This is it. The final two days of kindergarten. I am melancholy. Miss H – Mrs K – has been the best teacher we could have asked for. Kind and concerned yet firm and fair. She did well by my child. She did well by me.
We run errands this morning after Mac dresses himself impeccably in a pair of khaki shorts complete with new belt, and a Ralph Lauren shirt that he received from the Australian girl for his birthday. He is smashing. We have one of his last three sessions with his talking doctor. Then he eats leftover grilled cheese in the car on the way to school. And nothing is different. All is the same. We wait. The kids chat and play. Mrs K opens the door to retrieve them for the afternoon. I dodge into line to kiss Mac and remind him to be good. The kids file in excited for another afternoon in their beloved classroom with their beloved teacher. The door closes. Late-comers run but are too late and have to go thru the main door. It’s the same as always. There is no indication that it all ends tomorrow. This comfortable little group. Of moms, dad, children, siblings, backpacks, strollers. We have grown so accustomed to one another that we no longer even feel the need to make idle chit chat with everyone. And tomorrow will be our last day of this comfortable, homey feeling.
We have a play with the Australian family after school. One of the French girls comes along, which pits boys against girls. Not aggressively, but still. I enjoy a chat with the mum, but I feel we don’t get to discuss much. We agree to spend some time at the beach together this summer. I am loathe to get mostly naked in front of so many of my mom friends this summer. And I wonder if there is a statute of limitations against 39-year-old women wearing bikinis at the beach. I guess I will know I am too old when I know I am too old.
We have already scheduled a beach date – weather permitting – with another of the French families. I fear losing touch with the parents over the summer and having no one to hang out with, either by default or by choice.
I wonder why I make such a big deal out of these events: end of school and such. It’s just one of so many, which will take place year after year. And yet, I think about whether or not Mac might fit into the same clothes he wore for his first day. And whether or not I should wear the same outfit I wore. Or if it even matters. Or for that matter why I even think about it. Our summer schedule literally starts Wednesday, not a day to spare, to rest, and yet I am still stroking melancholy.
I just
Don’t
Want it
To end.
But it will. Like every thing else. And I have to realize that kindergarten will not be my end-all. I thought this was it. This was our destiny. But I see it’s yet another stepping stone in this grand mystery we call life.
I am such a cliché.
Tuesday. I almost write “Friday.” It’s not the end of the week, just the end of the school year.
A normal morning. Pancakes. Hash browns. Sailor whining and crying because we don’t have blueberries for his pancakes. Mac moaning about starvation when I get angry and say, “Fine. I’ll go take a shower and you guys need baths and we’ll get ready to go and we’ll go to the store for blueberries.” A normal morning.
And we are almost late for our last day of kindergarten. Did I just say “our”? Indeed. But it has been “our” year. I have been as involved as a parent could have been.
Mac marvels that he went into kindergarten 5 and came out 6.
At drop off the paparazzi from September is back. There are digital cameras and video cameras popping and whirring and flashing. All the parents are here. And the kids act no differently from any other day. It’s all normal. Except for parents calling their children’s names and “turn around!” as they disappear into the big school for the last time as kindergarteners.
And then I utter the words, “I just can’t deal!” and the tears begin to fall. Mrs. K waves at her audience of parents. “Good-bye!” she says. She has a doctor appointment and will leave before dismissal.
Suddenly I realize this is it! I run up the stairs. “Good bye,” I say, and we hug, a long hug. “Thank you,” I say, through tears, “for everything.”
“Take care of your babies this summer,” she tells me, “they are really wonderful boys.” She doesn’t want me to cry. I can’t help it. It’s heartbreaking. Really.
Other moms follow my lead and line up to say goodbye and hug Mrs. K. She is a fab teacher. We will miss her a great deal.
The door closes. But no one leaves. We parents linger. And linger. What are we waiting for? I pick the Australian mom to chat with and we walk off together.
Sailor and I stop at the grocery for a $4 bag of whole wheat flour. I have it in my head to make a huge batch of cookies for the children for after school.
Sailor and I bake. The kitchen is a mess. He wants to play games in the living room. We play for a bit and then head to school. We are very early. I walk slowly. I invite Sailor to lie down and he is out in a blink. Everyone EVERYONE is at pickup!
The principal winds thru the crowd.
It’s a madhouse of parents and cameras and new babies and friends. The cameras come out again and we capture our small children’s exit from the world of kindergarten. I capture once and for all the beauty of my little boy running out to greet me with that smile that I love. The same way he has greeted me all year, and for the two years of preschool preceding.
He takes off toward the playground and I wind my way thru the absolute masses of people.
We hand out cookies. Olivia and her mom hand out popsicles. Some middle graders hand out frozen chocolate bananas. No one discriminates. Everyone is welcome to share.
One of the French girls tells me in not-quite-perfected English that she wants to give her doll to Mac’s little brother. “Pourquoi?” I ask. “Why?”
“Because I don’t like she.” It’s a pretty doll with a beautiful dress. I am uncertain of the word for “borrow” in French. I will have to check in with her mom about this.
There are more cameras. Group photos. Solitary photos. Mac showing off his ability to pump his swing for the video camera. Someone gets hurt. Someone gets time out. And so it goes. They are still just little. Our little 5- and 6-year-olds. They can do so much now. But they are still just little.
Mac thinks he has graduated. He wants a huge party tonight, complete with presents, he says. He has to be happy with the chocolate chip cookies, I tell him. I let him eat many.
We walk home.
In Mac’s folder are all sorts of goodies. His sign-in sheets from the day one to the last, showing an amazing improvement in skill and ability. Other paperwork, his journal, which I tell him we should continue to write in every day for the summer. His report card. He has met all the expectations of the kindergarten curriculum. Except he is still not clearly able to identify coins and he is still working on fractions. Fractions?! I though this was kindergarten, not 2nd grade! He has far surpassed all of my expectations. He can read. He can write. He can do some math. Tie his shoes. Not to mention take a shower, make coffee….
And that’s all there is to it.
Tomorrow our summer vacation will officially start and I can start bitching about not wanting Mac in school all day next year – if I want to, but I don’t think I want to. I think I need to just get over it and deal! North Avenue Beach – HERE WE COME!
Friday, August 24, 2007
Week 36 – The Last Full Week
I have come to realize that kindergarten has been an all-encompassing reality for me. Our lives have revolved around Mac being a kindergartener for 9 months. It’s an end-all experience. And it’s just about to end. And I feel as if I am about to become completely disoriented. No more 12:35 drop-off. No more Mrs. K… No more 1 folder in the huge backpack… Sidenote on the folder: It’s the same one. As in, while Mac needed a new folder by Christmas, I have not replaced it. It’s tattered and completely unrecognizable for what it is. I feel bad. I want to give him a new folder for this last week. Should I? Maybe just to be nice. I already promised him I wouldn’t do this to him again next year.
It’s a rainy Monday morning. We have errands to run but instead we putz at home. Sailor won’t clean up his room, which he has trashed in a frenzy of giddiness and so after enough warnings I bag it all up. He leaves the house in his raincoat and boots a screaming, crying frog in firefighter boots. Mac walks patiently beside us, still getting used to his new umbrella. He wears his firefighter raincoat and army man boots. They are not outgrowing things in the right sequence. Or something.
While we wait for Mac at talking doctor Sailor wants a snack. I open a Tupperware of peanut butter and crackers.
“How come you didn’t make peanut butter salad?”
“Peanut butter salad?"
“When you put peanut butter on.”
“On celery?” I ask, remembering the snack he is remembering that I brought here back in April.
“Yeah.”
It begins to pour right after we arrive at school. We bring the kids inside to wait outside their classroom. Mac, a French girl, the German boy, the Japanese girl and the Australian girl are called to the band room for their dental exams. Free. Why not? Save me a buck or two. He tells me after school he has no cavities. Hurray!
Sailor and I return his summer shoes to a local children’s clothing store.
“They hurt his feet.”
“You can’t return these. He wore them outside.”
“Of course he wore them outside. How else would he know that they hurt his feet?”
Why don’t shoe sellers (aside from Nordstrom) understand this concept??????
We stock up on future birthday gifts at Borders. There is a 75% off sale area. $20 for a big bag of stuff. Way to shop, thrifty mama!
Sailor does not fall asleep in the car.
Our fave French family comes over after school. We discuss how overprotective I am.
The kids are running and screaming though the house. Haven’t we heard this one before?
It’s early to bed night. But my dad is in the kitchen trying to unclog our kitchen sink. Not sure what’s down there. He is working hard so I feel too guilty to be in bed with the kids so I call my mobile phone carrier to pay my bill. An hour later both boys have been sent to their rooms for wacky behaviour and I am beyond furious with this company that is adding charge after charge to my bill just to be rude at this point.
Which is when I realize I have lost my checkbook. AGAIN!!!!!!!!! ARGH!!!! All sorts of bills are due and the boys’ father is not coming with a check tomorrow because he is not coming tomorrow because he is still in the hospital. I email my one-Saturday-a-month work gig and ask about picking up some days this summer. And I dump out my entire desk in search of the checkbook. Which I do not find. I am so scroooood!
French class called and both boys are in. On the day I requested. On a 50% scholarship. I only have to pay $410 for both kids for the whole summer. ONLY!? Sailor is thrilled. Mac knows I am going to pay him to take Sailor. And I upped the ante: If he is well-behaved he will get a bonus. I am wondering if $1.25 a week will work on a 6-year-old. I am assuming yes.
Sailor still wants to know if he has to go to preschool. Mac told him 4 times yesterday “no” but he kept asking til he heard it from me. I tell him preschool is closed. I think he understands. Maybe we’ll drive by tomorrow to show him that no one is there.
Tuesday. “I haf go preschool today?” This is going to go on forever!
We clean out my desk and the car in search of my checkbook. It’s still lost. But we carry no fewer than 5 bags of recyclables, garbage, clothes, food and toys out of my car. The kitchen sink is still clogged. The kitchen is a consequent mess.
Over lunch Mac makes the following observations: “Mom, you are like a servant.” Pause. “Can you get me some ketchup?” But later as we are discussing something purple on my eye (eye liner? Veins? I have no idea.) Mac tells me, “You look pretty no matter what you are wearing.” He earns big hugs for that one.
At school I return some old yearbooks to the yearbook editor. “Next year I’ll do 1st grade and kindergarten,” I offer, by way of solidifying my commitment to help her out again next year. She goes on and on about having to meet with the new principal to see whether he liked the way I placed my photos without space around them or the way she placed hers with space better. And … on and on and all I wanted to do was tell her I’d help out again next year. Maybe she didn’t appreciate my artistic style. I think my pages are great!
“How do you make an apple?” Sailor asks on the way home. I explain about seeds and apple trees.
“You can plant money!” he informs me.
“Yeah? And what happens?” I ask. I am hopeful.
“You get a money tree.” Oh, Baby, if only!
Then a bit later, “Why do the white things on the dandelions blow away so easily.”
I explain about germination.
“Wow that’s deep!” I think he means my explanation. I am impressed by his adult response. Then, “Look at that puddle, Mommy!”
He lies back in the stroller a block from home, just as I am beginning to wonder if he should start giving up his naps. I walk around the block to give him time to settle into slumber before I bring him inside. My body is weary and I could use a nap myself.
Mac has a friend over after school. A boy of Swedish decent who has a slight accent, though I believe he was born here. He does not understand why he has to hold onto the stroller when we cross the streets and wants to know how soon til we’re at Mac’s house. This boy lives a ½ block from school, so our 6-block walk is a bit much for him.
The boy is well-behaved and I am pleased.
My sister comes over. Anna and her girls come over. We are all eight of us in the kitchen eating pizza and salad and drinking wine (just the adults) when the little boy’s dad and sister come for him. What a sight we must seem! The house is a mess and the kitchen is particularly bad, but everyone is happy.
I am tired and feel sick and want to go to bed. Sailor says, “So go to bed.” I do. The kids join me. My sister leaves.
Wednesday Sailor tries to not play soccer again. I take him into the bathroom to tell him how old this is getting. He goes back in to play. We have a play date planned with the triplets after soccer. We are almost 45 minutes late because there is no parking by their house and I can’t even get to the front of my house to check there for a spot.
Mac rides to school with the triplets, the only car I let him ride in besides my own. Sailor cries about how it’s not ok for Mac to go with them. I start to get nervous.
“Is something going to happen to him?”
“No!” He is just tired and feeling slighted.
“Ok, I won’t let him ride to school with them next time,” I promise. An easy promise to make as school ends before next Wednesday and the triplets’ family is planning to move away before the next school year.
I take Sailor to the Children’s Place to pay my charge card bill. We go to Old Navy to look around. My sister shows up. I spend $29 I don’t have. Sailor is asleep when I get home. We get a rock star parking spot. My boyfriend from two summers ago shows up as I am getting Sailor out of the car. He’s here to fix my clogged sink. Which I have apparently fixed myself as there is no clog when I run the water. He runs hot water to clear the pipes of the corrosive drano and checks to be sure the sink will drain if full. The sink is fixed in a matter of minutes. We have to find other ways to fill the rest of the hour he has set aside to help me out.
My dad makes me call the plumber to tell him the sink no longer needs fixing.
It’s chilly out and Sailor is still asleep. I carry him to the stroller and pick up Mac. When he wakes up after we drop Mac at FTK he asks me why he is sleeping in the stroller. I explain that he fell asleep in the car and then he slept on the sofa… “Who babysat me?” he wants to know. Then, “Where’s Mac?” This must be so weird for him to fall asleep in the car and wake up in the stroller.
8:30 pm. One hour and 10 minutes earlier Sailor asks for 10 more minutes to play. Which I grant. I begin the bed-time routine, as it were, at 7:30. At 8:30 I am carrying a crying Sailor back to his bed. Mac is crestfallen that I have had to yell at them both. Why are we still up an HOUR after I started to put them to bed. An HOUR! This should take maybe 30 minutes! At the most. The have their pj’s on, they have had stories read, they have both eaten snacks (which they requested at 8:00) and now it’s 8:30! THIS IS WHY I AM TIRED!
2:15 A.M. Sailor is in my bed. I bring him back to his own. He comes right back out, as he did last night. “We’re staying in our own beds all night tonight, remember?” I am gentle.
“I can’t. I am scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of the flump?”
“The flump? What flump?”
“The ka-chunk.”
Oh boy. “Ok, let’s go see.”
I carry him back in and locate the source of the flump and ka-chunk.
“We just have to close your window.” I do. He asks for one more blanket.
I’m starving!
Friday. The last one of the school year. There’s already a finality to things, yet we keep going on as if everything is not about to change completely. Plans are being discussed: the German family will return to Germany for a month, my fave French family is traveling to Mexico for two weeks, the triplets will be in Michigan for most of the summer… Our plans? The beach! Just blocks from our home and a real city getaway that doesn’t cost a dime.
But I am getting ahead of myself. And that is how it seems: as if we are already partly entrenched in a summer routine that just happens to still involve a 12:30 drop-off every afternoon; while at the same time things feel very much the same yet very different. Play date next Monday? Ok, but there are only two days left of school. There is some contradiction that is inexplicable.
I oversleep this morning and cannot make it to the last PTA meeting of the year. Bummer. I miss PTA closet cleanout. Bummer. Not! I have to stay home with my children, out of priority over dashing around and running out the door 15 minutes after waking up. Mac was upset when I went to Dr. T’s retirement party last night. Today he wants to know when I am leaving! I can’t deal. Sailor is whiny about what he wants to eat (Pirates’ Booty is not breakfast!) and I have to yell before I go pee except I have no voice with which to make myself heard this morning.
We make rice krispies treats for the boys’ father, whose birthday is Sunday but whom we will see this evening. We clean up a bit. Mac’s homework is about fractions and I am instructed to make a sandwich and discuss the names of each fraction I cut the sandwich into. Good thing we didn’t have plans to go out to lunch today. I also have to cut an apple. Mac wants the apple slices to resemble les papillons, which throws off the project a slight bit but I record our activity in French and English. Sigh… I don’t know that I have met my end-of-year goal of being able to converse through a dinner party entirely in French. Though I did partake in several French conversations yesterday.
We walk to school, both boys in the stroller. Halfway there I ask Mac if he can please get out and walk beside me. He says, “No.” I stop walking. I am short of breath and my knee hurts and I feel 65. There is nothing wrong with me that I can’t fix with a tire pump, but I am not going to re-inflate the stroller tires in the middle of the walk to school. I encourage Mac to get out and walk and ask him to stop complaining about his shoes (threatening to bin them when we get home). At school I pull out the tire pump and attempt to fix the tires, only to find the pump is broken and now we have a truly flat tire. I carry Sailor halfway home. He is tired and dressed in a clown suit. He is cute and baby-like, but heavy. Another mom pushes the stroller halfway and then she splits off and I have to let Sailor walk.
It’s nice out. After school we should play but we are picking up my ex and going to a movie in the ‘burbs. It’s fun. We celebrate his birthday and Mac gets his first movie popcorn, which is fun to watch him eat. We stay out too late and I realize when we get home that I have forgotten to collect child support payment. My email and text messages go un-returned.
In Mac’s backpack is an envelope of books that he is apparently supposed to read and return in the fall. Can’t we read them tonight and bring them back on Monday? I ask him. “No,” he says, “They are to help me practice reading.” If there is one thing we have a lot of in this house (I mean besides shoes, clothes and toys) it is books. We certainly don’t need anyone else’s books cluttering up our space here and we don’t need to have any extra encouragement to read. We read every day. On closer inspection, it looks as if the envelope of books is meant to be kept. I’ll have to email Mrs. K, who finally gave up her email address to us this week becuz she has run out of paper!
Two days of school left. I am Sooooo in denial! And even as I know school is over on Tuesday, our summer schedule of activities officially begins with French camp on Wednesday afternoon! I love summer so much, so why am I so reluctant to see the school year end (for the first time since college)?!
Saturday night Mac reads to us. The Giving Tree. It takes nearly 30 minutes. I want to tell him to hurry up. I am tired. Highly frustrated. But I let him press on and I help him with the hard words. And now I understand why, as a child, I believed this to be a long book. It is a long book when read by a child. But my child is able to read it. And we are both simply amazed!
At breakfast Sunday morning Mac offers to make me a cup of tea. He does it quite well. Sailor requests coffee and Mac makes that as well. Oh the things my child has learned to do this year!
The children do some drawing:
S: That’s not Sally, that’s Emma.
M: Where’s Emma?
S: Emma’s not writed yet.
M: What’s that? A starfighter? A transformer? A ---?
S: It’s Emma!
In the afternoon we head out to the two art fairs in the neighborhood. We are without stroller. Sailor gets tired as we don’t leave til naptime. We are a mile away from home when he wants uppie and I have to give in. I can’t walk like this tho and we sit in a make-shift beer garden to watch a cover band for an hour. They are good. Mac uses a hand fan to whack two Frisbees – his drums. He occupies himself well. I am glued to my seat holding my baby, who is miraculously able to sleep through the earsplitting sounds of the band. I don’t get it.
Mac earns a buck helping out two women who ask him to pass two abandoned chairs over a rail for them. A buck! Cool!
During dinner Sailor colors himself green. He wants to be Yoda. I help. He can’t color his own face. Mac colors his feet. He does his own hands and arms. He looks like a mini-Hulk in a Yoda suit. Mac suits up in the Darth Vader costume. I reprimand them for using their kitchen mops as light sabers. And then I bring their light sabers down from the shelf in my closet.
“Watch in total silence as I slice off Yoda’s arm!” Mac commands us. Their battle is well-rehearsed. Or so it seems. Sailor as Yoda is very good at being killed.
His bathwater turns green.
At bedtime Sailor says, “Hey, I need to tell you something.” His signature line. He holds up Mac’s new book, Go Away, Dog and says, “I think I am reading this.”
I kiss him goodnight. He is very sweet tonight.
“How come you have an arm shirt like I do?” he inquires, referring to our pajama tank tops.
“Because it’s warm in here and I don’t want to get too hot,” I explain. He seems to switch subjects, “I love you in the morning when I get up and get dressed. That will be your surprise.” “I love you, too,” I tell him on my way out, after another kiss and hug. I am already two rooms away when he returns to the subject of our “arm shirts.”
“So overbody can see our muscles, right Mom?”
Right, Honey.
Mac comes out. “Can you come to my room for a minute?” he asks me to pick out his clothes for tomorrow. I kiss him and tell him that Aunt Minny’s friend, (visiting from Houston), said he was a very good boy – not a hard observation to make after witnessing Sailor’s screams all the way home because I could no longer tote his 34 pounds down the street. “Two people liked how you behaved today,” I mention the ladies who paid him at the fair. His face lights up. He is a good boy. When he wants to be. Which is most of the time.
Two more days of school. Then summer break. I am trying to feel optimistic. I should be, after all, summer is my favorite season. And we will have the freedom to do as we please for three months. Remember back in September? I ask myself. I was so reluctant to let Mac go to kindergarten. I didn’t want our summer of freedom to end. I didn’t want to do the every day thing. I didn’t want to relinquish my child to the big school. I didn’t want to admit he was growing up so quickly. I just wanted it to stay warm out so we could continue to trek to the beach and take long walks and eat dinner al fresco… I just wanted things to stay as they were. And now… I just want things to stay as they are. Right, I am trying to feel optimistic. But what I really feel, is heartbroken.
