!!!!!!) for a good, old fashioned party, complete with pin the tail on the donkey, a piñata, party hats and blowers, and porcelain cupcake decorations that are from my mother’s childhood. Bring ‘em on!
Tuesday. Summer is back. It's warm out! I want to be out getting ice cream or reading on the back porch even now!
School is going somewhat better but I am hearing from parent after parent that they are not happy with 1st grade, that it needs an overhaul, that there is a lot of teasing already, etc. Makes me sad. But my little bespectacled 1st grader seems to be doing much better since I let him stay home last Thursday to recuperate from just being too tired. And we have started a 7pm bedtime, which helps also, tho it makes it a little crazy to try to visit with him, do homework, eat dinner and get to bed and then I have so little time with my little man! That's barely 4 hours (if we read for 1/2 an hour) plus 2 hours in the morning, which means THE DAMN TEACHER HAS MY CHILD MORE THAN I DO! I HATE THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!! But what am I to do? And then to make it worse, I have to work a lot on Saturdays now! And I have NO time that is just for Mac and me, except our 30 minute walk to get Sailor on Tuesdays! No, I am not complaining, just coming to a clearer understanding that soon my baby will be in college and I will only see him on holidays, and then he will get married and I will see him a few days a week if I am lucky! I need to have more babies!
Sailor went for his shots today he cried bravely when he learned he had to have them but then stopped when I explained that he needed them so he would not get very sick. He actually watched the 1st two and DID NOT CRY! But the 3rd one stung and he cried in earnest, as if he'd been truly hurt, either physically or emotionally (and he lamented later that he was in fact not brave because he did cry). He has the most beautiful crying face, when it just crumples.
I have been working on the school newsletter (I am the new editor this year -- yay me!), which seems to basically be a public thank you note from the PTA president. And I have a sinus infection so I think I am going to have some hot tea and go to bed!
Thursday
I would like to know how many times in a row I have to listen to Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girls.” I would also like to know why my 4-year-old has consistently chosen this song, on repeat, as his regular night time “lullaby” music.
Mac cried thru TaiKwonDo today.
Mac’s lunchbox was stolen yesterday. From his locker. Sailor and I spend half an hour looking everywhere in the school where Mac could possibly have accidentally left it yesterday. I even send Sailor into the boys’ bathroom. Nothing. Now a lunch box can be had for $4 or $5 right now, depending on where you shop. The metal thermos inside, however, is $15 if you can even find one. That’s the part that has my panties in a twist! That and one of the teachers denouncing Mac’s claim of theft with a perky, “Now I am sure it will turn up in a few days.” Turn up? From where? From the lunch box dimension, perhaps? Thank goodness Mac reports having actually eaten everything I packed him yesterday. Lest there be festering carrots and a mouldy pbj rotting in his box when and if we ever do find it. So Sailor and I go to Target and buy a new lunch box. Spiderman. Guaranteed not to be the focal point of recent teasing as his Little Einsteins box has been. Thermos: $15. I even go so far as to question whether or not Mac himself had anything to do with the box’s mysterious disappearance, as his claims of teasing (“That’s a babyish lunchbox,” as heard from other 1st grade children who are supposed to be his friends.) have worsened again over the past couple of days. I mean, who could blame the boy if he really wanted to get rid of such the object of ridicule? Though Mac should know I would buy him a new one if he were to have asked. He denies any involvement in the box’s disappearance. As does his pretty but surly locker partner.
Friday night. 6:40 pm. I want to go for ice cream. It’s 89 degrees outside. Instead I am trapped in my living room with Luke Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi. I can hear normal, non-StarWars-obsessed children playing outside. It’s been a long and exhausting week. For the children. For me. I have had a sinus infection or maybe just a cold since Tuesday and have been dragging myself around from one activity to the next, one chore to another. I feel like crap. The school principal emailed me to tell me he was out sick. How nice for him. Mommies – especially single mommies – don’t get sick days. And no matter how I try to explain my physical lack of well-being to my children they persist in insisting I do everything here at home. Sailor’s birthday party is on Sunday and I have NOTHING done for it and somehow the house is still a mess.
Ah, our good news for the day is the return of the lunch box. “A third-grader gave it to me,” Mac tells me. Not sure where this third-grader got my child’s lunch box. Of course he now prefers his new Spiderman lunchbox anyway, but at least I have the $15 thermos back.
Sailor has a new nickname at home, which he despises. It’s Beez-I, which is how he says, “Because I.” I think he thinks I am calling him Bee’s Eye.
We play in the nearby playground after school today. I find it interesting how much better the children play and get along when they are not on school property. We play til 5:00, which leaves us 2 hours to walk home, eat dinner, and do whatever. The kids choose StarWars as their Friday night video and I am tempted to let them see it thru to the end. Because I love letting my kids watch people shoot each other up with “blasters,” StarWars’ code word for guns. But now it’s 7pm and bedtime rules prevail. Mac asks to still go for ice cream. I want to say yes. Should I? Maybe the kids would sleep slightly later in the morning if we go to bed at 8 instead of 7 on a Friday night. Hmmm….
Saturday morning the tasks of mounting Sailor’s birthday party tomorrow are daunting. So I fuss at the boys all morning and threaten Sailor with a party cancellation if they won’t help me. Then I leave for work for the better part of the day. When I return I am full of energy until I step into my house and see just how much really still is left to be done. I want to call up a girlfriend and have her join me for a bottle of wine and a cheesy flick so we can do the goody bags and piñata. My wonderful mom surprises me with a kindly offer to come up for an hour and spends the whole afternoon. We bake, we clean, we iron, we organize, we plan and brainstorm. We order pizza and drink wine and it is perhaps the best afternoon I have spent with my mom in a very long time.
