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.
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