It’s a rainy Monday morning. We have errands to run but instead we putz at home. Sailor won’t clean up his room, which he has trashed in a frenzy of giddiness and so after enough warnings I bag it all up. He leaves the house in his raincoat and boots a screaming, crying frog in firefighter boots. Mac walks patiently beside us, still getting used to his new umbrella. He wears his firefighter raincoat and army man boots. They are not outgrowing things in the right sequence. Or something.
While we wait for Mac at talking doctor Sailor wants a snack. I open a Tupperware of peanut butter and crackers.
“How come you didn’t make peanut butter salad?”
“Peanut butter salad?"
“When you put peanut butter on.”
“On celery?” I ask, remembering the snack he is remembering that I brought here back in April.
“Yeah.”
It begins to pour right after we arrive at school. We bring the kids inside to wait outside their classroom. Mac, a French girl, the German boy, the Japanese girl and the Australian girl are called to the band room for their dental exams. Free. Why not? Save me a buck or two. He tells me after school he has no cavities. Hurray!
Sailor and I return his summer shoes to a local children’s clothing store.
“They hurt his feet.”
“You can’t return these. He wore them outside.”
“Of course he wore them outside. How else would he know that they hurt his feet?”
Why don’t shoe sellers (aside from Nordstrom) understand this concept??????
We stock up on future birthday gifts at Borders. There is a 75% off sale area. $20 for a big bag of stuff. Way to shop, thrifty mama!
Sailor does not fall asleep in the car.
Our fave French family comes over after school. We discuss how overprotective I am.
The kids are running and screaming though the house. Haven’t we heard this one before?
It’s early to bed night. But my dad is in the kitchen trying to unclog our kitchen sink. Not sure what’s down there. He is working hard so I feel too guilty to be in bed with the kids so I call my mobile phone carrier to pay my bill. An hour later both boys have been sent to their rooms for wacky behaviour and I am beyond furious with this company that is adding charge after charge to my bill just to be rude at this point.
Which is when I realize I have lost my checkbook. AGAIN!!!!!!!!! ARGH!!!! All sorts of bills are due and the boys’ father is not coming with a check tomorrow because he is not coming tomorrow because he is still in the hospital. I email my one-Saturday-a-month work gig and ask about picking up some days this summer. And I dump out my entire desk in search of the checkbook. Which I do not find. I am so scroooood!
French class called and both boys are in. On the day I requested. On a 50% scholarship. I only have to pay $410 for both kids for the whole summer. ONLY!? Sailor is thrilled. Mac knows I am going to pay him to take Sailor. And I upped the ante: If he is well-behaved he will get a bonus. I am wondering if $1.25 a week will work on a 6-year-old. I am assuming yes.
Sailor still wants to know if he has to go to preschool. Mac told him 4 times yesterday “no” but he kept asking til he heard it from me. I tell him preschool is closed. I think he understands. Maybe we’ll drive by tomorrow to show him that no one is there.
Tuesday. “I haf go preschool today?” This is going to go on forever!
We clean out my desk and the car in search of my checkbook. It’s still lost. But we carry no fewer than 5 bags of recyclables, garbage, clothes, food and toys out of my car. The kitchen sink is still clogged. The kitchen is a consequent mess.
Over lunch Mac makes the following observations: “Mom, you are like a servant.” Pause. “Can you get me some ketchup?” But later as we are discussing something purple on my eye (eye liner? Veins? I have no idea.) Mac tells me, “You look pretty no matter what you are wearing.” He earns big hugs for that one.
At school I return some old yearbooks to the yearbook editor. “Next year I’ll do 1st grade and kindergarten,” I offer, by way of solidifying my commitment to help her out again next year. She goes on and on about having to meet with the new principal to see whether he liked the way I placed my photos without space around them or the way she placed hers with space better. And … on and on and all I wanted to do was tell her I’d help out again next year. Maybe she didn’t appreciate my artistic style. I think my pages are great!
“How do you make an apple?” Sailor asks on the way home. I explain about seeds and apple trees.
“You can plant money!” he informs me.
“Yeah? And what happens?” I ask. I am hopeful.
“You get a money tree.” Oh, Baby, if only!
Then a bit later, “Why do the white things on the dandelions blow away so easily.”
I explain about germination.
“Wow that’s deep!” I think he means my explanation. I am impressed by his adult response. Then, “Look at that puddle, Mommy!”
He lies back in the stroller a block from home, just as I am beginning to wonder if he should start giving up his naps. I walk around the block to give him time to settle into slumber before I bring him inside. My body is weary and I could use a nap myself.
Mac has a friend over after school. A boy of Swedish decent who has a slight accent, though I believe he was born here. He does not understand why he has to hold onto the stroller when we cross the streets and wants to know how soon til we’re at Mac’s house. This boy lives a ½ block from school, so our 6-block walk is a bit much for him.
The boy is well-behaved and I am pleased.
My sister comes over. Anna and her girls come over. We are all eight of us in the kitchen eating pizza and salad and drinking wine (just the adults) when the little boy’s dad and sister come for him. What a sight we must seem! The house is a mess and the kitchen is particularly bad, but everyone is happy.
I am tired and feel sick and want to go to bed. Sailor says, “So go to bed.” I do. The kids join me. My sister leaves.
Wednesday Sailor tries to not play soccer again. I take him into the bathroom to tell him how old this is getting. He goes back in to play. We have a play date planned with the triplets after soccer. We are almost 45 minutes late because there is no parking by their house and I can’t even get to the front of my house to check there for a spot.
Mac rides to school with the triplets, the only car I let him ride in besides my own. Sailor cries about how it’s not ok for Mac to go with them. I start to get nervous.
“Is something going to happen to him?”
“No!” He is just tired and feeling slighted.
“Ok, I won’t let him ride to school with them next time,” I promise. An easy promise to make as school ends before next Wednesday and the triplets’ family is planning to move away before the next school year.
I take Sailor to the Children’s Place to pay my charge card bill. We go to Old Navy to look around. My sister shows up. I spend $29 I don’t have. Sailor is asleep when I get home. We get a rock star parking spot. My boyfriend from two summers ago shows up as I am getting Sailor out of the car. He’s here to fix my clogged sink. Which I have apparently fixed myself as there is no clog when I run the water. He runs hot water to clear the pipes of the corrosive drano and checks to be sure the sink will drain if full. The sink is fixed in a matter of minutes. We have to find other ways to fill the rest of the hour he has set aside to help me out.
My dad makes me call the plumber to tell him the sink no longer needs fixing.
It’s chilly out and Sailor is still asleep. I carry him to the stroller and pick up Mac. When he wakes up after we drop Mac at FTK he asks me why he is sleeping in the stroller. I explain that he fell asleep in the car and then he slept on the sofa… “Who babysat me?” he wants to know. Then, “Where’s Mac?” This must be so weird for him to fall asleep in the car and wake up in the stroller.
8:30 pm. One hour and 10 minutes earlier Sailor asks for 10 more minutes to play. Which I grant. I begin the bed-time routine, as it were, at 7:30. At 8:30 I am carrying a crying Sailor back to his bed. Mac is crestfallen that I have had to yell at them both. Why are we still up an HOUR after I started to put them to bed. An HOUR! This should take maybe 30 minutes! At the most. The have their pj’s on, they have had stories read, they have both eaten snacks (which they requested at 8:00) and now it’s 8:30! THIS IS WHY I AM TIRED!
2:15 A.M. Sailor is in my bed. I bring him back to his own. He comes right back out, as he did last night. “We’re staying in our own beds all night tonight, remember?” I am gentle.
“I can’t. I am scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of the flump?”
“The flump? What flump?”
“The ka-chunk.”
Oh boy. “Ok, let’s go see.”
I carry him back in and locate the source of the flump and ka-chunk.
“We just have to close your window.” I do. He asks for one more blanket.
I’m starving!
Friday. The last one of the school year. There’s already a finality to things, yet we keep going on as if everything is not about to change completely. Plans are being discussed: the German family will return to Germany for a month, my fave French family is traveling to Mexico for two weeks, the triplets will be in Michigan for most of the summer… Our plans? The beach! Just blocks from our home and a real city getaway that doesn’t cost a dime.
But I am getting ahead of myself. And that is how it seems: as if we are already partly entrenched in a summer routine that just happens to still involve a 12:30 drop-off every afternoon; while at the same time things feel very much the same yet very different. Play date next Monday? Ok, but there are only two days left of school. There is some contradiction that is inexplicable.
I oversleep this morning and cannot make it to the last PTA meeting of the year. Bummer. I miss PTA closet cleanout. Bummer. Not! I have to stay home with my children, out of priority over dashing around and running out the door 15 minutes after waking up. Mac was upset when I went to Dr. T’s retirement party last night. Today he wants to know when I am leaving! I can’t deal. Sailor is whiny about what he wants to eat (Pirates’ Booty is not breakfast!) and I have to yell before I go pee except I have no voice with which to make myself heard this morning.
We make rice krispies treats for the boys’ father, whose birthday is Sunday but whom we will see this evening. We clean up a bit. Mac’s homework is about fractions and I am instructed to make a sandwich and discuss the names of each fraction I cut the sandwich into. Good thing we didn’t have plans to go out to lunch today. I also have to cut an apple. Mac wants the apple slices to resemble les papillons, which throws off the project a slight bit but I record our activity in French and English. Sigh… I don’t know that I have met my end-of-year goal of being able to converse through a dinner party entirely in French. Though I did partake in several French conversations yesterday.
We walk to school, both boys in the stroller. Halfway there I ask Mac if he can please get out and walk beside me. He says, “No.” I stop walking. I am short of breath and my knee hurts and I feel 65. There is nothing wrong with me that I can’t fix with a tire pump, but I am not going to re-inflate the stroller tires in the middle of the walk to school. I encourage Mac to get out and walk and ask him to stop complaining about his shoes (threatening to bin them when we get home). At school I pull out the tire pump and attempt to fix the tires, only to find the pump is broken and now we have a truly flat tire. I carry Sailor halfway home. He is tired and dressed in a clown suit. He is cute and baby-like, but heavy. Another mom pushes the stroller halfway and then she splits off and I have to let Sailor walk.
It’s nice out. After school we should play but we are picking up my ex and going to a movie in the ‘burbs. It’s fun. We celebrate his birthday and Mac gets his first movie popcorn, which is fun to watch him eat. We stay out too late and I realize when we get home that I have forgotten to collect child support payment. My email and text messages go un-returned.
In Mac’s backpack is an envelope of books that he is apparently supposed to read and return in the fall. Can’t we read them tonight and bring them back on Monday? I ask him. “No,” he says, “They are to help me practice reading.” If there is one thing we have a lot of in this house (I mean besides shoes, clothes and toys) it is books. We certainly don’t need anyone else’s books cluttering up our space here and we don’t need to have any extra encouragement to read. We read every day. On closer inspection, it looks as if the envelope of books is meant to be kept. I’ll have to email Mrs. K, who finally gave up her email address to us this week becuz she has run out of paper!
Two days of school left. I am Sooooo in denial! And even as I know school is over on Tuesday, our summer schedule of activities officially begins with French camp on Wednesday afternoon! I love summer so much, so why am I so reluctant to see the school year end (for the first time since college)?!
Saturday night Mac reads to us. The Giving Tree. It takes nearly 30 minutes. I want to tell him to hurry up. I am tired. Highly frustrated. But I let him press on and I help him with the hard words. And now I understand why, as a child, I believed this to be a long book. It is a long book when read by a child. But my child is able to read it. And we are both simply amazed!
At breakfast Sunday morning Mac offers to make me a cup of tea. He does it quite well. Sailor requests coffee and Mac makes that as well. Oh the things my child has learned to do this year!
The children do some drawing:
S: That’s not Sally, that’s Emma.
M: Where’s Emma?
S: Emma’s not writed yet.
M: What’s that? A starfighter? A transformer? A ---?
S: It’s Emma!
In the afternoon we head out to the two art fairs in the neighborhood. We are without stroller. Sailor gets tired as we don’t leave til naptime. We are a mile away from home when he wants uppie and I have to give in. I can’t walk like this tho and we sit in a make-shift beer garden to watch a cover band for an hour. They are good. Mac uses a hand fan to whack two Frisbees – his drums. He occupies himself well. I am glued to my seat holding my baby, who is miraculously able to sleep through the earsplitting sounds of the band. I don’t get it.
Mac earns a buck helping out two women who ask him to pass two abandoned chairs over a rail for them. A buck! Cool!
During dinner Sailor colors himself green. He wants to be Yoda. I help. He can’t color his own face. Mac colors his feet. He does his own hands and arms. He looks like a mini-Hulk in a Yoda suit. Mac suits up in the Darth Vader costume. I reprimand them for using their kitchen mops as light sabers. And then I bring their light sabers down from the shelf in my closet.
“Watch in total silence as I slice off Yoda’s arm!” Mac commands us. Their battle is well-rehearsed. Or so it seems. Sailor as Yoda is very good at being killed.
His bathwater turns green.
At bedtime Sailor says, “Hey, I need to tell you something.” His signature line. He holds up Mac’s new book, Go Away, Dog and says, “I think I am reading this.”
I kiss him goodnight. He is very sweet tonight.
“How come you have an arm shirt like I do?” he inquires, referring to our pajama tank tops.
“Because it’s warm in here and I don’t want to get too hot,” I explain. He seems to switch subjects, “I love you in the morning when I get up and get dressed. That will be your surprise.” “I love you, too,” I tell him on my way out, after another kiss and hug. I am already two rooms away when he returns to the subject of our “arm shirts.”
“So overbody can see our muscles, right Mom?”
Right, Honey.
Mac comes out. “Can you come to my room for a minute?” he asks me to pick out his clothes for tomorrow. I kiss him and tell him that Aunt Minny’s friend, (visiting from Houston), said he was a very good boy – not a hard observation to make after witnessing Sailor’s screams all the way home because I could no longer tote his 34 pounds down the street. “Two people liked how you behaved today,” I mention the ladies who paid him at the fair. His face lights up. He is a good boy. When he wants to be. Which is most of the time.
Two more days of school. Then summer break. I am trying to feel optimistic. I should be, after all, summer is my favorite season. And we will have the freedom to do as we please for three months. Remember back in September? I ask myself. I was so reluctant to let Mac go to kindergarten. I didn’t want our summer of freedom to end. I didn’t want to do the every day thing. I didn’t want to relinquish my child to the big school. I didn’t want to admit he was growing up so quickly. I just wanted it to stay warm out so we could continue to trek to the beach and take long walks and eat dinner al fresco… I just wanted things to stay as they were. And now… I just want things to stay as they are. Right, I am trying to feel optimistic. But what I really feel, is heartbroken.
Week 35 and Counting
“Happy Memorial Day!” This is how Mac wakes me this morning. I am beat, bushed, pooped, wiped out, exhausted and just plain old tired. We had a long weekend, beginning with a very bad mood on Saturday morning preceding Mac’s 6th birthday party. But let me go back to Friday night for the full effect.
I have purchased organic ice cream cones so as to make healthy ice cream cone cupcakes for Mac’s party. We are making an ice cream cone art project and my sister has the brilliant idea to make the ice cream cone cupcakes. So I go all out and get healthy stuff from Whole Foods. Not that any of the parents will be in attendance to even notice, but I am becoming that much of a food freak.
So here I am, late Friday night. Baking. I call one of my best friends to keep me company and we talk thru the evening. Meanwhile the banana cupcake batter I whipped up on Thursday afternoon is not quite enough to fill 24 cones. So I go the easy route and whip up a quick batch of a chocolate cake that I have an easy recipe for. Except I am missing a key ingredient (no, not the chocolate) and have to call down to my mom for assistance. I top each cone with chocolate and am excited that they will have a “banana split” flavor. But when I check the oven over and over I continue to find that they are not baking. Make that the banana layer is not baking. The chocolate layer on top is doing well. On most of the cones. But a few cones have begun to fall over and/or ooze out. I am at a loss as to why and am suddenly picturing myself on a Whole Foods run at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning. After an hour I pull out 18 of the 23 cones (the 24th cone was broken out of the box) and per my mom’s suggestion I nuke them, one or two at a time, for 30 seconds at a time. I am soon enveloped by the dual aromas of some weird meat (don’t ask where that one is from) and burned sugar (which has more obvious origins). I curse and swear and declare that I will never bake a birthday cake or cupcakes again! A declaration I am fairly certain my sister made last year at this time when she neglected to add the full amount of whole wheat flour to Mac’s cake and his cake fell. Prompting Mac to thank his Aunt Minny for not screwing up his cake at his birthday dinner this year! This is why it’s easier to be wealthy. If I had money like everyone else I would have just bought my cupcakes like everyone else. But nooooo. I have falling, oozing, burning cupcakes that have cost me so much time and effort I couldn’t pay myself enuf for the time!
Eventually I prop each cone into my rigged box of Dixie cups. I set about frosting them with the pink butter cream frosting I have made and colored with organic, all natural food coloring, which costs $17 for three tiny bottles. Then I swirl on chocolate frosting and top that with a dollop of white butter cream, which I top with organic sprinkles and a cherry that came in a jar but is not fluorescent. These are the most beautiful cupcakes in the world. Martha Stewart, eat your heart out! What I won’t find out until after the party on Saturday is that some of these masterpieces are so hard they could break a tooth. Thank you, Microwave!
Saturday morning I am irritable and cranky for no apparent reason except that I seem always to be talking to the walls. When we are ready to leave I have to swing by a nearby bank on a busy street to drop off a check to pay a bill that is due today. Nothing like leaving things til the absolute last minute. And of course, to my knowledge the bank closes at noon. And I can’t find the check or the bill. We look in the car and go back home. It’s raining and the kids are all decked out and carrying umbrellas. We look in the house again and I call the bank. The automated service won’t give me a live human so I slam down the phone and head back to the car. The check and bill are on the street under the car parked in front of us. Soaking wet. I retrieve it, thank the boys for helping me look, and drive off. We actually find parking a block from the bank. I stomp down the street in my preposterously high but very stylish sandals that feel like walking on stilts. The kids follow carefully and quickly. We enter the bank and are greeted by a pleasant looking young man who is optimistically cheerful. “This is due today,” I say, slapping the soggy envelope on the counter, “and your automated phone service sucks.” I am deadpan. I turn and we exit. But not before I see the greeter pick up the envelope between finger and thumb and hold it up to carry it off to be examined.
Walking back to the car I pick up Sailor. Just to have the hug.
We pick up my sister and head to Mac’s party. We have less than 40 minutes to get it all together. We are good to go when the 1st of 15 guests begin to arrive.
I will say this for the party: it only takes one bratty child to set the mood for 17 children to disobey and misbehave. It only takes one threat to call said bratty child’s mother to get all the kids to settle down, for awhile, anyway. It only matters whether or not the children have fun, not that that the parents do. My sister and I work our asses off for 2 ½ hours with my parents’ assistance. We are wiped out and pissed off by the end. And we are covered in paint because above mentioned bratty child does not pay attention to the instruction that state, “Paint only the canvas, not your friends!”
I invite the whole family out to dinner. Sailor cries in the car because I have allowed Mac to ride the bus home with Nana and GrandDad and also becuz he is very tired, having missed his nap. He protests our dinner plans. “Let’s cancel the restaurant,” he begs me. He is dressed in his t-shirt and a pair of sweats, having spilled milk on his cute dress-up party outfit. And, I might add a side note here that aside from my boys only TWO of the children, both girls, came actually dressed up for Mac’s party. The rest of the children appeared as if they were going to play at the playground, or maybe help their parents do some gardening. I find this appalling! It’s a birthday party. What happened to patent leather and frilly dresses and button down shirts?! But I digress…
“Where will everyone eat dinner if we cancel the restaurant?” I ask Sailor.
“Well, Mac can come home and eat with us. Nana and GradDad can eat at deir house and Aunt Minny can eat at her house.” And then he falls asleep. I drop off my sister so she can change into a paint-free outfit. I bring all the gifts, leftover food (we served milk, strawberries, melon, and pirate booty, as well as the tooth cracking cupcakes), and extra miscellaneous items into the house and then bring a sleeping Sailor in. I re-dress myself and the sleeping Sailor and pick him up and head out to dinner. I treat everyone with the gift certificate Mac won for the best Halloween costume back in October.
Sunday we do nothing. Literally. Well, I do clean out Mac’s closet and start Mac’s thank you notes and finally late in the afternoon I convince the boys to go out and play. Mac chooses roller skates and Sailor chooses his scooter, which after once around the block he trades for his bicycle. It’s nice out so I fill a glass with lemonade and add a shot of vodka and let the kids do some chalking ("drawking" Mac used to call it -- as in drawing with chalk) on the sidewalk outside until we are all starving and then we head inside for some dinner. My mom has donated three of her Seattle Sutton’s Healthy Eating meals for the cause. Sailor gets the “spegli” and meat sauce and Mac gets gnocci and asparagus. I have a pita filled with a huge leaf of lettuce and chick peas. I am still starving when dinner is done and I can see how with these itty bitty portions one would either lose weight or starve to death trying. We are all in bed early. And I channel search long enough to find something about a missing girl and freak myself out so bad I can’t go to sleep for having to check on the boys a couple hundred times.
“Happy Memorial Day!” Our plans to go sandal shopping are delayed because my sister, who we are supposed to pick up at 10:30, has turned a first date into a slumber party. So we wait, except my boys get antsy and they are tearing down the walls.