Mac and Sailor help a little and play. Then I hear Sailor follow Mac into the bathroom. “Do you have to just go pee?” Sailor is asking. I do not hear Mac’s reply but then Sailor says, “Cuz I don’t’ want to smell your poop!” Sailor has a self-proclaimed allergy to poop. Poor boy gags at the smell of his own poop!
Later I send the kids to the bathtub with my father to supervise. I assure him they can do the bath themselves. They starte the bath playing something cute. Sailor asks what he is supposed to say and Mac tells him to say whatever comes out of his imagination.
But soon enough, my dad comes out in disgust.
“They are peeing in the water.”
I assure him they frequently do this. “You were a little boy once,” I begin.
“We never peed in our bath!” Ah to have been a child growing up in the perfect 1930s. “Then they were drinking the water,” he goes on. I have told them a million times not to do that.
"You have to tell them not to do that!” I make them apologize to my dad for harassing him.
By a little after 8:30 both boys are miraculously asleep and I am just about ready for the party at 10:00 tomorrow morning. 13 children ranging in age from 2 to 6 will be here, assumedly all dressed up in real party clothes (as specified on our invitation – as if one should have to specify dressing in party clothes for a party!!!!!!!!!) for a good, old fashioned party, complete with pin the tail on the donkey, a piñata, party hats and blowers, and porcelain cupcake decorations that are from my mother’s childhood. Bring ‘em on!
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Week 2
With Mac in school all day my days at home seem very, very long. For example, the drama of yesterday morning seems as if it occurred easily many days ago. And yet it was just yesterday morning that I was told by a probably well-meaning male teacher that I could not enter the school with Mac to tell his teacher about his brand-new glasses. “All visitors must check in with the front office,” he informs me. “This is my school!” I want to shout! “I was here before any of you!” Instead I call Mac back. “They won’t let me in,” I tell him, “please give my note to your teacher and have a great day.” I try not to shed the welling tears as I make my way back to the stroller with Sailor. You are wondering why I didn’t just follow the male teacher’s instructions. The school grounds are small and packed with parents, teachers, and students before school. If I had been able to make my way thru the crowd and then waited for the students to enter the main door and then stopped in the office to explain what I was doing, I would have arrived upstairs just in time to interrupt Mrs. S’s morning. Which would not have gone over well.
This isn’t kindergarten anymore, Baby!
Instead I put Sailor into the stroller and head off with the daughter-in-law of my mom’s best friend toward the home of Sailor’s friend Taylor. We are going to try a little playgroup for our younger children, who will all be entering kindergarten together on fall 2009. I want to call it Club09.
We spot a coyote running down the middle of the street and heading west. Right. A coyote in the middle of the city. I call 911. A little frightened, to say the least.
Club09 gets off to a bad start. The girls head upstairs leaving Sailor alone to warm up with me. Another boy arrives with his mom and wants to play in the basement. Sailor follows. I attempt conversation with this mom over her boy’s very LOUD protestations of, "Stop talking, Mom! Stop talking!” OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN! And then, “Play pirates with me, Mom!” I give up and make up an excuse to head upstairs. The girls are playing with dollies. I am sequestered with the mom of the painfully demanding boy. We will not be attending Club09 again.
Sailor has a haircut. We shop for dinner food. We shop for party goods for his fast-approaching 4th birthday. After we have chosen a fun birthday pattern, I find a slightly less fun pattern for legitimately less money. I try to convince Sailor. He wants the first set we chose, but then says, “Get whatever you want, Mom,” in a very mature and understanding way. I get him the stuff we have already chosen, thus not saving myself probably $20. We go shoe shopping for Mac. Who is not with us. And Sailor wants Skechers. Even tho he has no fewer than 3 decent pair of gymshoes – one his, and two hand-me-downs. I buy the beloved Skechers, which he and Mac have been asking for since early spring. He spends the entire rest of the day talking about them. “I love my Skechers, Mom!” “Do you see my new Skechers?” “Did you really buy me Skechers?” “I LOVE my new Skechers, Mom!” and on and on. We have lunch with my dad and by the time we are done it’s almost 3:00 and we run off to get Mac a short time later after Sailor walks Maurice the dog and we discover that one of Mac’s French classmates lives right across the street.
I think we are dreadfully late. I think the bell has already rung. I walk fast. I expect to see Mac in a panic that I am not there, or at least a bit miffed. Mac and the rest of his class are nowhere to be seen. They exit the building several minutes later. This is when I know there is no way we would make it to the 3:45 drama class Mac is set to begin next week.
Back at home Mac tries on his new gymshoes. I think they might fit him in a few years. We drive back to the store and find a pair that not only fits better but looks better and also is a better make. I mention to the sales guy the “helpfulness” of the very un-knowledgeable staff earlier in the day.
We eat a snack plate of Swiss cheese, hearty rolls, apples, broccoli, carrots and veggie dogs for dinner.
And it is hard to believe all of that was just yesterday. No wonder I am tired.
Today is Tuesday, September 11, 2007. The 6-year anniversary.
