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!