At Nordstrom, a fancy department store that has actual people to answer its phones, Mac buys a pair of Keen sandals he completely rejected last year and Sailor gets a pair of nice brown leather UMI sandals. This is why I am broke (well, aside from the less-than-$1000 worth of child support we have to live on each month): the shoes cost me $120. But it will be worth every last penny if I no longer have to listen to the cries of “my feet hurt” “I can’t walk anymore!” “I need to wear socks with my sandals.” And besides, I distinctly remember saying last summer that this summer I would not buy my children cheap sandals. I can’t find anything that is in my size that fits and doesn’t hurt my feet or look like they were meant for someone 3 times my age. At one point I ask, “Did you actually go into my grandma’s closet to find these?” And Mac is literally if not figuratively bouncing off the walls, climbing on the mirrors, not staying with me. I am so embarrassed. To say the least!
We spend the afternoon at a party in the suburbs. We sit in the sun and relax. There is watermelon and ice cream and corn on the cob. It’s a nice way to end a long weekend and a crazy long week.
I get the kids to bed after feeding them salmon and spinach. They will be strong and healthy boys!
In the middle of the night Mac comes to me. “I’m scared.” He said this last night too. Only this time I have watched a bit of the Super Nanny before sleep and I am determined if not half asleep. "Go back to your bed." He wines a bit and I roll over. I hear him crying in his room for a couple of minutes and I feel excruciatingly guilty and also tired. Six years worth of tired. Sailor comes in a bit later. He climbs on my feet. I can’t sleep with a child on my feet. I pick him up and place him on the floor. He cries. I recommend he either spend the night in the big comfy chair in the corner or go back to his bed. “I wan’be with you!” he wails. I re-state my recommendation. He lies down on the floor. Again I feel excruciatingly guilty. And also tired. It’s time my children start to sleep in their own beds. I pick up Sailor and bring him to his own bed. He remains asleep just long enough for me to think about it and then he wakes up crying. Not for me. For milk. Seriously. I know! He’ll be 4 in less than 4 months! The good mommy in my wants to go get him a sippy cup of milk and reassure him that I am always here for him. The single mommy who is finally just exhausted beyond reality wants to instill in her children that they are just fine in their own beds, for the whole night, until the sun comes up. And when the sun does come up Mac is snuggled beside me and Sailor is sleeping on my feet. I am the only mom I know whose children, ages 3 ½ and 6, still keep her up half the night!
When Mac was little my parents used to offer to take him so his father and I could have a quiet night and a sleep-in morning. They no longer offer but I am finally willing to accept. Is it too late to say yes?
Sailor has 2 days left of school. And yet, he cries again when I leave him with his teacher this morning. Maybe on Thursday he won’t cry. Or Friday, the day of the preschool “graduation” ceremony. Sailor will be returning in the fall and therefore not graduating this June. Nonetheless, all children are required to attend this most adorable, tear-jerker of a production in which four times the recommended number of people crowd into the little school house to watch teeny tiny children sing standard songs. It’s adorable beyond reason and I cried both years that Mac graduated.
While Sailor is at school today Mac and I share in a very important and MUCH anticipated right of passage. I make Mac is very first bowl of popcorn. When he was little I told him he had to be six to eat popcorn, due to the extreme possibility of small children choking on the buttery movie theatre snack. And now, after all these years (before which I simply could not imagine waiting this long) I allow him to have a bowl of popcorn. At 10:00 in the morning. Complete with a melted pat of butter and all the salt he wanted. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. He enjoys every last kernel and wants more (I don’t make more) and I am full to the point of wanting to puke. He is one happy little clam!
When we pick Sailor up he is wearing a pair of tan sweat pants, an undershirt and the shoes we left for him to wear on snowy days, which happen to be a gymshoe/sandals combo. “Sailor had an accident,” the second teacher whispers, handing me a plastic bag. I don’t even catch this the 1st time she says it and she has to repeat herself. She tells me how upset he was and that she told him never be afraid to get up and go potty. I am certainly not upset but very surprised because Sailor literally never has accidents. “I suppose I need to bring an extra set of clothes for Thursday?” I ask in jest. “It’s a good idea,” the teacher replies in all seriousness. Indeed.
She also hands me the class photo and Sailor’s individual photos. If I do say so myself, my little boy is stunningly gorgeous! The blue in his shirt has made the baby’s blue eyes just pop out of the photo. I try to remember what it was Sailor told me about the photo shoot two weeks ago (or was that seriously just last week?!) “We had to hide behind a tree,” he told me, “Den we had to blow his [the photographer’s] duck. Den we had to laugh.”
We walk home to change Sailor’s clothes. Which he is not happy with. But he looks like he should be watching sports on tv and drinking beer. He is so badly dressed he even earns a few funny looks from passersby on the walk home.
Mac has 12 days left of school. I counted. And then we are free to spend as much time at the beach as we want to. Which is what Mac wants to do today. It’s the perfect beach weather and if I weren’t so tired I would consider indulging his whim to go after school. But I am thinking Saturday might be a more appropriate choice.
In the playground after school one of the stay-home dads comments that Mac looks like he belongs on the lawn of a Jimmy Buffet concert. Having never attended one of Beffet’s concerts myself I admit to this and say he must be right. Mac is wearing a very big patchwork plaid button up shirt, with short sleeves that come below his elbows. He has on long blue shorts. And he is topped off by his signature hat. He does look as if he should be holding a stogey in one hand and a margarita in the other. Except he is doing anything but chilling.
I break up yet another scuffle on the playground, this time offering to escort the offending child inside for a visit to the principal. Once again my children are completely uninvolved. I am the every mother!
Sailor says he has two black eyes and we have to leave the school playground at 4:00. It’s still warm our. I want ice cream. We go home and the boys play while I fix some dinner and clean up a bit.
Their father comes for his weekly visit as we are finishing up dinner. Or I should say as Mac and I are finishing up dinner. Sailor has not touched the noodles and broccoli on his plate. Their dad was in the hospital last week and missed his visit (though he was here on Monday for Mac’s birthday). Tonight’s visit goes as usual. Though I am obliged to forego dinner plans with a friend because my ex feels unwell enough to stay home alone with the boys. He spends the majority of his 2 hours here talking with me and then we take the boys for ice cream. Mac gets a cone and I get a scoop and Sailor wants nothing. Except to go home and play. Which we do. I write. They play. But their dad is in pain and not the best playmate this evening. Yet when he leaves ½ an hour past the time I would normally have the boys in bed, Mac bursts into tears and I have to pry him from his father’s neck. I am perplexed. Last week he told my sister he didn’t want his dad to come to his birthday dinner because he didn’t like him much. And now this.
I carry him to bed and we chat. Seems one of the problems is that Daddy plays with the boys and Mommy generally does not. No, Mommy bathes, feeds, dresses, reads, drives, shops, pay bills, organizes, helps with homework, cleans up, yells, spanks, disciplines, gets no sleep, makes decisions…. Mommy. Daddy plays. Mommy does not play enough. And so Mac wants his dad to come visit more because he PLAYS WITH HIM! G-d help me if this is the most unfair thing to come across my path in a long time.
I make a promise to play with the kids more. “A lot!” Mac amends. Which will mean actual play, not working on the computer and allowing them to play. Or taking them to the beach and watching them play. Mac wants actual play. So I make a last ditch effort to save my sanity and offer up a deal: I will play more if I can get a bit more help around the house. So unfair, I know! But really, folks, how can I be expected to do all of the aforementioned tasks, and also deal with the bills and my own business, and still have time to PLAY! Dammit I don’t even like to PLAY with small children. I like to be with them. I like to do things with them – read, paint, walk. But, no, folks, I am sorry to have to admit that playing StarWars is very low on my "exciting things to do" list. I can’t compete with this. Mac asks if he can have more playdates with his friends. I name the French boy, one of the French girls and the Australian girl as children I am in the process of working out playtimes with for next week. And I make a mental note to be more… what? Fun? Someday I hope Mac and Sailor can understand what I have had to sacrifice to be a good single parent for them. I try so hard not to sacrifice the fun. But I have to be the disciplinarian and sometimes the two just do not go hand-in-hand. It’s so unfair. As unfair as having your dad never be home and then move out right after you turn four. I understand, Baby, really I do. And I will try to do better.
Wednesday morning I wake up alone. Well, almost. At least no one comes to sleep with me until the sun comes up. For the first time in forever. How did I accomplish this major feat, you ask? Simple. I asked the boys to stay in their beds all night. And they did! Perhaps it was a fluke. We’ll see tomorrow morning.
Sailor is giddy. Finds fun in slamming his bedroom door and holding Mac captive. I ask Mac to remind him why we don’t slam doors: “Because once you slammed my thumb and my nail turned black and fell off,” he tells Sailor. And then I ask him to get dressed in his soccer uniform – except I call it his soccer suit because I can never remember the word uniform – and meet me in the kitchen for breakfast. Thirty minutes later, when he is done tantrum-ing and whining about how he is too starving to wait [to get dressed first] and how he can’t put on his undies, he sits down to cold scrambled eggs and toast. Why is this necessary? Anybody?
Lauren is not at soccer today and Sailor has to play without support. And he does a great job. Because I bribe him. With the notion that we will go to Target and buy a toy if he plays without Mac or me. Ah, ya gotta love it: Here Honey, you play a game that you love and I will buy you a toy! Hey, listen, whatever works. And it works! Except the birthday gifts I try to return from Mac’s party are worth a whopping $2.50 each, leaving me with two gifts that I now must re-gift and no money to buy the kids the promised toys. I am not in a good mood scavenging the aisles of Target for the only StarWars toys we don’t have that don’t cost an arm or a leg. And then I convince Sailor to get a cute little soft bow and arrow from the beach toy aisle. Which Mac breaks 2 ½ minutes after we get home.
Not that he has time to be playing when we arrive home just 10 minutes before we have to leave for school. “What do you want for lunch? PBJ or quesadillas?” I ask Mac.
“Quesadillas because they are faster to make.” Not really, but ok. “Look, Mom, a case of ideas!”
I have already carried sleeping Sailor into the house from the car. I now carry sleeping Sailor from the house to the stroller. The parents at school think all he does is sleep.
When he wakes later in the afternoon he wants to play with me. So we play. We do some matching games and some puzzles. It’s fun, I admit it. Tho in the back of my mind are all the phone calls I need to be making and should have been making while he was asleep instead of walking to the park and reading for a few minutes. Oh, well. Life will go on around me, even if I stop to play with my little boy for an hour. Playing with Sailor reminds me of when Mac was little.
After school Mac reprimands me for not helping him with his homework last night and explains the consequences of not turning in your homework on time: "You don’t get a smiley face sticker. And this makes you sad."
I am both consoling and apologetic that I didn’t help him, but I also explain that he cannot tell me about homework at bed time and expect it to get done. I also start to explain that at the kindergarten level, being on time is not all that important, but then I stop myself. I realize that it is important as it sets the tone for the next 16 or more years he will be in school. It’s also important to rally on the side of his enthusiasm for homework!
“So what is your homework tonight?” I ask him. It is hours before bedtime and we should have plenty of time to get it done.
“I have to go outside and look at big trees very close up.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe to see the details or the patterins [that’s how he says it] or something.”
“We can do that after dinner. We can look at the apple tree in the back ard,” I suggest, mentioning the tiny tree my mother planted recently.
“No, it has to be a big tree. Like that one.” He points to a tree that is a good solid hundred years old.
“Ok, I think we can do this on the way home.” But I forget.
I look for the assignment in his backpack when we are heading out for ice cream after dinner. It’s in his folder, which has withstood the test of time and is the same folder from the first day of school. It is battered, torn, covered with stickers and tape, stapled closed on the bottom, and folded in half. I wanted to see if it would last all year. It did! The homework inside the folder instructs the children to count to 100 and then to practice counting backward. The illustration is of a girl standing against a tree, covering her eyes, and the caption reads, “98, 99, 100! Ready or not, here I come!” I try not to laugh as I explain the real homework instructions to Mac.
Also in his backpack tonight is his yearbook. Yes, you read that right. Yearbook. From his public school.
Tomorrow is Sailor’s last official day of school. Tho he will go back on Friday for “graduation.” “Mommy, are we moving?” he asks me.
“No.”
“All the kids who are moving get a picture.”
“That’s their diploma. It means they are not coming back to your preschool.”
And despite it being his almost last day tomorrow he still whines and asks, “Why do I have to go to school overdays?!”
He paints three little canvasses to give to his teachers as gifts tomorrow and he paints a large canvas just for fun. “I want to paint like [Curious] George and I want to put my hands in the bath like he did." And so at 8:30 at night he is painting followed by a bath in green water.
Mac has weird baby toes and for 6 years he has cried when I clip them. I am sure they hurt, as I have to work hard to get at them. Tonight he asks me what the doctor told us to do last week. “Clip them after a bath or shower,” I remind him. “
But we always do and it doesn’t help,” he reminds me.
He is right. So tonight I tell him to hold his breath. He does. And he does not cry. We look at each other. We are incredulous. We try the other foot. Nothing. “I didn’t even hold my breath!” he exclaims. It’s a miracle!
Mac’s butt hurts. He is not the best post-poop wiper out there. So even after his shower he wants me to fix it. I look for something appropriate to soothe his little tush. “How about Vaseline?” he suggests. Now why didn’t I think of that? I pop the top off the jar that is exactly one week younger than Mac and still more than half full. “That’s my lipstick!” Mac calls from his bedroom. Indeed, the jar’s contents perform many duties.
Thursday, May 31, 2007. Sailor’s last day of preschool. How did THAT happen? Funny how the winter months drag on at an interminable pace but when the sunshine of spring breaks thru we wonder how it all went by so quickly. He is dressed in a cute pair of plaid shorts, which I realize too late are a bit too short, a navy blue polo and his new overpriced brown leather sandals. He is cute. Cuter than cute. We come to school bearing gifts. And a change of clothes to replace the ones he wore home on Tuesday. Except when we arrive Teacher J is handing out the change-of-clothing boxes to the parents. As in, no one has a change of clothes for today. I remind her that she asked us to bring a new change of clothes. She says she doesn’t know what she was thinking.
Sailor won’t deliver his gifts, which I have nestled in shred and bagged in cello bags and tied with bows and attached to very personal notes. During breakfast. While Mac eats and Sailor refuses yet another warm meal.
Sailor won’t let me take any photos (which turns out to be a good thing as I find out later I have no film in the camera). And when it is time for me to leave, there is a tear running down Sailor’s cheek as he sits on histeacher’s lap, straining to reach me. It’s over, Baby. After this it’s all over (until you’re 4!). I don’t want to leave. It seems like a normal day. But for the nostalgia and the impossible regularity of it.
Mac refuses to help me with the garbage, preferring to stay inside and read rather than hazard a chance meeting with Ratatouille. I can’t blame him.
At 10:00 I take my starving boy on our last date to our nearby sandwich shop. I have enjoyed our year of Thursday lunches with him. It’s been time well spent. Our fave cashier guy gives us free lemonade and chips and we pay for the rest of our food with our own gift cards. Now that’s the way I like to travel. Mac is wearing a brand new shirt today. A polo with light and lighter green stripes.
“You look so handsome,” I told him this morning.
“Thank you. Who got me this shirt?”
“I did,” I say and then immediately see the error of my ways. “I mean, Easter Bunny did, I think, yes, Easter Bunny. But I picked it up for him, because, remember we were talking about this the other day? How the Easter Bunny needs help because he is so little and he doesn’t have a sleigh like Santa so he can only deliver the eggs and the mommies have to do the shopping…”
I know, it’s a stretch, but hey, I was in a pinch! Two bites into lunch and the aforementioned handsome new shirt is now a grease-stained, unattractive, no-one-will-want-this-shirt-as-a-hand-me-down shirt. Mac has yet to master the art of using his napkin. I am rather irritated. But what do I do? How do I teach my boy to use a napkin rather than his shirt? And should he not know this already?
We are too early for lunch but they make it for us anyway. We sit in the comfy seats in the back. Mac has to sign his thank you notes. Just sign them, not even write them. This takes him an hour. Truly. We go to the playground. We meet a boy and his mom who know two separate families we are friends with, both of whom had children at Mac’s party last weekend. Funny. We bump into one of Mac’s classmates on the way out and are once again running late. I am so sick of running late for everything because then I am truly running to get places on time. And no, my butt has not gone back up where it belongs and no, my cellulite has not disappeared and no, my legs don’t look any better than they looked a year ago. Darn it!
At the playground Mac demonstrates that he can finally pump his own swing.
Picking up Sailor at school, on his last day, is anti-climactic. We were late for drop-off, as usual (in direct opposite of Mac’s 1st preschool year when we were chronically early and I quipped on the last day that one would think I should know by now that it only takes 2 minutes to drive to school, not the ten I allow!), and we are one of the last ones to arrive at pick-up, as usual. There is no fanfare. It is simply over. Well, the fanfare is tomorrow, I suppose, the big graduation ceremony.
Halfway to school Sailor asks for pizza, which I have. He eats half a piece and says, “I’m done.” He wants to get out of the stroller and walk. He runs down the block in his cute, happy legs way. He stops, slumps, and walks like a tired man. He stops, readjusts and walks like a scarecrow. And despite the fact that I have my video camera with me, I miss the Kodak moment completely. I push the stroller with my left hand across the three-street intersection and hold Sailor’s hand with my right. Then he wants to push. “But you can’t see over the handlebars,” I point out. I help him steer. My 3 ½-year-old is pushing my 6-year-old. This has to be his last year in the stroller, I realize. I mean, what 7-year-old still rides in a stroller? (I’ll tell you what 7-year-old, Mac a year from now! I tell ya! )
“You’re doing a great job!”
“Now I can push by myself?” he asks in a tiny voice.
Drop-off is drop-off. I ask one of Mac’s classmates if I can see her new glasses. “I lost them.” She just go them two days ago. Is this what it’s going to be like with Mac next year?
Sailor falls asleep after drop-off and I meet my sister for a long, leisurely lunch. I sip a coffee. We chat about relationships. I realize in advising her all the mistakes I have made and why. It’s all good. The sky turns dark. And darker. Or as Sailor would say, “And even!” as in, and even darker. We round the next-to-last corner before school and are suddenly drenched. Hovering under a tree canopy with several others, we contemplate running the last block to school or hailing a taxi that will take me to my car, which I can return with and pick everyone up in less than 15 minutes. I have not taken a taxi since Mac was born. And there are none in sight today. The rain lets up just in time and I sign Mac out of school 5 minutes early.
Mac has a new umbrella. “I waited very patiently for this,” he reminds me. Indeed, he has waited six years. Little brother wants an umbrella now too, as I knew he would. I actually hear myself saying aloud that it is Mac’s choice whether or not Sailor gets an umbrella at 3 ½ even though he had to wait til he turned six.
“It’s my decision? Well then I decide yes.”
“Can we go get it right now?” Sailor asks.
The boys need a few rules about umbrella etiquette. Rule number 1, I begin… The rules are obvious, but to be so kind I ad rule #4: if you see a friend or family member standing in the rain without an umbrella, share your umbrella. Mac’s promptly forgets this rule a mere six minutes after he learns it.
Later we stop by the art studio to look through a few bags of hand-me-downs that have been dropped off for us. There are five full garbage bags of clothes. About as many items of clothing as my children currently own. We go through each bag and the children and I pick a few favorites, including a pair of light-up Buzz Lightyear slippers (“Slippers rhymes with flippers,” Sailor informs us later.), which I approve of because they can only be worn indoors. Mac spies a stack of pajamas and instantly he is cold and wants to put on pajamas right now. How many times does a mom have to say “no” before she is both heard and understood? Sailor tries on some too-big pants and a pair of Spiderman socks and a too-big jean jacket. All at once.
Later we are in the car discussing allergies to cats. “I’m allergic to cats,” Sailor says, “When I smell a cat I get itchy ‘bout a cat.”
Sailor pitches a fit when I leave for dinner with a friend. He is apparently still pitching said fit when I return two hours later. There is a look on my mother’s face that I am loathe to seriously investigate.
My house is a Wednesday mess, but it’s Thursday. I have much to do to prepare for the activities of tomorrow.
I go into the kitchen long past midnight. I need snack. I am sidetracked by Sailor’s dinner, left out by my mom; three to-go cups bearing rained-in lemonade, which now tastes foul, and an overpriced coffee that never tasted that great to begin with; a bowl of blackberries that had better be eaten soon; Mac’s green shirt with stains all down the front; Mac’s backpack, which holds a foul odor, a cup of candy, two water bottles, his yearbook, and a full folder; my purse and low-battery cell phone… I plug the phone into the bathroom, and take the shirt as far as, well, here, my lap. And I still have no snack. But I do have a sore throat.
Friday morning. The kids have been up for a seemingly long time when they finally drag me off the couch at 7:15. There is a lot to do today.
Despite the fact that today is Sailor’s absolute last day of school until September, he still cries at drop off. In fact, he even runs out the door after us today. I just can’t believe it.
Mac and I run home to put away the garbage cans, get the class gift ready for preschool, get ready for Serendipity Day at Mac’s school this afternoon. And while I am at it, I might as well call the insurance company, which I have not had time to do yet this week. I will refrain from quoting the hour-long conversation here. Suffice it to say, nothing is fair, I am screwed and also I am in a very bad mood. And I forget to pack face paints for Mac’s class this afternoon so I can do facepainting.