Which I decide to downplay in my own little world. And for reasons I don’t quite understand I feel more at peace today than I have felt in a very long time. I listen to what my favorite radio has to say on the tragedy. I mix up a batch of homemade cookies for our local fire department while the boys eat breakfast. Normally I would keep my children home with me and not go far on this date. But it happens that today is Sailor’s first day of preschool, and I hate to have him miss out on today over something that happened before he was born.
We are running late to school. Or so I think. We leave 15 minutes later than usual. We run into all sorts of people on our walk. And it is freezing out. Mac is dressed in jeans (which I think are certifiably too small despite their “size 6” label), a white t-shirt, a red, blue and grey argyle vest, his new gym shoes, his glasses, and a fab new brown corduroy jacket I just got him for school. Undeniably the best dressed boy in the 1st grade. But perhaps also the geekiest? But why should I have to dress him down? More on this later.
Despite our late departure time we still have time to wait in line outside school. And I wonder about the real times of entry and dismissal at this school.
Sailor and I run to the bank on the way home. He complains he is cold and needs a blanket. Indeed there is a fall chill in the air.
We pack up our summer gear and haul it to the basement. We vacuum up the sand in the hallway. We play “tennis” in the backyard. I indulge Sailor and let him toss a few more water balloons off the porch.
He does everything in his power to procrastinate and put off getting ready for his first day of preschool. He eats while I iron his outfit: linen pants and a light blue embroidered button down shirt. It is warm enough for him to wear his sandals by the time 12:30 rolls around. We get to school on time, my sister along for “fanfare” and photo detail. Sailor is reluctant but I am amazingly proud of him that he does not cry. Of course, for me, listening to the cacophony of all the small children who do not want to be torn from their mothers brings me to tears. But I don’t want to upset Sailor so I point out that Teacher S really needs his help today with all these new kids. Sailor prefers to go to his comfort spot and I walk him to the beanbag. There we find the twin daughter of my childhood best friend. I introduce the two. I pick a Curious George book for Sailor and give him many kisses. I leave, dragging my sister with me, mid-sentence with Teacher S, who sees exactly what I must do!
Surprisingly, despite the fact that it is my almost-4-year-old’s first day of school, and despite the fact that we are remembering 9/11 today, my afternoon goes off without a hitch. I don’t even feel lonely at home. I have my afternoon planned: first I drop off my cookies, decorated with red, white and blue M&Ms, to the fire station. Then I come home and continue my fall cleaning project. I complete both the dining room and the living room, so that by the time Mac gets home he is truly wowed.
I have a mini-date with Mac after school. We stop at Starbucks on the walk to get Sailor. Mac orders a latte. Really. “I want exactly the same coffee you had the other day. It was so good.”
“Do you make a kid-sized latte?” I inquire of the stunned, is not somewhat amused, barista.
“No, I want a huge grown-up size one like you had,” Mac says.
Not!
Mac wants to know why I am pouring WOLE milk into his latte. “The W is silent,” I tell him.
I almost step on a beautiful insect that looks like two bright green leaves. We stop to inspect it and to move it off the walking path.
Mac tells me about his day.
“I peed on my face.”
“What?! How?!”
“My peeper was pointed up and I peed on my face.”
Pointed up? But that would not result in pee on his face. I need more of an explanation.
“I knew I couldn’t snap my pants if I unsnapped them so I tried to just pull them down but I couldn’t get them down all the way so my peeper was pointed up and I peed on my face.” I am laughing hysterically at this tragic event. “Billy helped me clean it up.” He does not seem upset by either the incident or my laughter. In fact I think he is pleased that he has amused me.
We are the second-to-last ones to pick up our preschooler. Sailor is happy to see us and we share a group hug! Teacher S said he smiled the while time.
The boys play outside school for 45 minutes, both peeing on a nearby tree when the urge hits, while I turn away and pretend they are not my children.
And for dinner on the illustrious occasion of Sailor’s first day of preschool during which he does not cry? Chuck E. Cheese’s, of course! Sailor’s choice. And a good one, at that.
I let my kids eat the crappy pizza and root beer on a school night (deciding we will wait to return to “Chucky,” as Sailor calls it, until Mac receives his first report card, which will have lots of good grades on it, earning him extra game tokens).
I have 4 more rooms to clean. Before Sailor’s birthday on Sunday. That is my goal.Mac has a playdate arranged for next Tuesday with a new boy named Nich.
Sailor is asleep by 8:20. Mac’s key time seems to be 8:45.
Life is good. I feel happy. The 6th anniversary of 9/11 is almost over. We continue to survive. No, to live.
Tomorrow is another day. We have learned not to take a moment of it for granted and to enjoy each bit we are given, from vacuuming the summer’s sand off the floor, to throwing water balloons with my almost-4-year-old, to enjoying a latte with my 6-year-old, to reading the boys a bedtime story from a Beverly Cleary book that is nearly 20 years older than I am, to looking closely at a beautiful and unique insect, to listening to my children tell my parents about their respective day at school today. It is life. Every day.
And so it goes. We will never forget. And so it goes.
Wednesday Sailor and I wake up earlier than Mac. When Mac finds us in the bathroom he is rumpled and grumbly. “I’m tiiiiiired,” he whimpers. “Brush your teeth and hop in the shower,” I suggest. I am so sympathetic. I am. Really. “It’s cold,” he whines. It is. Very.
Mac does not want to go to school. But he goes. Sailor doesn’t want to go to French. But he goes. I only stay for a minute. I am still so truly amazed that he lets me go so easily this year. He is reluctant to let me go, it’s true, but he does not put up a fuss.
