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!