Sailor is adorable when we get to school. All the children are wearing straw jungle hats with their names on the front. Sailor is also wearing the same shirt Mac wore to preschool graduation 2 years ago, which I had to iron this morning. Yes, iron. I know. Over this green and blue plaid shirt he is wearing his blue and white seersucker jacket, the sleeves rolled up. Khaki shorts. Saddle shoes and white socks. My kid is certainly styling. And way too cute. But in a mood. Clingy. And while we are standing around waiting I catch him unzipping my skirt! Yowza! I scold. He is embarrassed. And angry. And completely uncooperative. And he won’t participate in the class activity of singing in a group. I am so not happy. Instead of crying from sentiment I want to cry out of frustration. I tell my mom to put away the camera.
Mac to the rescue. He mentions to Sailor that we have a gift for him at home. Ding ding ding! He asks if he can have the gift when he gets home. “Not unless you participate,” I say. Sailor is instantly singing along, and happily! Unfortunately he is standing right in front of us so it is very hard to capture these cute moments on film.
When it’s all over I know I should feel some nostalgia. I don’t know what to feel. He didn’t graduate but he did finish out a whole year. One whole whining, fussing, fighting year of preschool. I am proud of him for doing it. I am proud of me for not caving and pulling him out. I can’t believe it’s just suddenly over. Finished. Done. It was painful, those days dropping off my crying baby. Over and over again. And now just like that it’s over. (Until September of course … but that’s going to be a whole ‘nother story).
We have cookies and lemonade outside, give the teachers the gift form Sailor’s class, and say goodbye and thank you for a great year (which I still can’t believe is over). And then I pop Sailor in the stroller, entrust him to my parents and head off with Mac to the big school. Unfortunately I neglect to strap Sailor into the stroller and he gets out and throws a long tantrum all the way home. For my parents.
Mac has Serendipity Day at school today and I am here to volunteer. “After today will I stay home tomorrow because it’s summer break?” Mac has exactly 7 days of kindergarten to go.
I spend the afternoon painting 28 little faces. Most of the girls choose les jolies papillons (pretty butterflies) and I love how well they turn out, if I do say so myself. Mac is a full-faced Spiderman. I paint some of the kids’ faces to match their outfits. I paint a camouflage face and the German boy wants something but he doesn’t know the name of it in English. “Tell me in German,” I say. “Leopard,” he says. I do a couple of tigers, a princess or two. And lots of jolies papillons. It’s fun.
Mac is excited to be able to participate in snack – popcorn! Thankfully he knows better than to imbibe in the orange pop.
With Mac's face painted as Spiderman, we walk home after stopping at the bank to pay a bill that I found late last night, that was due yesterday. The greeter recognizes me from the weekend. I should be embarrassed but I am not.
Mac has goodie bags full of junky toys and crap and he and Sailor share nicely. We are all a little tired and although it is not quite 4pm and it’s very sunny and warm out, rather than take us all to the playground we hang around. Sailor changes clothes – it’s much too warm for the long sleeved, black turtleneck sweater of mine he is wearing when we get home. (He looks very cute in this, however.) He is wearing now his Curious George shirt with a light blue Hawaiian shirt – a jacket, he calls it – over it. At 5:00 I decide to end the day on a quiet note. I pop in the latest DVD to arrive from Netflix: a light film, Anne Frank.
We sit for three hours. Sailor straps no fewer than 5 pens to the neck of his shirt and fills Mac’s backpack with everything including our house phone and my cell phone then dumps it all out. He talks all through the movie. It breaks the mood a little. But not enough. By the time Otto Frank discovers his daughters are not coming back Mac is beside himself and bursts into tears. He is just so sad. I invite him to sit with me and before I know it I am covered in Spiderman and he is only part-Spiderman. We cry together at the inhumanity that is Anne Frank’s death. For the first time this story has truly affected me, not just because it makes me sad or because it is such a tragedy but because we are reminded at the end of the film, which was aired on television the weekend Mac was born, that Anne was just one of several million children to whom this happened. Suddenly it is all too real. It is also again horrifying to see that the world has learned nothing in the 60+ years since World War II ended. Nothing.
And so we end the night. The house is a mess and Sailor actually has the energy to bring things to the kitchen for me and Mac needs a shower to wash off the remainder of Spiderman. He is so sad and scared that he won’t leave my side. I put clean sheets on my bed, finally, after 2 weeks on the sofa, and send him to my bed to sleep while I put Sailor to bed. Am I scared, too? You bet. But I put on such a good face for Mac I convince myself it’s all ok.
Saturday rain is forecast. We cancel our beach plans and take a picnic to the park instead. It is warm and sunny all afternoon. We play our version of soccer. In the zoo we spy a pair of odd-looking ducks.
“I wonder what they are,” I muse aloud.
“That’s an Egyptian Goose,” Mac informs us.
“How do you know?”
“I read the sign.” My boy, who will struggle over “good” and “what” has just read “Egyptian Goose.” We whoop and holler and have a mini-celebration right in the zoo!
On Sunday Mac carries two loads of laundry up the stairs and both boys put away most of their own laundry in our deal: I’ll help you clean up your playroom if you help me clean up the dining room. Our teamwork leaves us enough time for a round of a new Banana Slap game, which would me much better suited to 8-year-olds, and 3 rounds of the Memory Game before I head out for an afternoon of work.
I have purchased organic ice cream cones so as to make healthy ice cream cone cupcakes for Mac’s party. We are making an ice cream cone art project and my sister has the brilliant idea to make the ice cream cone cupcakes. So I go all out and get healthy stuff from Whole Foods. Not that any of the parents will be in attendance to even notice, but I am becoming that much of a food freak.
So here I am, late Friday night. Baking. I call one of my best friends to keep me company and we talk thru the evening. Meanwhile the banana cupcake batter I whipped up on Thursday afternoon is not quite enough to fill 24 cones. So I go the easy route and whip up a quick batch of a chocolate cake that I have an easy recipe for. Except I am missing a key ingredient (no, not the chocolate) and have to call down to my mom for assistance. I top each cone with chocolate and am excited that they will have a “banana split” flavor. But when I check the oven over and over I continue to find that they are not baking. Make that the banana layer is not baking. The chocolate layer on top is doing well. On most of the cones. But a few cones have begun to fall over and/or ooze out. I am at a loss as to why and am suddenly picturing myself on a Whole Foods run at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning. After an hour I pull out 18 of the 23 cones (the 24th cone was broken out of the box) and per my mom’s suggestion I nuke them, one or two at a time, for 30 seconds at a time. I am soon enveloped by the dual aromas of some weird meat (don’t ask where that one is from) and burned sugar (which has more obvious origins). I curse and swear and declare that I will never bake a birthday cake or cupcakes again! A declaration I am fairly certain my sister made last year at this time when she neglected to add the full amount of whole wheat flour to Mac’s cake and his cake fell. Prompting Mac to thank his Aunt Minny for not screwing up his cake at his birthday dinner this year! This is why it’s easier to be wealthy. If I had money like everyone else I would have just bought my cupcakes like everyone else. But nooooo. I have falling, oozing, burning cupcakes that have cost me so much time and effort I couldn’t pay myself enuf for the time!
Eventually I prop each cone into my rigged box of Dixie cups. I set about frosting them with the pink butter cream frosting I have made and colored with organic, all natural food coloring, which costs $17 for three tiny bottles. Then I swirl on chocolate frosting and top that with a dollop of white butter cream, which I top with organic sprinkles and a cherry that came in a jar but is not fluorescent. These are the most beautiful cupcakes in the world. Martha Stewart, eat your heart out! What I won’t find out until after the party on Saturday is that some of these masterpieces are so hard they could break a tooth. Thank you, Microwave!
Saturday morning I am irritable and cranky for no apparent reason except that I seem always to be talking to the walls. When we are ready to leave I have to swing by a nearby bank on a busy street to drop off a check to pay a bill that is due today. Nothing like leaving things til the absolute last minute. And of course, to my knowledge the bank closes at noon. And I can’t find the check or the bill. We look in the car and go back home. It’s raining and the kids are all decked out and carrying umbrellas. We look in the house again and I call the bank. The automated service won’t give me a live human so I slam down the phone and head back to the car. The check and bill are on the street under the car parked in front of us. Soaking wet. I retrieve it, thank the boys for helping me look, and drive off. We actually find parking a block from the bank. I stomp down the street in my preposterously high but very stylish sandals that feel like walking on stilts. The kids follow carefully and quickly. We enter the bank and are greeted by a pleasant looking young man who is optimistically cheerful. “This is due today,” I say, slapping the soggy envelope on the counter, “and your automated phone service sucks.” I am deadpan. I turn and we exit. But not before I see the greeter pick up the envelope between finger and thumb and hold it up to carry it off to be examined.
Walking back to the car I pick up Sailor. Just to have the hug.
We pick up my sister and head to Mac’s party. We have less than 40 minutes to get it all together. We are good to go when the 1st of 15 guests begin to arrive.
I will say this for the party: it only takes one bratty child to set the mood for 17 children to disobey and misbehave. It only takes one threat to call said bratty child’s mother to get all the kids to settle down, for awhile, anyway. It only matters whether or not the children have fun, not that that the parents do. My sister and I work our asses off for 2 ½ hours with my parents’ assistance. We are wiped out and pissed off by the end. And we are covered in paint because above mentioned bratty child does not pay attention to the instruction that state, “Paint only the canvas, not your friends!”
I invite the whole family out to dinner. Sailor cries in the car because I have allowed Mac to ride the bus home with Nana and GrandDad and also becuz he is very tired, having missed his nap. He protests our dinner plans. “Let’s cancel the restaurant,” he begs me. He is dressed in his t-shirt and a pair of sweats, having spilled milk on his cute dress-up party outfit. And, I might add a side note here that aside from my boys only TWO of the children, both girls, came actually dressed up for Mac’s party. The rest of the children appeared as if they were going to play at the playground, or maybe help their parents do some gardening. I find this appalling! It’s a birthday party. What happened to patent leather and frilly dresses and button down shirts?! But I digress…
“Where will everyone eat dinner if we cancel the restaurant?” I ask Sailor.
“Well, Mac can come home and eat with us. Nana and GradDad can eat at deir house and Aunt Minny can eat at her house.” And then he falls asleep. I drop off my sister so she can change into a paint-free outfit. I bring all the gifts, leftover food (we served milk, strawberries, melon, and pirate booty, as well as the tooth cracking cupcakes), and extra miscellaneous items into the house and then bring a sleeping Sailor in. I re-dress myself and the sleeping Sailor and pick him up and head out to dinner. I treat everyone with the gift certificate Mac won for the best Halloween costume back in October.
Sunday we do nothing. Literally. Well, I do clean out Mac’s closet and start Mac’s thank you notes and finally late in the afternoon I convince the boys to go out and play. Mac chooses roller skates and Sailor chooses his scooter, which after once around the block he trades for his bicycle. It’s nice out so I fill a glass with lemonade and add a shot of vodka and let the kids do some chalking ("drawking" Mac used to call it -- as in drawing with chalk) on the sidewalk outside until we are all starving and then we head inside for some dinner. My mom has donated three of her Seattle Sutton’s Healthy Eating meals for the cause. Sailor gets the “spegli” and meat sauce and Mac gets gnocci and asparagus. I have a pita filled with a huge leaf of lettuce and chick peas. I am still starving when dinner is done and I can see how with these itty bitty portions one would either lose weight or starve to death trying. We are all in bed early. And I channel search long enough to find something about a missing girl and freak myself out so bad I can’t go to sleep for having to check on the boys a couple hundred times.
“Happy Memorial Day!” Our plans to go sandal shopping are delayed because my sister, who we are supposed to pick up at 10:30, has turned a first date into a slumber party. So we wait, except my boys get antsy and they are tearing down the walls.
At Nordstrom, a fancy department store that has actual people to answer its phones, Mac buys a pair of Keen sandals he completely rejected last year and Sailor gets a pair of nice brown leather UMI sandals. This is why I am broke (well, aside from the less-than-$1000 worth of child support we have to live on each month): the shoes cost me $120. But it will be worth every last penny if I no longer have to listen to the cries of “my feet hurt” “I can’t walk anymore!” “I need to wear socks with my sandals.” And besides, I distinctly remember saying last summer that this summer I would not buy my children cheap sandals. I can’t find anything that is in my size that fits and doesn’t hurt my feet or look like they were meant for someone 3 times my age. At one point I ask, “Did you actually go into my grandma’s closet to find these?” And Mac is literally if not figuratively bouncing off the walls, climbing on the mirrors, not staying with me. I am so embarrassed. To say the least!
We spend the afternoon at a party in the suburbs. We sit in the sun and relax. There is watermelon and ice cream and corn on the cob. It’s a nice way to end a long weekend and a crazy long week.
I get the kids to bed after feeding them salmon and spinach. They will be strong and healthy boys!
In the middle of the night Mac comes to me. “I’m scared.” He said this last night too. Only this time I have watched a bit of the Super Nanny before sleep and I am determined if not half asleep. "Go back to your bed." He wines a bit and I roll over. I hear him crying in his room for a couple of minutes and I feel excruciatingly guilty and also tired. Six years worth of tired. Sailor comes in a bit later. He climbs on my feet. I can’t sleep with a child on my feet. I pick him up and place him on the floor. He cries. I recommend he either spend the night in the big comfy chair in the corner or go back to his bed. “I wan’be with you!” he wails. I re-state my recommendation. He lies down on the floor. Again I feel excruciatingly guilty. And also tired. It’s time my children start to sleep in their own beds. I pick up Sailor and bring him to his own bed. He remains asleep just long enough for me to think about it and then he wakes up crying. Not for me. For milk. Seriously. I know! He’ll be 4 in less than 4 months! The good mommy in my wants to go get him a sippy cup of milk and reassure him that I am always here for him. The single mommy who is finally just exhausted beyond reality wants to instill in her children that they are just fine in their own beds, for the whole night, until the sun comes up. And when the sun does come up Mac is snuggled beside me and Sailor is sleeping on my feet. I am the only mom I know whose children, ages 3 ½ and 6, still keep her up half the night!
When Mac was little my parents used to offer to take him so his father and I could have a quiet night and a sleep-in morning. They no longer offer but I am finally willing to accept. Is it too late to say yes?
Sailor has 2 days left of school. And yet, he cries again when I leave him with his teacher this morning. Maybe on Thursday he won’t cry. Or Friday, the day of the preschool “graduation” ceremony. Sailor will be returning in the fall and therefore not graduating this June. Nonetheless, all children are required to attend this most adorable, tear-jerker of a production in which four times the recommended number of people crowd into the little school house to watch teeny tiny children sing standard songs. It’s adorable beyond reason and I cried both years that Mac graduated.
While Sailor is at school today Mac and I share in a very important and MUCH anticipated right of passage. I make Mac is very first bowl of popcorn. When he was little I told him he had to be six to eat popcorn, due to the extreme possibility of small children choking on the buttery movie theatre snack. And now, after all these years (before which I simply could not imagine waiting this long) I allow him to have a bowl of popcorn. At 10:00 in the morning. Complete with a melted pat of butter and all the salt he wanted. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. He enjoys every last kernel and wants more (I don’t make more) and I am full to the point of wanting to puke. He is one happy little clam!
When we pick Sailor up he is wearing a pair of tan sweat pants, an undershirt and the shoes we left for him to wear on snowy days, which happen to be a gymshoe/sandals combo. “Sailor had an accident,” the second teacher whispers, handing me a plastic bag. I don’t even catch this the 1st time she says it and she has to repeat herself. She tells me how upset he was and that she told him never be afraid to get up and go potty. I am certainly not upset but very surprised because Sailor literally never has accidents. “I suppose I need to bring an extra set of clothes for Thursday?” I ask in jest. “It’s a good idea,” the teacher replies in all seriousness. Indeed.
She also hands me the class photo and Sailor’s individual photos. If I do say so myself, my little boy is stunningly gorgeous! The blue in his shirt has made the baby’s blue eyes just pop out of the photo. I try to remember what it was Sailor told me about the photo shoot two weeks ago (or was that seriously just last week?!) “We had to hide behind a tree,” he told me, “Den we had to blow his [the photographer’s] duck. Den we had to laugh.”
We walk home to change Sailor’s clothes. Which he is not happy with. But he looks like he should be watching sports on tv and drinking beer. He is so badly dressed he even earns a few funny looks from passersby on the walk home.
Mac has 12 days left of school. I counted. And then we are free to spend as much time at the beach as we want to. Which is what Mac wants to do today. It’s the perfect beach weather and if I weren’t so tired I would consider indulging his whim to go after school. But I am thinking Saturday might be a more appropriate choice.
In the playground after school one of the stay-home dads comments that Mac looks like he belongs on the lawn of a Jimmy Buffet concert. Having never attended one of Beffet’s concerts myself I admit to this and say he must be right. Mac is wearing a very big patchwork plaid button up shirt, with short sleeves that come below his elbows. He has on long blue shorts. And he is topped off by his signature hat. He does look as if he should be holding a stogey in one hand and a margarita in the other. Except he is doing anything but chilling.
I break up yet another scuffle on the playground, this time offering to escort the offending child inside for a visit to the principal. Once again my children are completely uninvolved. I am the every mother!
Sailor says he has two black eyes and we have to leave the school playground at 4:00. It’s still warm our. I want ice cream. We go home and the boys play while I fix some dinner and clean up a bit.
Their father comes for his weekly visit as we are finishing up dinner. Or I should say as Mac and I are finishing up dinner. Sailor has not touched the noodles and broccoli on his plate. Their dad was in the hospital last week and missed his visit (though he was here on Monday for Mac’s birthday). Tonight’s visit goes as usual. Though I am obliged to forego dinner plans with a friend because my ex feels unwell enough to stay home alone with the boys. He spends the majority of his 2 hours here talking with me and then we take the boys for ice cream. Mac gets a cone and I get a scoop and Sailor wants nothing. Except to go home and play. Which we do. I write. They play. But their dad is in pain and not the best playmate this evening. Yet when he leaves ½ an hour past the time I would normally have the boys in bed, Mac bursts into tears and I have to pry him from his father’s neck. I am perplexed. Last week he told my sister he didn’t want his dad to come to his birthday dinner because he didn’t like him much. And now this.
I carry him to bed and we chat. Seems one of the problems is that Daddy plays with the boys and Mommy generally does not. No, Mommy bathes, feeds, dresses, reads, drives, shops, pay bills, organizes, helps with homework, cleans up, yells, spanks, disciplines, gets no sleep, makes decisions…. Mommy. Daddy plays. Mommy does not play enough. And so Mac wants his dad to come visit more because he PLAYS WITH HIM! G-d help me if this is the most unfair thing to come across my path in a long time.
I make a promise to play with the kids more. “A lot!” Mac amends. Which will mean actual play, not working on the computer and allowing them to play. Or taking them to the beach and watching them play. Mac wants actual play. So I make a last ditch effort to save my sanity and offer up a deal: I will play more if I can get a bit more help around the house. So unfair, I know! But really, folks, how can I be expected to do all of the aforementioned tasks, and also deal with the bills and my own business, and still have time to PLAY! Dammit I don’t even like to PLAY with small children. I like to be with them. I like to do things with them – read, paint, walk. But, no, folks, I am sorry to have to admit that playing StarWars is very low on my "exciting things to do" list. I can’t compete with this. Mac asks if he can have more playdates with his friends. I name the French boy, one of the French girls and the Australian girl as children I am in the process of working out playtimes with for next week. And I make a mental note to be more… what? Fun? Someday I hope Mac and Sailor can understand what I have had to sacrifice to be a good single parent for them. I try so hard not to sacrifice the fun. But I have to be the disciplinarian and sometimes the two just do not go hand-in-hand. It’s so unfair. As unfair as having your dad never be home and then move out right after you turn four. I understand, Baby, really I do. And I will try to do better.
Wednesday morning I wake up alone. Well, almost. At least no one comes to sleep with me until the sun comes up. For the first time in forever. How did I accomplish this major feat, you ask? Simple. I asked the boys to stay in their beds all night. And they did! Perhaps it was a fluke. We’ll see tomorrow morning.
Sailor is giddy. Finds fun in slamming his bedroom door and holding Mac captive. I ask Mac to remind him why we don’t slam doors: “Because once you slammed my thumb and my nail turned black and fell off,” he tells Sailor. And then I ask him to get dressed in his soccer uniform – except I call it his soccer suit because I can never remember the word uniform – and meet me in the kitchen for breakfast. Thirty minutes later, when he is done tantrum-ing and whining about how he is too starving to wait [to get dressed first] and how he can’t put on his undies, he sits down to cold scrambled eggs and toast. Why is this necessary? Anybody?
Lauren is not at soccer today and Sailor has to play without support. And he does a great job. Because I bribe him. With the notion that we will go to Target and buy a toy if he plays without Mac or me. Ah, ya gotta love it: Here Honey, you play a game that you love and I will buy you a toy! Hey, listen, whatever works. And it works! Except the birthday gifts I try to return from Mac’s party are worth a whopping $2.50 each, leaving me with two gifts that I now must re-gift and no money to buy the kids the promised toys. I am not in a good mood scavenging the aisles of Target for the only StarWars toys we don’t have that don’t cost an arm or a leg. And then I convince Sailor to get a cute little soft bow and arrow from the beach toy aisle. Which Mac breaks 2 ½ minutes after we get home.
Not that he has time to be playing when we arrive home just 10 minutes before we have to leave for school. “What do you want for lunch? PBJ or quesadillas?” I ask Mac.
“Quesadillas because they are faster to make.” Not really, but ok. “Look, Mom, a case of ideas!”
I have already carried sleeping Sailor into the house from the car. I now carry sleeping Sailor from the house to the stroller. The parents at school think all he does is sleep.