After French I drive him and Taylor to soccer. He eats a few bites of lunch and we change him into his soccer uniform and he takes off. Literally. “Bye Mom!” Again I am stunned.
I am talking to a preschool mom I know at Whole Foods when Sailor asks to be removed from his seat in the shopping cart. “Uppie!” He is still so 2! Moments later he is asleep in my arms. I approach the checkout woman. “I need gefilte fish,” I tell her, “and I can’t find it.” She starts to tell me where I would find it but I cut her off. “And I need someone to get it for me.” Sailor is heavy and I cannot walk around the store in search of gefilte fish. She obliges me by bringing me one of each of 4 different varieties. I choose one and carry my baby and my dad’s gefilte fish to the car.
After I gently lay Sailor on my parents’ sofa I run upstairs. I check phone messages and find one garbled child message, which I assume is for Mac, followed by Mrs. K, Mac’s kindergarten teacher from last year, explaining that Mac is tired and sad and out of sorts and wants to talk to me. “What should I do?” I ask my mom, back downstairs. “Should I go get him?” It’s 2:30. I call the school and tell them I have to come for him, if they don’t mind, because of a nondescript “family thing.” “You’ll have to sign him out,” says the possessive, over-controlling secretary. “I’ll be there in ten minutes." I decide to drive and I am there in two. I sign Mac out and wait for him. And wait for him. And wait for him. I look around for Mrs. K to see if she can offer any insight into what happened during lunch recess that prompted her to call me. I have a conversation about the age of the school with the security guard. The principal comes out and we talk about the school newsletter, of which I am the new editor. “We have to be like this because of this newsletter,” says Mr. A, holding up his crossed fingers.
“We have to be like this,” I hold up my own crossed fingers, “because you have my kid!” I know he understands. I am in with the principal. He knows me. And I am much relieved.
At least 20 minutes pass before Mac arrives at the office, escorted by a little girl from his class. He does not seem surprised to see me. He looked exhausted.
On Thursday morning he asks to stay home. He is too tired to go to school. I am unable to disagree with him. I let him stay home. The boys play and basically trash the house, which I have worked very hard to clean this week in preparation for Sailor’s 4th birthday on Sunday.
I eat bagels and chat with my designer, who has come to help me give Mac’s room a facelift. We remove a garbage bag worth of stuffed animals from his pet net. We remove books. We take photos from the walls and move his personal art gallery. When we are done the room is bare, like mine. It looks neat and clean. We now need to schedule a day to paint.
Sailor protests going to his 2nd day of school. But again he goes with little fuss. Mac and I walk home. “Why can’t you home school me?” he asks. I take out a workbook when we get home. One of the many we did not complete this summer. An hour and a half later Mac has completed three pages. “This is why we can’t home school,” I point out. We walk to the zoo. It’s a warm day. Sunny. My sister comes along. I completely understand why Mac prefers a day at home to a day at school. I prefer it, too. Having him home with me, his mommy, where he belongs.
He bumps his lip on the rail by the seals. He bleeds everywhere. It’s the perfect excuse to get a snow cone. There are no snow cones. He stops crying when I suggest Starbucks. He orders water and I order a grande decaf iced mocha.
We pick up Sailor from school early but we are late to Mac’s first TaiKwonDo class anyway. We see right away that tardiness will not do. Mac’s reading buddy from last year is in his class. Brilliant! I can ask his mom if I can drive him to class so he can watch Mac while I get Sailor from school. Brilliant.
Mac has to pee. I run him to the bathroom. “We do not leave the room!” Master K bellows when we return. “We do not pee on the floor,” I wish to bellow back. Whatever. “I am a little afraid of my teacher,” Mac confesses. I can understand why. I am not afraid of the man but if I were six I would have peed in my pants from fright. But I can see the man has a sparkle in his eyes and I point this out to Mac. I can tell this class will do wonders for Mac and I wish we had started years ago. We watch the class and I read Sailor a story and he falls asleep in my lap.
I win the Master’s Golden Star for the day by answering a question right. “What does HWA mean, moms?!” he bellows. “Home work assignment,” I quip. He shakes my hand and praises me while playfully berating the veteran moms for not knowing.
We raid my parents fridge for Rosh Hashanah leftovers, clean the kitchen – really clean, as in down on my hands and knees with a sponge and scraping guck from under the dishwasher clean. And at 7:00 prompt, I have the boys in bed. That is the new plan. To have Mac in his bed by 7:00 and done reading stories by 7:30. If he is not so tired perhaps he will like school better.
Friday morning Mac does not want to go to school. But we made a deal yesterday morning when he woke up. He could stay home Thursday but he has to go to school Friday. We have a bad morning.
The kids return to their old habit of opening the bathroom door right before I end my shower, letting all my warm air out and all the cold house air in. I ask them kindly not to do this. I ask them kindly to please finish cleaning up their toys from the living room. They run out – leaving the door open! I shout something I am too ashamed to put in print.
We have a bad morning. The boys take too long to eat breakfast. I don’t get into the shower on time. I don’t get out of the shower on time. We are late for school. The shy mom from last year is walking away from school as we approach. “Good morning,” she says. I am surprised.
The school doors are still open, tho Mac’s class has already entered. We do not have to check in at the office. I kiss my boy. I apologize for our bad morning. I tell him how much I love him. I tell him to have a good day.
Outside school I meet up with a friend whose daughter is having as bad a time as Mac is, in terms of being exhausted by the new first grade schedule. Seems all the kids are. But her daughter is being particularly awful. She too wanted to stay home from school – which I have heard several parents say about their children – but then had a tantrum when her mother said she could stay home and rest.
Perhaps next week will be better. Tho I am told on Friday afternoon by Mrs. K that it takes the children roughly two months to get used to being in school all day for 1st grade. I have no memory of this hardship. I loved first grade. Children were not tired in the 1970s. We were just children.
Sailor and I spend three hours at the dollar store, Target and the shoe store. I am trying to muster enough strength and energy to get to the grocery store and laundormat. I don’t know if I have it in me today. Especially the hours required to wash and dry my down comforter, which has been peed on by both my children in their sleep this week. But after Sailor has a major meltdown over a StarWars toy I won’t by him for his birthday, he falls asleep in the shoe store. No, he is not in the stroller. He simply climbs upon a small bench used by customers to sit on while trying on shoes, and falls asleep. I alert the sales woman running the store because I am sure she has never had this happen in her store before.
Sailor is still asleep when I leave to get Mac from school. Mac is exhausted. He wants to come home and go to sleep. But because our weekend plans for Sailor’s birthday have completely gone up in smoke and required a total revamp - - which seems to happen every year – we have made new plans to go up to the suburbs tonight to get Sailor’s birthday photo taken. Poor Mac. He will not be in bed by 7:00 tonight.
Sailor hams it up. He does a great photo shoot. We go for dinner. The restaurant has been moved and redone. It looks like an old folks’ diner or a pancake house. It looks like crap and I say so. The waiter brings Mac apple juice instead of chocolate milk, forgets my sister’s water, does not offer us bread, and actually brings the bill before bringing the pizza because he says we did not order pizza. We pay $9 for the salad and receive two complimentary dinner cards from the manager.
We labor over which of Sailor’s photos to choose. We stop for hot chocolate – it is very cold out. The kids are asleep before 10pm. I feel terribly guilty. I have to work in the morning and I hope the kids will sleep until I have to leave.
As I fall asleep I think over the week. The best moment: On Monday morning I had a great deal of garbage to take out. Sailor was awake and Mac was still asleep. “I’ll take care of Mac,” Sailor told me.
It is Sailor who sleeps in on Saturday morning and my mom has to come up so I can go to work. He is adorable wrapped up in my bed sheet. I want to just stay and look at him. My bed was wet when I got out of it this morning. Oddly, I am sleeping in the wet spot, which has never happened before. I check myself to see if I am the offender. I am not.
“Mac did you pee in my bed?”
“No,” he says, “I peed in my own bed.” Sigh.
We strip his sheets and I ask him to please make sure mine are stripped when Sailor wakes up. I have not changed this many sheets since last year. It’s been at least 4 times this week. Mac says he is too tired to get up too pee. I remind him how much I hate changing sheets. I tell both boys they are no longer allowed pre-bed beverages.
At night I use all my energy to get the boys to bed so I can wrap Sailor’s birthday gifts and decorate the dining room.
Sailor will be 4 when he wakes up. He still seems so young to me. So two. Not that he is immature for almost 4. He is just so "second child." He still wants uppie, still cries a lot, still wants to be held. Mac was required to give up his baba milk on his 4th birthday yet I remember him as being so much more mature. Of course, Mac was a big brother to an almost-2-year-old when he turned 4.
Mac’s birthday creates a great deal of hoopla every year. There is not the same momentum to Sailor’s birthday because there was not the same momentum to his birth. Whereas I was in labor for 3 days before Mac was born, I woke up on a regular Tuesday morning and began labor while I was putting on my makeup on the day that would become Sailor’s birth day. A very different experience. But the joyous birth of my baby, nonetheless. “Read me the story of when I was a baby,” he requests, sleepily. Mac used to ask me to read him stories from my mouth, too. I whisper the story of his birth to him as he falls asleep.
And so we have a fun day planned tomorrow and the dining room is decorated and I hope that Sailor is able to leave behind his crabby attitude and begin fresh as a 4-year-old. Right.
This isn’t kindergarten anymore, Baby!
Instead I put Sailor into the stroller and head off with the daughter-in-law of my mom’s best friend toward the home of Sailor’s friend Taylor. We are going to try a little playgroup for our younger children, who will all be entering kindergarten together on fall 2009. I want to call it Club09.
We spot a coyote running down the middle of the street and heading west. Right. A coyote in the middle of the city. I call 911. A little frightened, to say the least.
Club09 gets off to a bad start. The girls head upstairs leaving Sailor alone to warm up with me. Another boy arrives with his mom and wants to play in the basement. Sailor follows. I attempt conversation with this mom over her boy’s very LOUD protestations of, "Stop talking, Mom! Stop talking!” OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN! And then, “Play pirates with me, Mom!” I give up and make up an excuse to head upstairs. The girls are playing with dollies. I am sequestered with the mom of the painfully demanding boy. We will not be attending Club09 again.
Sailor has a haircut. We shop for dinner food. We shop for party goods for his fast-approaching 4th birthday. After we have chosen a fun birthday pattern, I find a slightly less fun pattern for legitimately less money. I try to convince Sailor. He wants the first set we chose, but then says, “Get whatever you want, Mom,” in a very mature and understanding way. I get him the stuff we have already chosen, thus not saving myself probably $20. We go shoe shopping for Mac. Who is not with us. And Sailor wants Skechers. Even tho he has no fewer than 3 decent pair of gymshoes – one his, and two hand-me-downs. I buy the beloved Skechers, which he and Mac have been asking for since early spring. He spends the entire rest of the day talking about them. “I love my Skechers, Mom!” “Do you see my new Skechers?” “Did you really buy me Skechers?” “I LOVE my new Skechers, Mom!” and on and on. We have lunch with my dad and by the time we are done it’s almost 3:00 and we run off to get Mac a short time later after Sailor walks Maurice the dog and we discover that one of Mac’s French classmates lives right across the street.