When he wakes later in the afternoon he wants to play with me. So we play. We do some matching games and some puzzles. It’s fun, I admit it. Tho in the back of my mind are all the phone calls I need to be making and should have been making while he was asleep instead of walking to the park and reading for a few minutes. Oh, well. Life will go on around me, even if I stop to play with my little boy for an hour. Playing with Sailor reminds me of when Mac was little.
After school Mac reprimands me for not helping him with his homework last night and explains the consequences of not turning in your homework on time: "You don’t get a smiley face sticker. And this makes you sad."
I am both consoling and apologetic that I didn’t help him, but I also explain that he cannot tell me about homework at bed time and expect it to get done. I also start to explain that at the kindergarten level, being on time is not all that important, but then I stop myself. I realize that it is important as it sets the tone for the next 16 or more years he will be in school. It’s also important to rally on the side of his enthusiasm for homework!
“So what is your homework tonight?” I ask him. It is hours before bedtime and we should have plenty of time to get it done.
“I have to go outside and look at big trees very close up.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe to see the details or the patterins [that’s how he says it] or something.”
“We can do that after dinner. We can look at the apple tree in the back ard,” I suggest, mentioning the tiny tree my mother planted recently.
“No, it has to be a big tree. Like that one.” He points to a tree that is a good solid hundred years old.
“Ok, I think we can do this on the way home.” But I forget.
I look for the assignment in his backpack when we are heading out for ice cream after dinner. It’s in his folder, which has withstood the test of time and is the same folder from the first day of school. It is battered, torn, covered with stickers and tape, stapled closed on the bottom, and folded in half. I wanted to see if it would last all year. It did! The homework inside the folder instructs the children to count to 100 and then to practice counting backward. The illustration is of a girl standing against a tree, covering her eyes, and the caption reads, “98, 99, 100! Ready or not, here I come!” I try not to laugh as I explain the real homework instructions to Mac.
Also in his backpack tonight is his yearbook. Yes, you read that right. Yearbook. From his public school.
Tomorrow is Sailor’s last official day of school. Tho he will go back on Friday for “graduation.” “Mommy, are we moving?” he asks me.
“No.”
“All the kids who are moving get a picture.”
“That’s their diploma. It means they are not coming back to your preschool.”
And despite it being his almost last day tomorrow he still whines and asks, “Why do I have to go to school overdays?!”
He paints three little canvasses to give to his teachers as gifts tomorrow and he paints a large canvas just for fun. “I want to paint like [Curious] George and I want to put my hands in the bath like he did." And so at 8:30 at night he is painting followed by a bath in green water.
Mac has weird baby toes and for 6 years he has cried when I clip them. I am sure they hurt, as I have to work hard to get at them. Tonight he asks me what the doctor told us to do last week. “Clip them after a bath or shower,” I remind him. “
But we always do and it doesn’t help,” he reminds me.
He is right. So tonight I tell him to hold his breath. He does. And he does not cry. We look at each other. We are incredulous. We try the other foot. Nothing. “I didn’t even hold my breath!” he exclaims. It’s a miracle!
Mac’s butt hurts. He is not the best post-poop wiper out there. So even after his shower he wants me to fix it. I look for something appropriate to soothe his little tush. “How about Vaseline?” he suggests. Now why didn’t I think of that? I pop the top off the jar that is exactly one week younger than Mac and still more than half full. “That’s my lipstick!” Mac calls from his bedroom. Indeed, the jar’s contents perform many duties.
Thursday, May 31, 2007. Sailor’s last day of preschool. How did THAT happen? Funny how the winter months drag on at an interminable pace but when the sunshine of spring breaks thru we wonder how it all went by so quickly. He is dressed in a cute pair of plaid shorts, which I realize too late are a bit too short, a navy blue polo and his new overpriced brown leather sandals. He is cute. Cuter than cute. We come to school bearing gifts. And a change of clothes to replace the ones he wore home on Tuesday. Except when we arrive Teacher J is handing out the change-of-clothing boxes to the parents. As in, no one has a change of clothes for today. I remind her that she asked us to bring a new change of clothes. She says she doesn’t know what she was thinking.
Sailor won’t deliver his gifts, which I have nestled in shred and bagged in cello bags and tied with bows and attached to very personal notes. During breakfast. While Mac eats and Sailor refuses yet another warm meal.
Sailor won’t let me take any photos (which turns out to be a good thing as I find out later I have no film in the camera). And when it is time for me to leave, there is a tear running down Sailor’s cheek as he sits on histeacher’s lap, straining to reach me. It’s over, Baby. After this it’s all over (until you’re 4!). I don’t want to leave. It seems like a normal day. But for the nostalgia and the impossible regularity of it.
Mac refuses to help me with the garbage, preferring to stay inside and read rather than hazard a chance meeting with Ratatouille. I can’t blame him.
At 10:00 I take my starving boy on our last date to our nearby sandwich shop. I have enjoyed our year of Thursday lunches with him. It’s been time well spent. Our fave cashier guy gives us free lemonade and chips and we pay for the rest of our food with our own gift cards. Now that’s the way I like to travel. Mac is wearing a brand new shirt today. A polo with light and lighter green stripes.
“You look so handsome,” I told him this morning.
“Thank you. Who got me this shirt?”
“I did,” I say and then immediately see the error of my ways. “I mean, Easter Bunny did, I think, yes, Easter Bunny. But I picked it up for him, because, remember we were talking about this the other day? How the Easter Bunny needs help because he is so little and he doesn’t have a sleigh like Santa so he can only deliver the eggs and the mommies have to do the shopping…”
I know, it’s a stretch, but hey, I was in a pinch! Two bites into lunch and the aforementioned handsome new shirt is now a grease-stained, unattractive, no-one-will-want-this-shirt-as-a-hand-me-down shirt. Mac has yet to master the art of using his napkin. I am rather irritated. But what do I do? How do I teach my boy to use a napkin rather than his shirt? And should he not know this already?
We are too early for lunch but they make it for us anyway. We sit in the comfy seats in the back. Mac has to sign his thank you notes. Just sign them, not even write them. This takes him an hour. Truly. We go to the playground. We meet a boy and his mom who know two separate families we are friends with, both of whom had children at Mac’s party last weekend. Funny. We bump into one of Mac’s classmates on the way out and are once again running late. I am so sick of running late for everything because then I am truly running to get places on time. And no, my butt has not gone back up where it belongs and no, my cellulite has not disappeared and no, my legs don’t look any better than they looked a year ago. Darn it!
At the playground Mac demonstrates that he can finally pump his own swing.
Picking up Sailor at school, on his last day, is anti-climactic. We were late for drop-off, as usual (in direct opposite of Mac’s 1st preschool year when we were chronically early and I quipped on the last day that one would think I should know by now that it only takes 2 minutes to drive to school, not the ten I allow!), and we are one of the last ones to arrive at pick-up, as usual. There is no fanfare. It is simply over. Well, the fanfare is tomorrow, I suppose, the big graduation ceremony.
Halfway to school Sailor asks for pizza, which I have. He eats half a piece and says, “I’m done.” He wants to get out of the stroller and walk. He runs down the block in his cute, happy legs way. He stops, slumps, and walks like a tired man. He stops, readjusts and walks like a scarecrow. And despite the fact that I have my video camera with me, I miss the Kodak moment completely. I push the stroller with my left hand across the three-street intersection and hold Sailor’s hand with my right. Then he wants to push. “But you can’t see over the handlebars,” I point out. I help him steer. My 3 ½-year-old is pushing my 6-year-old. This has to be his last year in the stroller, I realize. I mean, what 7-year-old still rides in a stroller? (I’ll tell you what 7-year-old, Mac a year from now! I tell ya! )
“You’re doing a great job!”
“Now I can push by myself?” he asks in a tiny voice.
Drop-off is drop-off. I ask one of Mac’s classmates if I can see her new glasses. “I lost them.” She just go them two days ago. Is this what it’s going to be like with Mac next year?
Sailor falls asleep after drop-off and I meet my sister for a long, leisurely lunch. I sip a coffee. We chat about relationships. I realize in advising her all the mistakes I have made and why. It’s all good. The sky turns dark. And darker. Or as Sailor would say, “And even!” as in, and even darker. We round the next-to-last corner before school and are suddenly drenched. Hovering under a tree canopy with several others, we contemplate running the last block to school or hailing a taxi that will take me to my car, which I can return with and pick everyone up in less than 15 minutes. I have not taken a taxi since Mac was born. And there are none in sight today. The rain lets up just in time and I sign Mac out of school 5 minutes early.
Mac has a new umbrella. “I waited very patiently for this,” he reminds me. Indeed, he has waited six years. Little brother wants an umbrella now too, as I knew he would. I actually hear myself saying aloud that it is Mac’s choice whether or not Sailor gets an umbrella at 3 ½ even though he had to wait til he turned six.
“It’s my decision? Well then I decide yes.”
“Can we go get it right now?” Sailor asks.
The boys need a few rules about umbrella etiquette. Rule number 1, I begin… The rules are obvious, but to be so kind I ad rule #4: if you see a friend or family member standing in the rain without an umbrella, share your umbrella. Mac’s promptly forgets this rule a mere six minutes after he learns it.
Later we stop by the art studio to look through a few bags of hand-me-downs that have been dropped off for us. There are five full garbage bags of clothes. About as many items of clothing as my children currently own. We go through each bag and the children and I pick a few favorites, including a pair of light-up Buzz Lightyear slippers (“Slippers rhymes with flippers,” Sailor informs us later.), which I approve of because they can only be worn indoors. Mac spies a stack of pajamas and instantly he is cold and wants to put on pajamas right now. How many times does a mom have to say “no” before she is both heard and understood? Sailor tries on some too-big pants and a pair of Spiderman socks and a too-big jean jacket. All at once.
Later we are in the car discussing allergies to cats. “I’m allergic to cats,” Sailor says, “When I smell a cat I get itchy ‘bout a cat.”
Sailor pitches a fit when I leave for dinner with a friend. He is apparently still pitching said fit when I return two hours later. There is a look on my mother’s face that I am loathe to seriously investigate.
My house is a Wednesday mess, but it’s Thursday. I have much to do to prepare for the activities of tomorrow.
I go into the kitchen long past midnight. I need snack. I am sidetracked by Sailor’s dinner, left out by my mom; three to-go cups bearing rained-in lemonade, which now tastes foul, and an overpriced coffee that never tasted that great to begin with; a bowl of blackberries that had better be eaten soon; Mac’s green shirt with stains all down the front; Mac’s backpack, which holds a foul odor, a cup of candy, two water bottles, his yearbook, and a full folder; my purse and low-battery cell phone… I plug the phone into the bathroom, and take the shirt as far as, well, here, my lap. And I still have no snack. But I do have a sore throat.
Friday morning. The kids have been up for a seemingly long time when they finally drag me off the couch at 7:15. There is a lot to do today.
Despite the fact that today is Sailor’s absolute last day of school until September, he still cries at drop off. In fact, he even runs out the door after us today. I just can’t believe it.
Mac and I run home to put away the garbage cans, get the class gift ready for preschool, get ready for Serendipity Day at Mac’s school this afternoon. And while I am at it, I might as well call the insurance company, which I have not had time to do yet this week. I will refrain from quoting the hour-long conversation here. Suffice it to say, nothing is fair, I am screwed and also I am in a very bad mood. And I forget to pack face paints for Mac’s class this afternoon so I can do facepainting.
Sailor is adorable when we get to school. All the children are wearing straw jungle hats with their names on the front. Sailor is also wearing the same shirt Mac wore to preschool graduation 2 years ago, which I had to iron this morning. Yes, iron. I know. Over this green and blue plaid shirt he is wearing his blue and white seersucker jacket, the sleeves rolled up. Khaki shorts. Saddle shoes and white socks. My kid is certainly styling. And way too cute. But in a mood. Clingy. And while we are standing around waiting I catch him unzipping my skirt! Yowza! I scold. He is embarrassed. And angry. And completely uncooperative. And he won’t participate in the class activity of singing in a group. I am so not happy. Instead of crying from sentiment I want to cry out of frustration. I tell my mom to put away the camera.
Mac to the rescue. He mentions to Sailor that we have a gift for him at home. Ding ding ding! He asks if he can have the gift when he gets home. “Not unless you participate,” I say. Sailor is instantly singing along, and happily! Unfortunately he is standing right in front of us so it is very hard to capture these cute moments on film.
When it’s all over I know I should feel some nostalgia. I don’t know what to feel. He didn’t graduate but he did finish out a whole year. One whole whining, fussing, fighting year of preschool. I am proud of him for doing it. I am proud of me for not caving and pulling him out. I can’t believe it’s just suddenly over. Finished. Done. It was painful, those days dropping off my crying baby. Over and over again. And now just like that it’s over. (Until September of course … but that’s going to be a whole ‘nother story).
We have cookies and lemonade outside, give the teachers the gift form Sailor’s class, and say goodbye and thank you for a great year (which I still can’t believe is over). And then I pop Sailor in the stroller, entrust him to my parents and head off with Mac to the big school. Unfortunately I neglect to strap Sailor into the stroller and he gets out and throws a long tantrum all the way home. For my parents.
Mac has Serendipity Day at school today and I am here to volunteer. “After today will I stay home tomorrow because it’s summer break?” Mac has exactly 7 days of kindergarten to go.
I spend the afternoon painting 28 little faces. Most of the girls choose les jolies papillons (pretty butterflies) and I love how well they turn out, if I do say so myself. Mac is a full-faced Spiderman. I paint some of the kids’ faces to match their outfits. I paint a camouflage face and the German boy wants something but he doesn’t know the name of it in English. “Tell me in German,” I say. “Leopard,” he says. I do a couple of tigers, a princess or two. And lots of jolies papillons. It’s fun.
Mac is excited to be able to participate in snack – popcorn! Thankfully he knows better than to imbibe in the orange pop.
With Mac's face painted as Spiderman, we walk home after stopping at the bank to pay a bill that I found late last night, that was due yesterday. The greeter recognizes me from the weekend. I should be embarrassed but I am not.
Mac has goodie bags full of junky toys and crap and he and Sailor share nicely. We are all a little tired and although it is not quite 4pm and it’s very sunny and warm out, rather than take us all to the playground we hang around. Sailor changes clothes – it’s much too warm for the long sleeved, black turtleneck sweater of mine he is wearing when we get home. (He looks very cute in this, however.) He is wearing now his Curious George shirt with a light blue Hawaiian shirt – a jacket, he calls it – over it. At 5:00 I decide to end the day on a quiet note. I pop in the latest DVD to arrive from Netflix: a light film, Anne Frank.
We sit for three hours. Sailor straps no fewer than 5 pens to the neck of his shirt and fills Mac’s backpack with everything including our house phone and my cell phone then dumps it all out. He talks all through the movie. It breaks the mood a little. But not enough. By the time Otto Frank discovers his daughters are not coming back Mac is beside himself and bursts into tears. He is just so sad. I invite him to sit with me and before I know it I am covered in Spiderman and he is only part-Spiderman. We cry together at the inhumanity that is Anne Frank’s death. For the first time this story has truly affected me, not just because it makes me sad or because it is such a tragedy but because we are reminded at the end of the film, which was aired on television the weekend Mac was born, that Anne was just one of several million children to whom this happened. Suddenly it is all too real. It is also again horrifying to see that the world has learned nothing in the 60+ years since World War II ended. Nothing.
And so we end the night. The house is a mess and Sailor actually has the energy to bring things to the kitchen for me and Mac needs a shower to wash off the remainder of Spiderman. He is so sad and scared that he won’t leave my side. I put clean sheets on my bed, finally, after 2 weeks on the sofa, and send him to my bed to sleep while I put Sailor to bed. Am I scared, too? You bet. But I put on such a good face for Mac I convince myself it’s all ok.
Saturday rain is forecast. We cancel our beach plans and take a picnic to the park instead. It is warm and sunny all afternoon. We play our version of soccer. In the zoo we spy a pair of odd-looking ducks.
“I wonder what they are,” I muse aloud.
“That’s an Egyptian Goose,” Mac informs us.
“How do you know?”
“I read the sign.” My boy, who will struggle over “good” and “what” has just read “Egyptian Goose.” We whoop and holler and have a mini-celebration right in the zoo!
On Sunday Mac carries two loads of laundry up the stairs and both boys put away most of their own laundry in our deal: I’ll help you clean up your playroom if you help me clean up the dining room. Our teamwork leaves us enough time for a round of a new Banana Slap game, which would me much better suited to 8-year-olds, and 3 rounds of the Memory Game before I head out for an afternoon of work.
Week 34 Happy Birthday, Mac
My baby turns 6 today. Which may be why he wakes me up at 6:00 a.m.
“Mac!” Sailor cries. “You’re 6!”
“Say ‘Happy Birthday’ to me,” Mac whispers back.
“Happy Birthday.”
Mac kisses me. “I’m 6!” And I’m tired.
He reads me the time off the VCR and I beg the kids to go back to sleep, which they don’t. So out of desperation I turn on the tv. Mr. Rogers is on. “It’s Uncle Rogers,” Mac is excited to see the quiet man he first discovered a few years ago – which seems like a lifetime ago – just before the icon of children’s television died.
They let me sleep til 7:15. I feel hungover when I drag myself out of bed. That's so unfair! I should no thave to feel hungover if I did not at least get to enjoy the drinking part the night before! URGH!
Mac wants to open a few gifts. Three. No, five. Six.
I am trying to pull his coveted Cabbage Patch Kid (or Patch Kid in Sailor lingo) out of its box when I decide it’s of greater priority to me to go pee. I am soooo tired. The CPK is named Pierre, which means he must speak French! Hee hee. Mac is excited by new t-shirts: “Cool, Mom, did you order these for me?!” and he loves the little silver heart charm I am hoping to pin to the inside of his backpack. He opens a bag of chapter books about Anne Frank (which he wants to read right away), Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Harry Houdini. He get StarWars things and I am amazed at his ability to be so excited about a toy he himself picked out at Toys R Us just yesterday.
I prepare a very nice breakfast and I am soooo tired. Mac gets the first shower, I tell him, becuz it’s his birthday. We get it down to 5 minutes today and I am drying him off at exactly 9:38 a.m. The official time of his birth. “Now am I six?”
“Yes, now you are officially six.” And he is. To the minute. And I pick him up and hold him. He is 3 feet 10 inches and about 45 pounds but in my eyes, in my arms he is 17 ¾ inches long and just 5 ½ pounds and his whole butt, not just half of it, fits in my hand. He is beautiful. Red hair. Soft skin. Freckles. I am in love.
And in this moment I realize we are only going forward, never back. With every passing moment, every passing year Mac just gets bigger and bigger and more and more capable of living. He is not going to ever be the tiny baby I could nurse while putting on make-up. Not ever again. Or the tiny miracle who said his first word at 5 months old (I swear, it’s in his baby book!). He’s never again going to be the smartest baby I have ever known. He is never going to be small enough to pick up and hold for more than a minute or two. He was. It was him. It still is. But he is moving forward and I want to stay in the past. I cling to Sailor, just 3 ½ and still small enough to be a “baby.” I love the kid Mac is becoming. And I love the connection that he and I share. I let him go to his room to get dressed. But the clothes I have left out confuse him and he comes back to ask if there are choices. No, I explain, underwear then outfit. With t-shirts sometimes going under the main shirt and sometimes going over getting dressed can sometimes be confusing.
Mac has a very long phone conversation with my sister while I get ready, during which he tells her he invited his dad to his birthday dinner tonight even though he doesn’t like his dad very much anymore. Apparently he also puts the new CPK, Pierre, and Sailor’s CPK, Danny, on the phone, as well. Everyone enjoys the conversation. It’s getting late and I want to take Mac to lunch. I didn’t plan well so we can only go to our fave little place in the neighborhood, Cosi. Mac brings Pierre and Sailor brings Curious George. He fusses through most of lunch, but the guy who works there makes up for it by buying Sailor a lemonade and each boy a hot chocolate before we leave. I carry a cup holder with 5 drinks and Curious George in one arm and hold Sailor’s hand with my other hand. Mac thanks me for taking him to lunch. And I know I am doing a good job with him.
It’s getting warmer and warmer outside and we get home in time to change Sailor’s chocolate milk covered shirt and pack the cupcakes, milk, cups, napkins and Sailor into the wet stroller. Mac is wearing the cardboard crown that reads “It’s My Birthday,” which he got at Toys R Us yesterday. I think he is a dork. I wonder if he will wear this crown to school next year when he is turning 7 in 1st grade. I realize he is not a dork. He is merely an innocent little boy. And I love that about him.
Sailor is confused. Why didn’t Mac lose a tooth today? He isn’t really 6, his tooth didn’t fall out!
Sailor and I hang out at school with Mac in his classroom and after the first activity Sailor and I or I should say, I set up 30 places with a napkin, cupcake, and cup of milk. I video tape Mac standing on a chair conducting his class in their singing of “Happy Birthday to You (cha cha cha!)” and snap photos like a tourist of my two little boys enjoying their cupcakes side by side. Sailor is so well behaved in the kindergarten class. He is shy, maybe even intimidated, but he holds his own.
Most of the kids seem to like our cupcakes and everyone but the Australian girl wants more milk. One would think no one remembered to feed these children an hour ago.
Sailor and I escort Mac to the principal’s office where Mac offers a banana cupcake to the head honcho, who invites him into his inner office and offers him a birthday pencil and takes a few moments to show him (and Sailor, which is peering out from behind my leg, literally) a rain stick and a thunder drum. I am surprised by the display.