I think we are dreadfully late. I think the bell has already rung. I walk fast. I expect to see Mac in a panic that I am not there, or at least a bit miffed. Mac and the rest of his class are nowhere to be seen. They exit the building several minutes later. This is when I know there is no way we would make it to the 3:45 drama class Mac is set to begin next week.
Back at home Mac tries on his new gymshoes. I think they might fit him in a few years. We drive back to the store and find a pair that not only fits better but looks better and also is a better make. I mention to the sales guy the “helpfulness” of the very un-knowledgeable staff earlier in the day.
We eat a snack plate of Swiss cheese, hearty rolls, apples, broccoli, carrots and veggie dogs for dinner.
And it is hard to believe all of that was just yesterday. No wonder I am tired.
Today is Tuesday, September 11, 2007. The 6-year anniversary.
Which I decide to downplay in my own little world. And for reasons I don’t quite understand I feel more at peace today than I have felt in a very long time. I listen to what my favorite radio has to say on the tragedy. I mix up a batch of homemade cookies for our local fire department while the boys eat breakfast. Normally I would keep my children home with me and not go far on this date. But it happens that today is Sailor’s first day of preschool, and I hate to have him miss out on today over something that happened before he was born.
We are running late to school. Or so I think. We leave 15 minutes later than usual. We run into all sorts of people on our walk. And it is freezing out. Mac is dressed in jeans (which I think are certifiably too small despite their “size 6” label), a white t-shirt, a red, blue and grey argyle vest, his new gym shoes, his glasses, and a fab new brown corduroy jacket I just got him for school. Undeniably the best dressed boy in the 1st grade. But perhaps also the geekiest? But why should I have to dress him down? More on this later.
Despite our late departure time we still have time to wait in line outside school. And I wonder about the real times of entry and dismissal at this school.
Sailor and I run to the bank on the way home. He complains he is cold and needs a blanket. Indeed there is a fall chill in the air.
We pack up our summer gear and haul it to the basement. We vacuum up the sand in the hallway. We play “tennis” in the backyard. I indulge Sailor and let him toss a few more water balloons off the porch.
He does everything in his power to procrastinate and put off getting ready for his first day of preschool. He eats while I iron his outfit: linen pants and a light blue embroidered button down shirt. It is warm enough for him to wear his sandals by the time 12:30 rolls around. We get to school on time, my sister along for “fanfare” and photo detail. Sailor is reluctant but I am amazingly proud of him that he does not cry. Of course, for me, listening to the cacophony of all the small children who do not want to be torn from their mothers brings me to tears. But I don’t want to upset Sailor so I point out that Teacher S really needs his help today with all these new kids. Sailor prefers to go to his comfort spot and I walk him to the beanbag. There we find the twin daughter of my childhood best friend. I introduce the two. I pick a Curious George book for Sailor and give him many kisses. I leave, dragging my sister with me, mid-sentence with Teacher S, who sees exactly what I must do!
Surprisingly, despite the fact that it is my almost-4-year-old’s first day of school, and despite the fact that we are remembering 9/11 today, my afternoon goes off without a hitch. I don’t even feel lonely at home. I have my afternoon planned: first I drop off my cookies, decorated with red, white and blue M&Ms, to the fire station. Then I come home and continue my fall cleaning project. I complete both the dining room and the living room, so that by the time Mac gets home he is truly wowed.
I have a mini-date with Mac after school. We stop at Starbucks on the walk to get Sailor. Mac orders a latte. Really. “I want exactly the same coffee you had the other day. It was so good.”
“Do you make a kid-sized latte?” I inquire of the stunned, is not somewhat amused, barista.
“No, I want a huge grown-up size one like you had,” Mac says.
Not!
Mac wants to know why I am pouring WOLE milk into his latte. “The W is silent,” I tell him.
I almost step on a beautiful insect that looks like two bright green leaves. We stop to inspect it and to move it off the walking path.
Mac tells me about his day.
“I peed on my face.”
“What?! How?!”
“My peeper was pointed up and I peed on my face.”
Pointed up? But that would not result in pee on his face. I need more of an explanation.
“I knew I couldn’t snap my pants if I unsnapped them so I tried to just pull them down but I couldn’t get them down all the way so my peeper was pointed up and I peed on my face.” I am laughing hysterically at this tragic event. “Billy helped me clean it up.” He does not seem upset by either the incident or my laughter. In fact I think he is pleased that he has amused me.
We are the second-to-last ones to pick up our preschooler. Sailor is happy to see us and we share a group hug! Teacher S said he smiled the while time.
The boys play outside school for 45 minutes, both peeing on a nearby tree when the urge hits, while I turn away and pretend they are not my children.
And for dinner on the illustrious occasion of Sailor’s first day of preschool during which he does not cry? Chuck E. Cheese’s, of course! Sailor’s choice. And a good one, at that.
I let my kids eat the crappy pizza and root beer on a school night (deciding we will wait to return to “Chucky,” as Sailor calls it, until Mac receives his first report card, which will have lots of good grades on it, earning him extra game tokens).
I have 4 more rooms to clean. Before Sailor’s birthday on Sunday. That is my goal.Mac has a playdate arranged for next Tuesday with a new boy named Nich.
Sailor is asleep by 8:20. Mac’s key time seems to be 8:45.
Life is good. I feel happy. The 6th anniversary of 9/11 is almost over. We continue to survive. No, to live.
Tomorrow is another day. We have learned not to take a moment of it for granted and to enjoy each bit we are given, from vacuuming the summer’s sand off the floor, to throwing water balloons with my almost-4-year-old, to enjoying a latte with my 6-year-old, to reading the boys a bedtime story from a Beverly Cleary book that is nearly 20 years older than I am, to looking closely at a beautiful and unique insect, to listening to my children tell my parents about their respective day at school today. It is life. Every day.
And so it goes. We will never forget. And so it goes.
Wednesday Sailor and I wake up earlier than Mac. When Mac finds us in the bathroom he is rumpled and grumbly. “I’m tiiiiiired,” he whimpers. “Brush your teeth and hop in the shower,” I suggest. I am so sympathetic. I am. Really. “It’s cold,” he whines. It is. Very.
Mac does not want to go to school. But he goes. Sailor doesn’t want to go to French. But he goes. I only stay for a minute. I am still so truly amazed that he lets me go so easily this year. He is reluctant to let me go, it’s true, but he does not put up a fuss.
After French I drive him and Taylor to soccer. He eats a few bites of lunch and we change him into his soccer uniform and he takes off. Literally. “Bye Mom!” Again I am stunned.
I am talking to a preschool mom I know at Whole Foods when Sailor asks to be removed from his seat in the shopping cart. “Uppie!” He is still so 2! Moments later he is asleep in my arms. I approach the checkout woman. “I need gefilte fish,” I tell her, “and I can’t find it.” She starts to tell me where I would find it but I cut her off. “And I need someone to get it for me.” Sailor is heavy and I cannot walk around the store in search of gefilte fish. She obliges me by bringing me one of each of 4 different varieties. I choose one and carry my baby and my dad’s gefilte fish to the car.
After I gently lay Sailor on my parents’ sofa I run upstairs. I check phone messages and find one garbled child message, which I assume is for Mac, followed by Mrs. K, Mac’s kindergarten teacher from last year, explaining that Mac is tired and sad and out of sorts and wants to talk to me. “What should I do?” I ask my mom, back downstairs. “Should I go get him?” It’s 2:30. I call the school and tell them I have to come for him, if they don’t mind, because of a nondescript “family thing.” “You’ll have to sign him out,” says the possessive, over-controlling secretary. “I’ll be there in ten minutes." I decide to drive and I am there in two. I sign Mac out and wait for him. And wait for him. And wait for him. I look around for Mrs. K to see if she can offer any insight into what happened during lunch recess that prompted her to call me. I have a conversation about the age of the school with the security guard. The principal comes out and we talk about the school newsletter, of which I am the new editor. “We have to be like this because of this newsletter,” says Mr. A, holding up his crossed fingers.
“We have to be like this,” I hold up my own crossed fingers, “because you have my kid!” I know he understands. I am in with the principal. He knows me. And I am much relieved.
At least 20 minutes pass before Mac arrives at the office, escorted by a little girl from his class. He does not seem surprised to see me. He looked exhausted.
On Thursday morning he asks to stay home. He is too tired to go to school. I am unable to disagree with him. I let him stay home. The boys play and basically trash the house, which I have worked very hard to clean this week in preparation for Sailor’s 4th birthday on Sunday.
I eat bagels and chat with my designer, who has come to help me give Mac’s room a facelift. We remove a garbage bag worth of stuffed animals from his pet net. We remove books. We take photos from the walls and move his personal art gallery. When we are done the room is bare, like mine. It looks neat and clean. We now need to schedule a day to paint.
Sailor protests going to his 2nd day of school. But again he goes with little fuss. Mac and I walk home. “Why can’t you home school me?” he asks. I take out a workbook when we get home. One of the many we did not complete this summer. An hour and a half later Mac has completed three pages. “This is why we can’t home school,” I point out. We walk to the zoo. It’s a warm day. Sunny. My sister comes along. I completely understand why Mac prefers a day at home to a day at school. I prefer it, too. Having him home with me, his mommy, where he belongs.
He bumps his lip on the rail by the seals. He bleeds everywhere. It’s the perfect excuse to get a snow cone. There are no snow cones. He stops crying when I suggest Starbucks. He orders water and I order a grande decaf iced mocha.
We pick up Sailor from school early but we are late to Mac’s first TaiKwonDo class anyway. We see right away that tardiness will not do. Mac’s reading buddy from last year is in his class. Brilliant! I can ask his mom if I can drive him to class so he can watch Mac while I get Sailor from school. Brilliant.
Mac has to pee. I run him to the bathroom. “We do not leave the room!” Master K bellows when we return. “We do not pee on the floor,” I wish to bellow back. Whatever. “I am a little afraid of my teacher,” Mac confesses. I can understand why. I am not afraid of the man but if I were six I would have peed in my pants from fright. But I can see the man has a sparkle in his eyes and I point this out to Mac. I can tell this class will do wonders for Mac and I wish we had started years ago. We watch the class and I read Sailor a story and he falls asleep in my lap.