I am heartbroken to leave Mac at school. In six years I have never been away from him on his birthday. Not for even a moment. I try not to look back. Sailor and I walk home slowly. I am hoping he will fall asleep but he does not. We inflate balloons and tie them to chairs and finish getting ready for our party tonight. Sailor falls asleep in the stroller on the way back to school an hour later. I let Macplay in the playground for a bit but I am so disgusted by the behavior of some of the older children:
“What do you mean my little boy was humping you? He wouldn’t never behave that way! He doesn’t even know what that is! So don’t take his hat. If you have a problem, come find me and let me know.”
“Fine.”
“Don’t take attitude with me or I’ll find your mother!”
And then from another charming bigger boy to a girl, “Hit him, hit him!”
Me: “Hey, you hit him and I’ll hit you!”
I am only not put off by the boy who comes to me to tell me that he did not take Mac’s hat (because I yelled at him for wearing it, even tho I saw another boy put it on his head). I tell this boy he is fine and not to worry. 4:00 comes not fast enough and we leave. I think seriously about talking to the principal about this bad older kid behavior.
Mac and I discuss the fact that Mac is now officially old enough to eat popcorn, now that he has finally outgrown the official risk of popcorn as a choking hazard age (tho anyone can choke on popcorn) and we try to think of a time we can either go to a movie this week or just have some popcorn at home together.
My sister and Mac’s “aunt” and two little “cousins” are waiting outside when we get home. “Happy 6th Birthday Mac!” is written in chalk on the sidewalk.
Inside I start dinner while the three kids destroy every last bit of the work just completed by the cleaning girls. My sister opens the wine. There are a mere 9 people in my house and yet the noise, chaos and mess are overwhelming. Dinner is delicious tho. Mac and I have chosen to serve our new fave: broccoli, tofu and brown rice. There are balloons, streamers, StarWars masks…. A special “Happy Birthday Mac” banner that I got from a mom whose son had his birthday party at the art studio a couple weeks ago. And Mac’s birthday portrait is on the wall. It’s a party. Mac’s dad doesn’t eat. My dad avoids the tofu. I drink wine.
After dinner Mac opens a firefighter raincoat and his very first umbrella, roller skates (which Sailor takes over immediately), books, work books, a new leather belt, a dino dig, and a StarWars fighter plane of some sort. He is happy. He is well-loved and spoiled a bit. But mostly just well-loved. Sailor handles it all pretty well, especially as he is sure Mac will share everything. Which we know he will, if not today then soon.
“I want to eat some cake,” requests Mac’s four-year-old “cousin.” My sister brings up Mac’s chocolate cake with white frosting (per his request) that is decorated with his StarWars guys in battle, and a very cool candle: Darth Vader holding a red light saber – a candle. It’s a great cake. And I hate how it takes so long to prepare the cake and only a second to cut into it and destroy the beautiful picture. After my dad, Mac’s dad, and the rest of our family guests leave, I assign everyone a room to clean up. More or less. Sailor runs around and Mac gets into bed. I read to him from his new Houdini book. “I’m really into madicians and StarWars,” he tells me. “And Anne Frank, and … (I name a few other things he really likes these days) and Mommy!” I snuggle him. “That’s the thing I’m into most,” he tells me. I love this kid!
After three chapters I am antsy with exhaustion. Tho never as tired as I was the day he was born. That was the most tired I have ever felt in my entire life. Tonight I am tired from everything I have put into making today great for the little boy who has made me a mother and made my life great.
I kiss his pink cheek, his freckled nose. I am so grateful for this little being. I am so amazed that he is mine. That I still have him. That the world has not destroyed itself and us with it (which was my fear, when, at nearly 4 months old, I thought we would never see his 5th birthday after we suffered through September 11th together). I am eternally blessed by this child. Mine. My very own. My baby boy.
It is his birthday today. And it is the day that my life was irrevocably changed because I became a mother. Six years ago. Forever ago. I cherish every moment, cliché that it is.
Happy birthday, my beautiful baby boy, my little Mac. I love you like crazy!
Two nights ago I told Mac it was his last night of going to sleep 5 and still waking up 5. Last night I told him he’d go to sleep 5 and wake up 6. Tonight I tell him he will go to sleep 6 and wake up 6 for the first time. I am such a sap!
Tuesday night we sit at dinner. The back door is open. It feels like summer. From no where Mac asks, “What’s a Piscalalian?”
“A what?” I ask.
“A Piscalalian. What Nana is. You know, not Jewish and not Christian.”
I have to call my mother. “Be patient and listen to Mac’s question,” I tell her, stifling my giggle.
I hear Mac’s end of the conversation only. “I know what a church is…”
When he hands the phone back to me a minute or two later he has some idea of what an Episcopalian is.
Wednesday morning Mac has kindergarten. The school has a half day and it’s the afternoon kindergarten’s turn to get to go to school and the morning class’s day off. We walk over. School starts at 8:53 a.m. so we get a good taste of what school mornings will be like next year. I think it’s going to kill us. Because despite the fact that we were up at 6:40 this morning we still had to kick it to get to school on time.
Sailor and I walk home and stop at the bank to deposit the bi-weekly child support check. And then we run home to pick up the video camera and drop off the stroller. We drive to soccer and get stuck in traffic on the way. Sailor’s friend Lauren is joining him today. Which I am hoping will help him feel more comfortably in the class without Mac. We arrive to find Lauren sitting in the stands with her mother and little brother. Shy like Sailor, she is reluctant to join the class on her own. It takes Sailor far less time to warm up today and he does not cry. I get cute video footage of Sailor and Lauren sitting together, so well-behaved… Is that really my kid? I wish this version lived in my home.
Sailor invites Lauren to join us on the picnic we are going on after we pick up Mac from school. We make a plan to meet in the park at noon and hurry to Trader Joe’s for brioche, turkey, blackberries, strawberries, lemonade, and crackers. We barely make it home with just 5 minutes for me to make a complete picnic lunch, go to the bathroom, and get Sailor to put his shoes back on. Luckily we find parking almost immediately.
It’s nice picking up Mac so early. We have the whole rest of the day to do as we please. Our picnic is delicious and when the kids run out of our site too many times we move over to the playground. Where Sailor’s little friend pops on a diaper to pee. Whatever.
Mac got roller skates for his birthday and he and I picked up a new set of knee and elbow pads for Sailor on Tuesday. So we gather up all of our roller gear and head outside after a quick water break. While sitting on the front steps Mac suddenly calls out, “Rat!”
A small, cute-ish, terrifying, rat is laboriously climbing up the next door neighbors’ steps and heading our way. “GET IN THE HOUSE!” I scream. I dash up the stairs. Sailor is crying hysterically because he can’t get up the stairs in his roller skates. I run down and grab him. The rat disappears and we are all so disgusted and horrified I never want to set foot on my front steps again. We regroup and head back down. Making lots of noise so Ratatouille does not come out for another visit. We head around the block for a 40-minute skate. Really.
Sailor and Mac are wearing matching camo Superman shirts. Mac’s is big but Sailor’s is enormous. Pair this with their helmets, knee and elbow pads and gloves (Sailor’s set came with fingerless gloves and Mac has pulled out a pair from winter – a smart move) and they are smashingly adorable.
The day goes on and on and we are really getting a nice taste of what summer is going to be like.
Thursday morning Sailor trashes Mac’s room. He gets in trouble. Yet he cries when I try to leave him at school because he wants to be with me. I swear… the boy has exactly 3 days left of school and he is still crying at drop-off!
Mac and I do some shopping for birthday party food for Saturday. And then we stop for a coffee and sit outside in the warm sunshine. I tell Mac about my plan for him and Sailor this summer regarding French class. As Mac doesn’t want to go and Sailor does but won’t go without Mac, I have decided to stoop to the level of bribery. I tell him that I will give him $1 per week to take Sailor to French class.
“You’ll have quite a lot of dollars by the end of the summer,” I tell him, “and if you want, you can buy something special.”
“Like maybe a bunch of flowers for you,” my dear darling boy replies. I am gushing!
“Oh Mac!” He comes to me and I wrap him in my arms. “Why are you so sweet?”
“You raised me this way,” my beloved son says.
Mac feeds pigeons. “Pichkins” he used to call them when he was not yet 2 years old. I tell him not to feed pigeons. He thinks he is sneaking them food. But I am not that unaware.
We have a nice morning. When I am with him I wonder what my life would have been like if he were my only one; if I’d never had Sailor. Yet when I am with Sailor I wonder what it’d be like to be the mom of just a 3-year-old. Each of my children is so unique, so utterly delightful when he wants to be; so much to cherish. I love their smallness.
We walk to get Sailor from school and on the way to the big school he takes off his sandals, which he claims hurt his feet. Mac is making similar claims about his sandals as well. Which leads me to regret spending less than $15 per pair. And which will lead me to Nordstrom over the weekend to pick up two pair of StrideRites.
Sailor convinces me to let him watch tv when we get home. I don’t know how he does it but I think I am just too tired to protest. My feet are falling off – the $76 sandals I bought a few weeks ago have given me blisters on the bottoms of my feet and every other pair of sandals I own are cutting the heck out of the tops of my feet and since I walked probably no fewer than 4 or 5 miles yesterday my legs are just wiped! He watches one video – an old one about Elmo and a Firehouse from when Mac was a baby, which he used to call Elmo Fire -- and then comes into the kitchen to find me mixing up yet another batch of banana cupcakes – my 3rd in a week – and says, “The tv was faster than you.” He is pleased with this and goes off to play. We play pirates for a few minutes, which basically means we put together the pirate ships. And then Sailor pretends he can’t put on his own shoes when it‘s time to leave and the next battle begins. He sticks his tongue out, I let him taste soap, he spits said soap at me, I ask him whether or not he wants more soap. I realize he is tired so I leave him in the bathroom and finish gathering snacks. And he falls asleep on the way to school.
There is a thing going on at school tonight. Tho nobody seems clear on the who, what and why of it. I fill everyone in on the fact that there will be hotdogs at 5:30, a reception for the retiring principal (for whom Mac has purchased a flowering plant and written a card this morning) and teachers at 6, a band concert at 7 and an art fair in the gym. Several of the moms decide to wait with me in the playground until 5:30. I am armed with sippy cups and water, fruit and crackers. We are here for the long haul.
Until Mac has to go to the bathroom. Bad. No big deal. He always waits til the last minute. So we run to the bathroom, leaving Sailor asleep in the stroller under the watch of one of the kindergarten moms. I wait in the hallway and he seems to be taking a bit too long. I knock.
“Are you ok?”
“Yes. I just have diarrhea. But I’ll clean it up.”
Clean it up?? I go into the boys’ room. Mac is in the middle stall and he tells me, “Some poop got on the front of the toilet.”
I push open the door and there is poop everywhere. The floor. The toilet. Mac’s underwear. The back of his shorts. And it stinks. And I love being a mom. Because this is where my real mommy self kicks in. I clean it all up. Clean him up a little (it’s too hard without wipes) and make sure he feels ok enough to go home. He wants to go home and put on his pj’s and go right to bed. So much for our evening at school. We walk home quickly. He feels sick-ish and my feet are burning. We make it home. He gets a bath. And despite the fact that against my better judgement he eats a slice of watermelon and macker cheese for dinner, he is perfectly fine for the rest of the evening. I blame the episode on the strawberry shortcake ice cream bar-o-crap that I let him buy from the vendor outside of school. Never again.
During dinner Sailor tells us he has a song to sing for us. He performs an adorable preschool version of 5 little monkeys jumping on the bed. I love it. Then Mac tries to out do him.
A: Now you sing a song, Mommy.
H: Sing something from "Annie."
M: The sun'll come out tomorrow...
A: How come Annie's diarrhea was on the floor?
M: In the movie?
A: No, the other thing.
M: (clearly bewildered by Sailor's question) Do you mean the poopy kind of diarrhea?
A: No, the book kind. (Meaning Anne Frank's diary, which was found on the floor by Miep Geis after Anne and her family were discovered and taken away.)
Mac and Sailor are playing so nicely in the playroom after dinner. I am too wiped to do much so I retreat to the living room. I want to pop on the tv but I know the kids will be all over me like a cat to a can opener if I do, so I grab a book I started week ago and settle on the couch for some “me” time, which is exactly what the book is telling me to do. I listen to the boys play. I read. It takes them roughly 45 minutes to need me. And then all hell breaks loose. Or I should say all Sailor breaks loose. Mac is tired. I can see it in his eyes. He wants to go to bed. Sailor wants Mac to play with him. He throws a fit. When he is over it we play a rock game to see which boy’s story I will read first. Sailor wins and I read a dumb Batman book. Then it’s Mac’s turn. We are on chapter 5 of his new Houdini book. Sailor wants milk first. Then he wants more macker cheese, which there isn’t any of, and he wants to play with my nose and he is being terribly rude. I give him a choice: listen quietly or go into his own room. He chooses his own choice: continue to be an obnoxious and disruptive and tired little boy. He gets carried to his room. A battle ensues.
I am duly punished for taking 45 minutes of me-time. The boys want snacks and I wonder for the thousandth time why I ever bother to feed the boys dinner at dinner time. We always have to have a snack at bedtime, which occurs roughly right after dinner. Sailor uses his 15 minutes of snack time to whine about being thirsty and never actually eats his snack. And then it’s 8:30 and both boys are in bed. Except Mac is afraid and wants me to stay with him. I have to go to the bathroom first. Sailor hears me and wants to ask me a question about two illustrations in the book he is looking at. “Why,” he begins, flipping pages til he finds what he is looking for, “is he sad? And why is he…” he flips more pages, “angry?” Mac is waiting for me in his room. I am one mom. With two children, whose bedrooms are located on opposite ends of my house.
I am so harassed. And once again it’s after 11pm and I am still up and hungry. Sigh.
Friday.
My children’s perception of time is a little uncertain as of yet. Mac asked me today (which happens to be the 30th anniversary of the premier of StarWars, their fave), which came first, StarWars or the Titanic sinking! Mac was wowed when I explained that the Titanic sank before GrandDad was born and StarWars came out when I was nine!
“Mac!” Sailor cries. “You’re 6!”
“Say ‘Happy Birthday’ to me,” Mac whispers back.
“Happy Birthday.”
Mac kisses me. “I’m 6!” And I’m tired.
He reads me the time off the VCR and I beg the kids to go back to sleep, which they don’t. So out of desperation I turn on the tv. Mr. Rogers is on. “It’s Uncle Rogers,” Mac is excited to see the quiet man he first discovered a few years ago – which seems like a lifetime ago – just before the icon of children’s television died.
They let me sleep til 7:15. I feel hungover when I drag myself out of bed. That's so unfair! I should no thave to feel hungover if I did not at least get to enjoy the drinking part the night before! URGH!
Mac wants to open a few gifts. Three. No, five. Six.
I am trying to pull his coveted Cabbage Patch Kid (or Patch Kid in Sailor lingo) out of its box when I decide it’s of greater priority to me to go pee. I am soooo tired. The CPK is named Pierre, which means he must speak French! Hee hee. Mac is excited by new t-shirts: “Cool, Mom, did you order these for me?!” and he loves the little silver heart charm I am hoping to pin to the inside of his backpack. He opens a bag of chapter books about Anne Frank (which he wants to read right away), Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Harry Houdini. He get StarWars things and I am amazed at his ability to be so excited about a toy he himself picked out at Toys R Us just yesterday.
I prepare a very nice breakfast and I am soooo tired. Mac gets the first shower, I tell him, becuz it’s his birthday. We get it down to 5 minutes today and I am drying him off at exactly 9:38 a.m. The official time of his birth. “Now am I six?”
“Yes, now you are officially six.” And he is. To the minute. And I pick him up and hold him. He is 3 feet 10 inches and about 45 pounds but in my eyes, in my arms he is 17 ¾ inches long and just 5 ½ pounds and his whole butt, not just half of it, fits in my hand. He is beautiful. Red hair. Soft skin. Freckles. I am in love.
And in this moment I realize we are only going forward, never back. With every passing moment, every passing year Mac just gets bigger and bigger and more and more capable of living. He is not going to ever be the tiny baby I could nurse while putting on make-up. Not ever again. Or the tiny miracle who said his first word at 5 months old (I swear, it’s in his baby book!). He’s never again going to be the smartest baby I have ever known. He is never going to be small enough to pick up and hold for more than a minute or two. He was. It was him. It still is. But he is moving forward and I want to stay in the past. I cling to Sailor, just 3 ½ and still small enough to be a “baby.” I love the kid Mac is becoming. And I love the connection that he and I share. I let him go to his room to get dressed. But the clothes I have left out confuse him and he comes back to ask if there are choices. No, I explain, underwear then outfit. With t-shirts sometimes going under the main shirt and sometimes going over getting dressed can sometimes be confusing.
Mac has a very long phone conversation with my sister while I get ready, during which he tells her he invited his dad to his birthday dinner tonight even though he doesn’t like his dad very much anymore. Apparently he also puts the new CPK, Pierre, and Sailor’s CPK, Danny, on the phone, as well. Everyone enjoys the conversation. It’s getting late and I want to take Mac to lunch. I didn’t plan well so we can only go to our fave little place in the neighborhood, Cosi. Mac brings Pierre and Sailor brings Curious George. He fusses through most of lunch, but the guy who works there makes up for it by buying Sailor a lemonade and each boy a hot chocolate before we leave. I carry a cup holder with 5 drinks and Curious George in one arm and hold Sailor’s hand with my other hand. Mac thanks me for taking him to lunch. And I know I am doing a good job with him.
It’s getting warmer and warmer outside and we get home in time to change Sailor’s chocolate milk covered shirt and pack the cupcakes, milk, cups, napkins and Sailor into the wet stroller. Mac is wearing the cardboard crown that reads “It’s My Birthday,” which he got at Toys R Us yesterday. I think he is a dork. I wonder if he will wear this crown to school next year when he is turning 7 in 1st grade. I realize he is not a dork. He is merely an innocent little boy. And I love that about him.
Sailor is confused. Why didn’t Mac lose a tooth today? He isn’t really 6, his tooth didn’t fall out!
Sailor and I hang out at school with Mac in his classroom and after the first activity Sailor and I or I should say, I set up 30 places with a napkin, cupcake, and cup of milk. I video tape Mac standing on a chair conducting his class in their singing of “Happy Birthday to You (cha cha cha!)” and snap photos like a tourist of my two little boys enjoying their cupcakes side by side. Sailor is so well behaved in the kindergarten class. He is shy, maybe even intimidated, but he holds his own.
Most of the kids seem to like our cupcakes and everyone but the Australian girl wants more milk. One would think no one remembered to feed these children an hour ago.
Sailor and I escort Mac to the principal’s office where Mac offers a banana cupcake to the head honcho, who invites him into his inner office and offers him a birthday pencil and takes a few moments to show him (and Sailor, which is peering out from behind my leg, literally) a rain stick and a thunder drum. I am surprised by the display.
I am heartbroken to leave Mac at school. In six years I have never been away from him on his birthday. Not for even a moment. I try not to look back. Sailor and I walk home slowly. I am hoping he will fall asleep but he does not. We inflate balloons and tie them to chairs and finish getting ready for our party tonight. Sailor falls asleep in the stroller on the way back to school an hour later. I let Macplay in the playground for a bit but I am so disgusted by the behavior of some of the older children:
“What do you mean my little boy was humping you? He wouldn’t never behave that way! He doesn’t even know what that is! So don’t take his hat. If you have a problem, come find me and let me know.”
“Fine.”
“Don’t take attitude with me or I’ll find your mother!”
And then from another charming bigger boy to a girl, “Hit him, hit him!”
Me: “Hey, you hit him and I’ll hit you!”
I am only not put off by the boy who comes to me to tell me that he did not take Mac’s hat (because I yelled at him for wearing it, even tho I saw another boy put it on his head). I tell this boy he is fine and not to worry. 4:00 comes not fast enough and we leave. I think seriously about talking to the principal about this bad older kid behavior.
Mac and I discuss the fact that Mac is now officially old enough to eat popcorn, now that he has finally outgrown the official risk of popcorn as a choking hazard age (tho anyone can choke on popcorn) and we try to think of a time we can either go to a movie this week or just have some popcorn at home together.
My sister and Mac’s “aunt” and two little “cousins” are waiting outside when we get home. “Happy 6th Birthday Mac!” is written in chalk on the sidewalk.
Inside I start dinner while the three kids destroy every last bit of the work just completed by the cleaning girls. My sister opens the wine. There are a mere 9 people in my house and yet the noise, chaos and mess are overwhelming. Dinner is delicious tho. Mac and I have chosen to serve our new fave: broccoli, tofu and brown rice. There are balloons, streamers, StarWars masks…. A special “Happy Birthday Mac” banner that I got from a mom whose son had his birthday party at the art studio a couple weeks ago. And Mac’s birthday portrait is on the wall. It’s a party. Mac’s dad doesn’t eat. My dad avoids the tofu. I drink wine.
After dinner Mac opens a firefighter raincoat and his very first umbrella, roller skates (which Sailor takes over immediately), books, work books, a new leather belt, a dino dig, and a StarWars fighter plane of some sort. He is happy. He is well-loved and spoiled a bit. But mostly just well-loved. Sailor handles it all pretty well, especially as he is sure Mac will share everything. Which we know he will, if not today then soon.