I win the Master’s Golden Star for the day by answering a question right. “What does HWA mean, moms?!” he bellows. “Home work assignment,” I quip. He shakes my hand and praises me while playfully berating the veteran moms for not knowing.
We raid my parents fridge for Rosh Hashanah leftovers, clean the kitchen – really clean, as in down on my hands and knees with a sponge and scraping guck from under the dishwasher clean. And at 7:00 prompt, I have the boys in bed. That is the new plan. To have Mac in his bed by 7:00 and done reading stories by 7:30. If he is not so tired perhaps he will like school better.
Friday morning Mac does not want to go to school. But we made a deal yesterday morning when he woke up. He could stay home Thursday but he has to go to school Friday. We have a bad morning.
The kids return to their old habit of opening the bathroom door right before I end my shower, letting all my warm air out and all the cold house air in. I ask them kindly not to do this. I ask them kindly to please finish cleaning up their toys from the living room. They run out – leaving the door open! I shout something I am too ashamed to put in print.
We have a bad morning. The boys take too long to eat breakfast. I don’t get into the shower on time. I don’t get out of the shower on time. We are late for school. The shy mom from last year is walking away from school as we approach. “Good morning,” she says. I am surprised.
The school doors are still open, tho Mac’s class has already entered. We do not have to check in at the office. I kiss my boy. I apologize for our bad morning. I tell him how much I love him. I tell him to have a good day.
Outside school I meet up with a friend whose daughter is having as bad a time as Mac is, in terms of being exhausted by the new first grade schedule. Seems all the kids are. But her daughter is being particularly awful. She too wanted to stay home from school – which I have heard several parents say about their children – but then had a tantrum when her mother said she could stay home and rest.
Perhaps next week will be better. Tho I am told on Friday afternoon by Mrs. K that it takes the children roughly two months to get used to being in school all day for 1st grade. I have no memory of this hardship. I loved first grade. Children were not tired in the 1970s. We were just children.
Sailor and I spend three hours at the dollar store, Target and the shoe store. I am trying to muster enough strength and energy to get to the grocery store and laundormat. I don’t know if I have it in me today. Especially the hours required to wash and dry my down comforter, which has been peed on by both my children in their sleep this week. But after Sailor has a major meltdown over a StarWars toy I won’t by him for his birthday, he falls asleep in the shoe store. No, he is not in the stroller. He simply climbs upon a small bench used by customers to sit on while trying on shoes, and falls asleep. I alert the sales woman running the store because I am sure she has never had this happen in her store before.
Sailor is still asleep when I leave to get Mac from school. Mac is exhausted. He wants to come home and go to sleep. But because our weekend plans for Sailor’s birthday have completely gone up in smoke and required a total revamp - - which seems to happen every year – we have made new plans to go up to the suburbs tonight to get Sailor’s birthday photo taken. Poor Mac. He will not be in bed by 7:00 tonight.
Sailor hams it up. He does a great photo shoot. We go for dinner. The restaurant has been moved and redone. It looks like an old folks’ diner or a pancake house. It looks like crap and I say so. The waiter brings Mac apple juice instead of chocolate milk, forgets my sister’s water, does not offer us bread, and actually brings the bill before bringing the pizza because he says we did not order pizza. We pay $9 for the salad and receive two complimentary dinner cards from the manager.
We labor over which of Sailor’s photos to choose. We stop for hot chocolate – it is very cold out. The kids are asleep before 10pm. I feel terribly guilty. I have to work in the morning and I hope the kids will sleep until I have to leave.
As I fall asleep I think over the week. The best moment: On Monday morning I had a great deal of garbage to take out. Sailor was awake and Mac was still asleep. “I’ll take care of Mac,” Sailor told me.
It is Sailor who sleeps in on Saturday morning and my mom has to come up so I can go to work. He is adorable wrapped up in my bed sheet. I want to just stay and look at him. My bed was wet when I got out of it this morning. Oddly, I am sleeping in the wet spot, which has never happened before. I check myself to see if I am the offender. I am not.
“Mac did you pee in my bed?”
“No,” he says, “I peed in my own bed.” Sigh.
We strip his sheets and I ask him to please make sure mine are stripped when Sailor wakes up. I have not changed this many sheets since last year. It’s been at least 4 times this week. Mac says he is too tired to get up too pee. I remind him how much I hate changing sheets. I tell both boys they are no longer allowed pre-bed beverages.
At night I use all my energy to get the boys to bed so I can wrap Sailor’s birthday gifts and decorate the dining room.
Sailor will be 4 when he wakes up. He still seems so young to me. So two. Not that he is immature for almost 4. He is just so "second child." He still wants uppie, still cries a lot, still wants to be held. Mac was required to give up his baba milk on his 4th birthday yet I remember him as being so much more mature. Of course, Mac was a big brother to an almost-2-year-old when he turned 4.
Mac’s birthday creates a great deal of hoopla every year. There is not the same momentum to Sailor’s birthday because there was not the same momentum to his birth. Whereas I was in labor for 3 days before Mac was born, I woke up on a regular Tuesday morning and began labor while I was putting on my makeup on the day that would become Sailor’s birth day. A very different experience. But the joyous birth of my baby, nonetheless. “Read me the story of when I was a baby,” he requests, sleepily. Mac used to ask me to read him stories from my mouth, too. I whisper the story of his birth to him as he falls asleep.
And so we have a fun day planned tomorrow and the dining room is decorated and I hope that Sailor is able to leave behind his crabby attitude and begin fresh as a 4-year-old. Right.
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