“I want to eat some cake,” requests Mac’s four-year-old “cousin.” My sister brings up Mac’s chocolate cake with white frosting (per his request) that is decorated with his StarWars guys in battle, and a very cool candle: Darth Vader holding a red light saber – a candle. It’s a great cake. And I hate how it takes so long to prepare the cake and only a second to cut into it and destroy the beautiful picture. After my dad, Mac’s dad, and the rest of our family guests leave, I assign everyone a room to clean up. More or less. Sailor runs around and Mac gets into bed. I read to him from his new Houdini book. “I’m really into madicians and StarWars,” he tells me. “And Anne Frank, and … (I name a few other things he really likes these days) and Mommy!” I snuggle him. “That’s the thing I’m into most,” he tells me. I love this kid!
After three chapters I am antsy with exhaustion. Tho never as tired as I was the day he was born. That was the most tired I have ever felt in my entire life. Tonight I am tired from everything I have put into making today great for the little boy who has made me a mother and made my life great.
I kiss his pink cheek, his freckled nose. I am so grateful for this little being. I am so amazed that he is mine. That I still have him. That the world has not destroyed itself and us with it (which was my fear, when, at nearly 4 months old, I thought we would never see his 5th birthday after we suffered through September 11th together). I am eternally blessed by this child. Mine. My very own. My baby boy.
It is his birthday today. And it is the day that my life was irrevocably changed because I became a mother. Six years ago. Forever ago. I cherish every moment, cliché that it is.
Happy birthday, my beautiful baby boy, my little Mac. I love you like crazy!
Two nights ago I told Mac it was his last night of going to sleep 5 and still waking up 5. Last night I told him he’d go to sleep 5 and wake up 6. Tonight I tell him he will go to sleep 6 and wake up 6 for the first time. I am such a sap!
Tuesday night we sit at dinner. The back door is open. It feels like summer. From no where Mac asks, “What’s a Piscalalian?”
“A what?” I ask.
“A Piscalalian. What Nana is. You know, not Jewish and not Christian.”
I have to call my mother. “Be patient and listen to Mac’s question,” I tell her, stifling my giggle.
I hear Mac’s end of the conversation only. “I know what a church is…”
When he hands the phone back to me a minute or two later he has some idea of what an Episcopalian is.
Wednesday morning Mac has kindergarten. The school has a half day and it’s the afternoon kindergarten’s turn to get to go to school and the morning class’s day off. We walk over. School starts at 8:53 a.m. so we get a good taste of what school mornings will be like next year. I think it’s going to kill us. Because despite the fact that we were up at 6:40 this morning we still had to kick it to get to school on time.
Sailor and I walk home and stop at the bank to deposit the bi-weekly child support check. And then we run home to pick up the video camera and drop off the stroller. We drive to soccer and get stuck in traffic on the way. Sailor’s friend Lauren is joining him today. Which I am hoping will help him feel more comfortably in the class without Mac. We arrive to find Lauren sitting in the stands with her mother and little brother. Shy like Sailor, she is reluctant to join the class on her own. It takes Sailor far less time to warm up today and he does not cry. I get cute video footage of Sailor and Lauren sitting together, so well-behaved… Is that really my kid? I wish this version lived in my home.
Sailor invites Lauren to join us on the picnic we are going on after we pick up Mac from school. We make a plan to meet in the park at noon and hurry to Trader Joe’s for brioche, turkey, blackberries, strawberries, lemonade, and crackers. We barely make it home with just 5 minutes for me to make a complete picnic lunch, go to the bathroom, and get Sailor to put his shoes back on. Luckily we find parking almost immediately.
It’s nice picking up Mac so early. We have the whole rest of the day to do as we please. Our picnic is delicious and when the kids run out of our site too many times we move over to the playground. Where Sailor’s little friend pops on a diaper to pee. Whatever.
Mac got roller skates for his birthday and he and I picked up a new set of knee and elbow pads for Sailor on Tuesday. So we gather up all of our roller gear and head outside after a quick water break. While sitting on the front steps Mac suddenly calls out, “Rat!”
A small, cute-ish, terrifying, rat is laboriously climbing up the next door neighbors’ steps and heading our way. “GET IN THE HOUSE!” I scream. I dash up the stairs. Sailor is crying hysterically because he can’t get up the stairs in his roller skates. I run down and grab him. The rat disappears and we are all so disgusted and horrified I never want to set foot on my front steps again. We regroup and head back down. Making lots of noise so Ratatouille does not come out for another visit. We head around the block for a 40-minute skate. Really.
Sailor and Mac are wearing matching camo Superman shirts. Mac’s is big but Sailor’s is enormous. Pair this with their helmets, knee and elbow pads and gloves (Sailor’s set came with fingerless gloves and Mac has pulled out a pair from winter – a smart move) and they are smashingly adorable.
The day goes on and on and we are really getting a nice taste of what summer is going to be like.
Thursday morning Sailor trashes Mac’s room. He gets in trouble. Yet he cries when I try to leave him at school because he wants to be with me. I swear… the boy has exactly 3 days left of school and he is still crying at drop-off!
Mac and I do some shopping for birthday party food for Saturday. And then we stop for a coffee and sit outside in the warm sunshine. I tell Mac about my plan for him and Sailor this summer regarding French class. As Mac doesn’t want to go and Sailor does but won’t go without Mac, I have decided to stoop to the level of bribery. I tell him that I will give him $1 per week to take Sailor to French class.
“You’ll have quite a lot of dollars by the end of the summer,” I tell him, “and if you want, you can buy something special.”
“Like maybe a bunch of flowers for you,” my dear darling boy replies. I am gushing!
“Oh Mac!” He comes to me and I wrap him in my arms. “Why are you so sweet?”
“You raised me this way,” my beloved son says.
Mac feeds pigeons. “Pichkins” he used to call them when he was not yet 2 years old. I tell him not to feed pigeons. He thinks he is sneaking them food. But I am not that unaware.
We have a nice morning. When I am with him I wonder what my life would have been like if he were my only one; if I’d never had Sailor. Yet when I am with Sailor I wonder what it’d be like to be the mom of just a 3-year-old. Each of my children is so unique, so utterly delightful when he wants to be; so much to cherish. I love their smallness.
We walk to get Sailor from school and on the way to the big school he takes off his sandals, which he claims hurt his feet. Mac is making similar claims about his sandals as well. Which leads me to regret spending less than $15 per pair. And which will lead me to Nordstrom over the weekend to pick up two pair of StrideRites.
Sailor convinces me to let him watch tv when we get home. I don’t know how he does it but I think I am just too tired to protest. My feet are falling off – the $76 sandals I bought a few weeks ago have given me blisters on the bottoms of my feet and every other pair of sandals I own are cutting the heck out of the tops of my feet and since I walked probably no fewer than 4 or 5 miles yesterday my legs are just wiped! He watches one video – an old one about Elmo and a Firehouse from when Mac was a baby, which he used to call Elmo Fire -- and then comes into the kitchen to find me mixing up yet another batch of banana cupcakes – my 3rd in a week – and says, “The tv was faster than you.” He is pleased with this and goes off to play. We play pirates for a few minutes, which basically means we put together the pirate ships. And then Sailor pretends he can’t put on his own shoes when it‘s time to leave and the next battle begins. He sticks his tongue out, I let him taste soap, he spits said soap at me, I ask him whether or not he wants more soap. I realize he is tired so I leave him in the bathroom and finish gathering snacks. And he falls asleep on the way to school.
There is a thing going on at school tonight. Tho nobody seems clear on the who, what and why of it. I fill everyone in on the fact that there will be hotdogs at 5:30, a reception for the retiring principal (for whom Mac has purchased a flowering plant and written a card this morning) and teachers at 6, a band concert at 7 and an art fair in the gym. Several of the moms decide to wait with me in the playground until 5:30. I am armed with sippy cups and water, fruit and crackers. We are here for the long haul.
Until Mac has to go to the bathroom. Bad. No big deal. He always waits til the last minute. So we run to the bathroom, leaving Sailor asleep in the stroller under the watch of one of the kindergarten moms. I wait in the hallway and he seems to be taking a bit too long. I knock.
“Are you ok?”
“Yes. I just have diarrhea. But I’ll clean it up.”
Clean it up?? I go into the boys’ room. Mac is in the middle stall and he tells me, “Some poop got on the front of the toilet.”
I push open the door and there is poop everywhere. The floor. The toilet. Mac’s underwear. The back of his shorts. And it stinks. And I love being a mom. Because this is where my real mommy self kicks in. I clean it all up. Clean him up a little (it’s too hard without wipes) and make sure he feels ok enough to go home. He wants to go home and put on his pj’s and go right to bed. So much for our evening at school. We walk home quickly. He feels sick-ish and my feet are burning. We make it home. He gets a bath. And despite the fact that against my better judgement he eats a slice of watermelon and macker cheese for dinner, he is perfectly fine for the rest of the evening. I blame the episode on the strawberry shortcake ice cream bar-o-crap that I let him buy from the vendor outside of school. Never again.
During dinner Sailor tells us he has a song to sing for us. He performs an adorable preschool version of 5 little monkeys jumping on the bed. I love it. Then Mac tries to out do him.
A: Now you sing a song, Mommy.
H: Sing something from "Annie."
M: The sun'll come out tomorrow...
A: How come Annie's diarrhea was on the floor?
M: In the movie?
A: No, the other thing.
M: (clearly bewildered by Sailor's question) Do you mean the poopy kind of diarrhea?
A: No, the book kind. (Meaning Anne Frank's diary, which was found on the floor by Miep Geis after Anne and her family were discovered and taken away.)
Mac and Sailor are playing so nicely in the playroom after dinner. I am too wiped to do much so I retreat to the living room. I want to pop on the tv but I know the kids will be all over me like a cat to a can opener if I do, so I grab a book I started week ago and settle on the couch for some “me” time, which is exactly what the book is telling me to do. I listen to the boys play. I read. It takes them roughly 45 minutes to need me. And then all hell breaks loose. Or I should say all Sailor breaks loose. Mac is tired. I can see it in his eyes. He wants to go to bed. Sailor wants Mac to play with him. He throws a fit. When he is over it we play a rock game to see which boy’s story I will read first. Sailor wins and I read a dumb Batman book. Then it’s Mac’s turn. We are on chapter 5 of his new Houdini book. Sailor wants milk first. Then he wants more macker cheese, which there isn’t any of, and he wants to play with my nose and he is being terribly rude. I give him a choice: listen quietly or go into his own room. He chooses his own choice: continue to be an obnoxious and disruptive and tired little boy. He gets carried to his room. A battle ensues.
I am duly punished for taking 45 minutes of me-time. The boys want snacks and I wonder for the thousandth time why I ever bother to feed the boys dinner at dinner time. We always have to have a snack at bedtime, which occurs roughly right after dinner. Sailor uses his 15 minutes of snack time to whine about being thirsty and never actually eats his snack. And then it’s 8:30 and both boys are in bed. Except Mac is afraid and wants me to stay with him. I have to go to the bathroom first. Sailor hears me and wants to ask me a question about two illustrations in the book he is looking at. “Why,” he begins, flipping pages til he finds what he is looking for, “is he sad? And why is he…” he flips more pages, “angry?” Mac is waiting for me in his room. I am one mom. With two children, whose bedrooms are located on opposite ends of my house.
I am so harassed. And once again it’s after 11pm and I am still up and hungry. Sigh.
Friday.
My children’s perception of time is a little uncertain as of yet. Mac asked me today (which happens to be the 30th anniversary of the premier of StarWars, their fave), which came first, StarWars or the Titanic sinking! Mac was wowed when I explained that the Titanic sank before GrandDad was born and StarWars came out when I was nine!
Week 33 -- Mac's Last Week of Being 5
Mac will turn six one week from today. This is his last week of being five. And then it’s all over. He is going to be an official kid. No more baby stuff (no that he has been a baby for awhile) but six is real kid. He knows how to tie his shoes, which once he figured out he mastered, he can make coffee and yesterday for Mother’s Day he nuked me a cup of tea. There’s not much he can’t do at this point if he puts his mind to it.
Today we all sleep til about 9am. It’s getting later and later and one of these days it’s going to be time to get up early all the time for 1st grade. Why are the early mornings wasted on infants who have no place to go? The older my kids get the later we sleep. We don’t have to rush but we do have to get moving. Mac has talking doctor at 11:15. While we are there Sailor is nearly attacked by a very cute AfAm boy who is developmentally delayed. I have my arms around my boy protecting him from this other boy who has Sailor’s arm in his grip. I work his hands away, saying, “Gentle, gentle,” and the boy starts beating at the sofa we are sitting on. His grandmother tries to hold him but he is wild and runs away. She gets him under control and apologizes to us. We are unharmed and I am exceedingly polite. No harm is done and she seems to have a good handle on the problem. Another boy in the waiting room watches me read to Sailor. He moves in with his own book. Sailor requests a second reading of the book. It’s an old Tom and Jerry book. It has no front or back cover but I can tell by the text that this book was written before I was born. We invite the little boy to listen. He brings with him a Thomas the Train book and when I finish the first book, Sailor’s, and start on the 2nd book, the boy’s, Sailor moves away. He doesn’t want to hear about Thomas’ ABCs. So I read just to the boy until his appointment.
Mac is on time for school. But I have to fix his outfit before I allow him to enter. For reasons I cannot explain he has a pile of about 15 pair of summer shorts from last year that still fit him, more or less. He is wearing a pair today, with a cute t-shirt and a horrible blue Hawaiian style shirt that are also from last year. He looks like a geek, all skinny legs sticking up from his sandals. I have to get the blue surf board shirt off him. Then he looks presentable.
Sailor and I run to the grocery store for cupcake ingredients and then home. He is asleep when we arrive. He is asleep still when we leave. He sleeps until almost 4:00 in the stroller, which I have parked at an angle in the playground outside of school to keep him out of the sun. Mac plays well today and does not ask for ice cream. In fact, I comment to him that he seems quite happy when he comes out of school. “I was happy all day,” he tells me. His best gal and her mom and sister are having dinner with us and we have all chosen a place we’ve never been to. It’s more or less near our houses and it serves mini sandwiches. The other mom remembers to bring birthday party hats and favors and even candles so we can celebrate her daughter’s birthday, which was last Monday and Mac’s, which is next Monday. My boys are well-behaved. Her girls fuss a bit. But then, it’s late, we’re hot (it’s actually over 80 degrees outside) and hungry and it’s the end of a long day. We eat these itty bitty mini sandwiches that I don’t think are even enough for Mac to feel full on and toast the birthday kids with ice cream sundaes. The other mom and I do not feel as if we’ve gotten a fair deal for our money and her kids complain that they did not have fun. But it was a good try. And I had fun. We pass the fire station on our walk back. The hydrant is open and the kids get a drink, which of course leads to the kids getting soaked. Sailor makes up a funny song and dances down the street. “We’re wet today! We’re wet today!” He flies with his arms out to his sides. Then he pitches them forward, Superman-style. “I’m Wet Boy!”
At home the birthday kids exchange gifts on the front porch. It’s almost 7:00 and I make a great effort to read to the kids – Mac’s book pack contains one book for him to read and two alphabet books for me to read to him, and I can’t help but wonder whether or not I should tell Miss H that we read the 1st three Harry Potter books a couple of years ago -- and get them to go to sleep early.
The playroom is a very bad mess area. I am tempted to bag it all up and pitch it but since I have my own laundry mess in the dining room perhaps I would be unfair.
Late in the evening I decide to go out for a bit and catch up with an old boyfriend. Not wanting to disrupt the kids’ routine at all, I arrange everything on text message and get the kids to bed before I leave. My sister comes to look after my sleeping boys and she brings along the little dog she is watching. Around 11:00 Mac gets up to pee. And of course due to my exceptionally considerate planning he has no idea my sister or the little mutt are here. The dog barks at him and scares the living crap out of him! He is hysterical and crying for me. Glad that I am on my way out to my car and only 15 minutes away when my sister calls me to inform me that there is an incident with the dog and Mac. When I get home Mac bursts into tears, and then, “Where were you?” Um… “I went out on a little date,” I say sheepishly by way of explanation. Shit!
Today Mac is afraid to get out of bed cuz he thinks the dog is still here. “Maurice is out there!” he tells Sailor, who is already up and has already trolled thru the house. “What Maurice?” Sailor asks. “The dog and Aunt Minny,” Mac explains. “You mean Angus?” Sailor questions. For reasons of absurdity I have taken to calling the little spotted mutt Maurice, which is as English as Angus. “There’s no dog here anymore,” Sailor is so patient with his big brother this morning.
All day he talks about how he's afraid of dogs now. Not that he wasn’t already a bit skittish. His dad has a little dog. Mac says he'll never go over to visit his Dad. Sorry Dad.
Moral of this story is that even when Mom thinks she is doing the right thing, even if part of doing the right thing is doing something good for herself, she screws up, and it really is all about the kids. Jeez, moms can't catch a break!
Tuesday morning before school Sailor tells me he doesn’t want to take preschool anymore.
It’s class photo day and he is dapper. And when we get to school he does the whole clingy and crying thing, reminiscent of the first months of school. The teachers try to detach him from me but he is tenacious! Fifteen minutes go by before I am able to dislodge myself from his iron grip and force myself to leave.
It’s warm and sunny so Mac and I come home so I can change clothes and we apply sunny lotion and head to the playground. It’s 9:30 a.m. Mac plays til 11, getting wet and dirty and I don’t care. At home, though, we have a big disagreement about appropriate school clothes, as he has chosen a dumb t-shirt-y thing and hideous, too-small denim shorts. He sasses me and makes snotty faces and everything goes down hill from there.
Wednesday Sailor refuses to play soccer without Mac. I insist, however. He cries and fights me. But I am insistent and his coaches try their best to get him into the game. Mac and I leave the gym. Sailor screams and cries and follows us out. We return on the condition that Sailor stop crying and play. 40 minutes go by. Sailor stands still, decorating the field. Ten minutes before the end of class he is thoroughly enjoying himself. Sweet reward for my persistence in knowing what is good for my child.
Wednesdays are so long. I bake a batch of our healthful chocolate chip cookies while Sailor sleeps in the afternoon. He actually went to his room to nap after I left him home with my mom to take Mac to school. He also, apparently, can reach the key and open the front door, according to my mother. He wakes from his nap and I heap praise on him for taking said nap. He tells me, “I went into my room and I was tired and Nana kept coming to my door to check on me and I went to sleep.”
Mac is bringing a friend to FTK today. She eats the snacks I provide. Mac the Usually Starving does not. They are so excited to go to class together.
I am tired and after Sailor and I get snacks and troll around unassisted at Victoria’s Secret (I want to buy some cute undies that don’t show off the fact that at 39 my ass is falling) we walk home. Sailor wants to play at the playground and stop at the zoo and ride his bicycle (a tricycle we found at the playground a few weeks ago). I am too tired. It’s too cold out. We play pirates for a couple minutes and then rush back out to get Mac. By car. Mac has a big gift waiting for him at FTK. He has invited one of his friends there to his upcoming birthday party and the boy can’t come. No gift necessary. He’s a nice boy whom Mac has been in class with the whole almost-two years, but the boys have never had a playdate or anything. Nonetheless there is a gift. We bring it home and Mac unwraps a wheel barrow. Seriously. We have to put it together. So that we can use it in our tiny, concrete, city backyard. I guess.
My mother has invited us to dine with her and my dad, per our usual Wednesday routine. Except my dad has been sick and I have cupcakes to bake for the bake sale at Sailor’s preschool tomorrow morning and 6 loads of laundry to fold and distribute and put away and a whole messy house to clean and I have plenty of leftovers in the fridge. No, my mom insists, she is making a chicken thing, and Dad is looking forward to having us over. So we are quite surprised, or should I say taken aback, to see my mom dressed up and heading for her car when we arrive home for dinner. She is vague about what she is up to.
“I have dinner plans.”
“But you invited us for dinner.”
“Dad is looking forward to it.” Dad, who is still dressed in his robe, is now in charge of getting dinner on the table for the boys and me. I am livid. I know I shouldn’t care. But honesty works so much better for me than deceit does.
At midnight I go to bed. I have baked a double batch of our famous banana cupcakes – a mini batch for the bake sale and a regular-sized batch for Mac’s class on Monday, his birthday. I frost the minis and bag them up in little zipper baggies with hearts on them, left from Valentine’s Day. I put ribbons around the little baggies of cookies I made this afternoon. I affix sticky labels with a list of the healthful ingredients to the baggies.
I talk on the phone to one of my best friends. I wonder why I work so hard at these Mommy Tasks. My Super Mommy cape gets frosting on it. I am exhausted. But the kitchen is cleaned up and the laundry is where it belongs and I can see most of my dining table again.
Thursday. Sailor just rolled over and fell off the sofa. Twice.
I wake up feeling hungover.
We forgot to take out the garbage cans this morning. But then, by odd coincidence, so did the entire block. The garbage guys must have thought they had hit the jackpot, not having to work our block this morning.
Sailor is dressed in a seersucker blazer, white shirt and bow tie, borrowed from Mac. Saddle shoes, of course. He is charmingly cute and his teacher puts him front and center at the first table at the bake sale. He receives many compliments on his get-up, and some Colonel Sanders remarks, which I can’t help but perpetuate.
Mac and I each have a pocket full of coins and I try to make shopping for 10- and 25-cent pastries a learning experience for him. But it seems to take him 10 minutes to count 5 dimes out of his pocket and I am frustrated. We shop the classroom and make a purchase from every child. They are cute beyond reason and most of them have their fingers dipped in something chocolate, or they have a rice krispies treat in their hand. I tell Sailor how much I like his bake sale and he ponders his own response and then agrees, “It’s… nice!” my parents and sister show up and purchase a few goodies, but I think they mostly come to see how cute the kids are.
At home in the afternoon Sailor is not napping he is costuming. Wearing his Captain Heartbreaker belt and his rain boots, plus some long-lost, unmatched mittens – or make that one mitten and one of my old purple gloves – he wields a wrapping paper role at me. He tells me who all the captains are and surprisingly he mentions his father’s partner, Jules.
“Who’s Jules?” I ask, as we have not seen the guy in a year. And I want to see what he knows.
“Dad’s.” Simple.
“Dad’s what?”
“Dad’s ‘nother guy.” He adds, “Who smokes.” It’s true.
“What does Dad do with him?”
“He plays with him.” Indeed.
I am relaying this little tidbit to my sister over the phone a short time later when I recall Sailor’s early morning statement. “I’m going to marry you, Mommy.” I remember when I wanted to marry my dad. I guess in a way, I still do. Not my actual dad, of course, but a younger, today’s version of him. Tho I conclude at this time that none exists.
Sailor wears his costume to go get Mac from school. And falls asleep in the stroller. Miss H reminds Mac to give me my note, which says,
“Mac had a time out today due to general wildness, saying “stupid”, and playing “guns” during work time. Thanks, Mrs. K”
So I guess she is going by Mrs. K now. Noted. I make Mac apologize and we walk home. It’s been cold out all day and the sun is high and playing in the playground would have been fun.
At home I make him write an apology note. I don’t help him much.
“Der Mrs. K
IM SRE FoR
BeiNG WiLD
IN KLAS aNd SA-iNG STuped
aNd PRiTeNDiNG TOchuT [to shoot]
I WOT Duet uGEN
Love Mac”
Thirty minutes later he calls his brother “stupid” and I put soap on his tongue.
Friday we play hooky for a “very special, educational field trip” as Mrs. K calls, it, approving of our day off. We putz around the house all morning and I spend a great deal of time attempting to get the boys to clean up after themselves. I seriously have no idea why I even try anymore. Oh, right, becuz I am too damn tired to do everything around here by myself. And becuz I want to raise responsible young men.
So after hours of nagging I give up and we pile into my car. Literally. With my mom at the wheel and my dad beside her I have no choice but to twist and wedge my birthing hops between Mac’s super-sized carseat and Sailor’s toddler carseat. It’s not comfortable and it’s not even remotely safe. We drive downtown to one of the city’s greatest tourist attractions: Navy Pier. In an effort to save the $23 parking fee and not have it take an hour to get there, I have convinced my parents to drive us. We are there in less than 15 minutes. Thus we launch the beginning of what will be Mac’s birthday weekend. The kids ride the train, we stock up on new teddy bear clothes at the Build a Bear shop (at the beginning of the day. Why? Because it’s so much fun to carry around a gigantic shopping bag all day. Right.), play a few hours in the children’s museum, ride the merry and what I believe may be the world’s largest Ferris wheel – Mac is frightened, but I assure him I would never take him on an unsafe ride, and, I point out, if he goes on this ride, every time we drive by the Ferris wheel he can tell whomever is with us that he rode on it; and then we get placed in gondola number 21, Mac’s birthday date. It is terrifying, but it’s exciting and I am glad to share this experience with my children, just the three of us. Sailor, on the other hand, is the picture of brave!
We buy postcards to… send to Aunt Minny and the boys’ dad, both of whom live quite close to us. The guy who sells us the postcards is a graduate of the same high school I went to. I graduated the year he was born. Sigh. We eat shrimp outside and ice cream. And after shrimp eating the waitress escorts us to the bathroom, which is quaint and Mac says he wants to live there. We spy plush toys on our way out and we leave with two stuffed shrimp! Blue for Mac and pink for Sailor. And a shrimp pencil for Mrs. K. I convince my parents to come back and get us and 6 glorious, exhausting hours later we are on our way home. Six years ago, I reflect, I have just completed my first 12 hours of early labor with my first baby – Mac.
Saturday we drive out to the north ‘burbs to get Mac’s birthday photo taken. As well as yesterday went with both kids and no stroller today I am ready to scream. The boys run this way and that while I try on $70 jeans and my sister waits for coffee. We stop to get Mac a short sleeve shirt, as it’s gotten warmer out and I have packed every extra type of clothing except short sleeves for Mac. That one shirt costs me over $40 because Sailor has to have a new shirt too, one my sister chooses with a plaid shark that I think is hilarious. And I love the matching red, white and blue polos I find at the front of the store. The boys are trying on their new shirts just outside the dressing rooms becuz I can’t even deal with looking for someone who possesses a key to the dressing rooms. I have a 20% off coupon, which pleases me no end and saves me $10. The kids are out of control, or maybe just out of the stroller. Although he will be 6 in a couple of days, Mac does the dumbest thing ever and it’s all I can do to keep myself from totally losing it. I ask him to keep his hands out of the fancy fountain. Not only does he put his hands in it but he follows the lead of a foreign two-year-old who appears to be visiting the fountain with two old grandfathers and is drinking the water. When I see water down Mac’s front I wonder where I was looking for 2 seconds that I completely missed this act of utter stupidity. Before we even head to the car Mac is wet and his new shirt is dirty and I am beside myself with frustration by the time we leave though we do have one very cute photo of my soon-to-be-6-year-old. We get Starbucks for everyone and drive out to the west ‘burbs for a big outdoor fundraiser party for a girl we know who has cystic fibrosis. We make a donation and get some free game tickets, which the boys use for the “dump tank” as Mac calls it, complaining that he does not want to go in it. Mac sinks the dunkee on his 3rd ball, which surprises me a great deal and Sailor sinks the dunkee as well! I am high-5-ing them all over the place. I love it! I make Mac a plate of food. Sailor is barely awake. When he comes to, he wants a plate of food too. Exactly the foods Mac has, nothing more, nothing less. We get on the wrong express way to get back and end up out by the airport, where I pump gas at the oasis. $37.88!
Sunday we drive out to the same north ‘burb area we visited on Saturday and attend a birthday party for one of Sailor’s school friends. It’s at a place that has gigantic inflatables to jump in. My boys favor a slide that must be 15 feet high. They slide down with reckless abandon and no fear. It’s wild. Sailor convinces me to come along for a ride and when I get to the top, holy crap! It’s a long steep slide down. And I scream all the way. And proceed to slide down 5 more times, equally as terrified each time. It was exhilarating and I only scrape my knee. And Sailor is in total heaven that I am playing with him. After pizza and cake we stop at no fewer than five stores on the way home to get everything we need for Mac’s 6th birthday tomorrow. We get home after 6:00. Six years ago my water was breaking and I was heading to the hospital.
I am whipping up a batch of icing for Mac’s cupcakes for school tomorrow and Mac says he is so tired he has to go to bed. Right now. I stop what I am doing and put sheets on his bed. And where do I find him when I have his bed already for him? In the living room – which I told them was off limits – jumping off the sofa!
Both boys fall asleep quickly. But Mac has a hard time staying asleep and makes his way to the bathroom at least 4 times, covering his eyes each time he passes thru the dining room so as not to see what I am doing. I put Sailor back to bed twice when he wakes up crying (once) and falls out of bed (once). It is midnight before I finish frosting and decorating 35 cupcakes colored with all natural food coloring -- which is really muddy looking and should be a lot more impressive for $17 -- packing up said cupcakes, cleaning up as much of the house as possible (the cleaning girls will be here at 1:00 tomorrow), decorating the dining room and wrapping all 17 gifts from Sailor and me. I am so creative with the wrapping, as I have run out of wrapping paper and I don’t want to waste money buying more just to throw it away. I pull out my bin of used wrappings and each of Mac’s gifts is wrapped in something that has been used before and can be used again and it’s such a variety that it looks like many more than one person brought him these gifts. I do some other tasks to get things looking nice and then I fall into bed … wide awake!
Today we all sleep til about 9am. It’s getting later and later and one of these days it’s going to be time to get up early all the time for 1st grade. Why are the early mornings wasted on infants who have no place to go? The older my kids get the later we sleep. We don’t have to rush but we do have to get moving. Mac has talking doctor at 11:15. While we are there Sailor is nearly attacked by a very cute AfAm boy who is developmentally delayed. I have my arms around my boy protecting him from this other boy who has Sailor’s arm in his grip. I work his hands away, saying, “Gentle, gentle,” and the boy starts beating at the sofa we are sitting on. His grandmother tries to hold him but he is wild and runs away. She gets him under control and apologizes to us. We are unharmed and I am exceedingly polite. No harm is done and she seems to have a good handle on the problem. Another boy in the waiting room watches me read to Sailor. He moves in with his own book. Sailor requests a second reading of the book. It’s an old Tom and Jerry book. It has no front or back cover but I can tell by the text that this book was written before I was born. We invite the little boy to listen. He brings with him a Thomas the Train book and when I finish the first book, Sailor’s, and start on the 2nd book, the boy’s, Sailor moves away. He doesn’t want to hear about Thomas’ ABCs. So I read just to the boy until his appointment.
Mac is on time for school. But I have to fix his outfit before I allow him to enter. For reasons I cannot explain he has a pile of about 15 pair of summer shorts from last year that still fit him, more or less. He is wearing a pair today, with a cute t-shirt and a horrible blue Hawaiian style shirt that are also from last year. He looks like a geek, all skinny legs sticking up from his sandals. I have to get the blue surf board shirt off him. Then he looks presentable.
Sailor and I run to the grocery store for cupcake ingredients and then home. He is asleep when we arrive. He is asleep still when we leave. He sleeps until almost 4:00 in the stroller, which I have parked at an angle in the playground outside of school to keep him out of the sun. Mac plays well today and does not ask for ice cream. In fact, I comment to him that he seems quite happy when he comes out of school. “I was happy all day,” he tells me. His best gal and her mom and sister are having dinner with us and we have all chosen a place we’ve never been to. It’s more or less near our houses and it serves mini sandwiches. The other mom remembers to bring birthday party hats and favors and even candles so we can celebrate her daughter’s birthday, which was last Monday and Mac’s, which is next Monday. My boys are well-behaved. Her girls fuss a bit. But then, it’s late, we’re hot (it’s actually over 80 degrees outside) and hungry and it’s the end of a long day. We eat these itty bitty mini sandwiches that I don’t think are even enough for Mac to feel full on and toast the birthday kids with ice cream sundaes. The other mom and I do not feel as if we’ve gotten a fair deal for our money and her kids complain that they did not have fun. But it was a good try. And I had fun. We pass the fire station on our walk back. The hydrant is open and the kids get a drink, which of course leads to the kids getting soaked. Sailor makes up a funny song and dances down the street. “We’re wet today! We’re wet today!” He flies with his arms out to his sides. Then he pitches them forward, Superman-style. “I’m Wet Boy!”
At home the birthday kids exchange gifts on the front porch. It’s almost 7:00 and I make a great effort to read to the kids – Mac’s book pack contains one book for him to read and two alphabet books for me to read to him, and I can’t help but wonder whether or not I should tell Miss H that we read the 1st three Harry Potter books a couple of years ago -- and get them to go to sleep early.
The playroom is a very bad mess area. I am tempted to bag it all up and pitch it but since I have my own laundry mess in the dining room perhaps I would be unfair.
Late in the evening I decide to go out for a bit and catch up with an old boyfriend. Not wanting to disrupt the kids’ routine at all, I arrange everything on text message and get the kids to bed before I leave. My sister comes to look after my sleeping boys and she brings along the little dog she is watching. Around 11:00 Mac gets up to pee. And of course due to my exceptionally considerate planning he has no idea my sister or the little mutt are here. The dog barks at him and scares the living crap out of him! He is hysterical and crying for me. Glad that I am on my way out to my car and only 15 minutes away when my sister calls me to inform me that there is an incident with the dog and Mac. When I get home Mac bursts into tears, and then, “Where were you?” Um… “I went out on a little date,” I say sheepishly by way of explanation. Shit!
Today Mac is afraid to get out of bed cuz he thinks the dog is still here. “Maurice is out there!” he tells Sailor, who is already up and has already trolled thru the house. “What Maurice?” Sailor asks. “The dog and Aunt Minny,” Mac explains. “You mean Angus?” Sailor questions. For reasons of absurdity I have taken to calling the little spotted mutt Maurice, which is as English as Angus. “There’s no dog here anymore,” Sailor is so patient with his big brother this morning.
All day he talks about how he's afraid of dogs now. Not that he wasn’t already a bit skittish. His dad has a little dog. Mac says he'll never go over to visit his Dad. Sorry Dad.
Moral of this story is that even when Mom thinks she is doing the right thing, even if part of doing the right thing is doing something good for herself, she screws up, and it really is all about the kids. Jeez, moms can't catch a break!
Tuesday morning before school Sailor tells me he doesn’t want to take preschool anymore.
It’s class photo day and he is dapper. And when we get to school he does the whole clingy and crying thing, reminiscent of the first months of school. The teachers try to detach him from me but he is tenacious! Fifteen minutes go by before I am able to dislodge myself from his iron grip and force myself to leave.
It’s warm and sunny so Mac and I come home so I can change clothes and we apply sunny lotion and head to the playground. It’s 9:30 a.m. Mac plays til 11, getting wet and dirty and I don’t care. At home, though, we have a big disagreement about appropriate school clothes, as he has chosen a dumb t-shirt-y thing and hideous, too-small denim shorts. He sasses me and makes snotty faces and everything goes down hill from there.
Wednesday Sailor refuses to play soccer without Mac. I insist, however. He cries and fights me. But I am insistent and his coaches try their best to get him into the game. Mac and I leave the gym. Sailor screams and cries and follows us out. We return on the condition that Sailor stop crying and play. 40 minutes go by. Sailor stands still, decorating the field. Ten minutes before the end of class he is thoroughly enjoying himself. Sweet reward for my persistence in knowing what is good for my child.
Wednesdays are so long. I bake a batch of our healthful chocolate chip cookies while Sailor sleeps in the afternoon. He actually went to his room to nap after I left him home with my mom to take Mac to school. He also, apparently, can reach the key and open the front door, according to my mother. He wakes from his nap and I heap praise on him for taking said nap. He tells me, “I went into my room and I was tired and Nana kept coming to my door to check on me and I went to sleep.”
Mac is bringing a friend to FTK today. She eats the snacks I provide. Mac the Usually Starving does not. They are so excited to go to class together.
I am tired and after Sailor and I get snacks and troll around unassisted at Victoria’s Secret (I want to buy some cute undies that don’t show off the fact that at 39 my ass is falling) we walk home. Sailor wants to play at the playground and stop at the zoo and ride his bicycle (a tricycle we found at the playground a few weeks ago). I am too tired. It’s too cold out. We play pirates for a couple minutes and then rush back out to get Mac. By car. Mac has a big gift waiting for him at FTK. He has invited one of his friends there to his upcoming birthday party and the boy can’t come. No gift necessary. He’s a nice boy whom Mac has been in class with the whole almost-two years, but the boys have never had a playdate or anything. Nonetheless there is a gift. We bring it home and Mac unwraps a wheel barrow. Seriously. We have to put it together. So that we can use it in our tiny, concrete, city backyard. I guess.
My mother has invited us to dine with her and my dad, per our usual Wednesday routine. Except my dad has been sick and I have cupcakes to bake for the bake sale at Sailor’s preschool tomorrow morning and 6 loads of laundry to fold and distribute and put away and a whole messy house to clean and I have plenty of leftovers in the fridge. No, my mom insists, she is making a chicken thing, and Dad is looking forward to having us over. So we are quite surprised, or should I say taken aback, to see my mom dressed up and heading for her car when we arrive home for dinner. She is vague about what she is up to.
“I have dinner plans.”
“But you invited us for dinner.”
“Dad is looking forward to it.” Dad, who is still dressed in his robe, is now in charge of getting dinner on the table for the boys and me. I am livid. I know I shouldn’t care. But honesty works so much better for me than deceit does.
At midnight I go to bed. I have baked a double batch of our famous banana cupcakes – a mini batch for the bake sale and a regular-sized batch for Mac’s class on Monday, his birthday. I frost the minis and bag them up in little zipper baggies with hearts on them, left from Valentine’s Day. I put ribbons around the little baggies of cookies I made this afternoon. I affix sticky labels with a list of the healthful ingredients to the baggies.
I talk on the phone to one of my best friends. I wonder why I work so hard at these Mommy Tasks. My Super Mommy cape gets frosting on it. I am exhausted. But the kitchen is cleaned up and the laundry is where it belongs and I can see most of my dining table again.
Thursday. Sailor just rolled over and fell off the sofa. Twice.
I wake up feeling hungover.
We forgot to take out the garbage cans this morning. But then, by odd coincidence, so did the entire block. The garbage guys must have thought they had hit the jackpot, not having to work our block this morning.
Sailor is dressed in a seersucker blazer, white shirt and bow tie, borrowed from Mac. Saddle shoes, of course. He is charmingly cute and his teacher puts him front and center at the first table at the bake sale. He receives many compliments on his get-up, and some Colonel Sanders remarks, which I can’t help but perpetuate.
Mac and I each have a pocket full of coins and I try to make shopping for 10- and 25-cent pastries a learning experience for him. But it seems to take him 10 minutes to count 5 dimes out of his pocket and I am frustrated. We shop the classroom and make a purchase from every child. They are cute beyond reason and most of them have their fingers dipped in something chocolate, or they have a rice krispies treat in their hand. I tell Sailor how much I like his bake sale and he ponders his own response and then agrees, “It’s… nice!” my parents and sister show up and purchase a few goodies, but I think they mostly come to see how cute the kids are.
At home in the afternoon Sailor is not napping he is costuming. Wearing his Captain Heartbreaker belt and his rain boots, plus some long-lost, unmatched mittens – or make that one mitten and one of my old purple gloves – he wields a wrapping paper role at me. He tells me who all the captains are and surprisingly he mentions his father’s partner, Jules.
“Who’s Jules?” I ask, as we have not seen the guy in a year. And I want to see what he knows.
“Dad’s.” Simple.
“Dad’s what?”
“Dad’s ‘nother guy.” He adds, “Who smokes.” It’s true.
“What does Dad do with him?”
“He plays with him.” Indeed.
I am relaying this little tidbit to my sister over the phone a short time later when I recall Sailor’s early morning statement. “I’m going to marry you, Mommy.” I remember when I wanted to marry my dad. I guess in a way, I still do. Not my actual dad, of course, but a younger, today’s version of him. Tho I conclude at this time that none exists.
Sailor wears his costume to go get Mac from school. And falls asleep in the stroller. Miss H reminds Mac to give me my note, which says,
“Mac had a time out today due to general wildness, saying “stupid”, and playing “guns” during work time. Thanks, Mrs. K”
So I guess she is going by Mrs. K now. Noted. I make Mac apologize and we walk home. It’s been cold out all day and the sun is high and playing in the playground would have been fun.
At home I make him write an apology note. I don’t help him much.
“Der Mrs. K
IM SRE FoR
BeiNG WiLD
IN KLAS aNd SA-iNG STuped
aNd PRiTeNDiNG TOchuT [to shoot]
I WOT Duet uGEN
Love Mac”
Thirty minutes later he calls his brother “stupid” and I put soap on his tongue.
Friday we play hooky for a “very special, educational field trip” as Mrs. K calls, it, approving of our day off. We putz around the house all morning and I spend a great deal of time attempting to get the boys to clean up after themselves. I seriously have no idea why I even try anymore. Oh, right, becuz I am too damn tired to do everything around here by myself. And becuz I want to raise responsible young men.
So after hours of nagging I give up and we pile into my car. Literally. With my mom at the wheel and my dad beside her I have no choice but to twist and wedge my birthing hops between Mac’s super-sized carseat and Sailor’s toddler carseat. It’s not comfortable and it’s not even remotely safe. We drive downtown to one of the city’s greatest tourist attractions: Navy Pier. In an effort to save the $23 parking fee and not have it take an hour to get there, I have convinced my parents to drive us. We are there in less than 15 minutes. Thus we launch the beginning of what will be Mac’s birthday weekend. The kids ride the train, we stock up on new teddy bear clothes at the Build a Bear shop (at the beginning of the day. Why? Because it’s so much fun to carry around a gigantic shopping bag all day. Right.), play a few hours in the children’s museum, ride the merry and what I believe may be the world’s largest Ferris wheel – Mac is frightened, but I assure him I would never take him on an unsafe ride, and, I point out, if he goes on this ride, every time we drive by the Ferris wheel he can tell whomever is with us that he rode on it; and then we get placed in gondola number 21, Mac’s birthday date. It is terrifying, but it’s exciting and I am glad to share this experience with my children, just the three of us. Sailor, on the other hand, is the picture of brave!
We buy postcards to… send to Aunt Minny and the boys’ dad, both of whom live quite close to us. The guy who sells us the postcards is a graduate of the same high school I went to. I graduated the year he was born. Sigh. We eat shrimp outside and ice cream. And after shrimp eating the waitress escorts us to the bathroom, which is quaint and Mac says he wants to live there. We spy plush toys on our way out and we leave with two stuffed shrimp! Blue for Mac and pink for Sailor. And a shrimp pencil for Mrs. K. I convince my parents to come back and get us and 6 glorious, exhausting hours later we are on our way home. Six years ago, I reflect, I have just completed my first 12 hours of early labor with my first baby – Mac.
Saturday we drive out to the north ‘burbs to get Mac’s birthday photo taken. As well as yesterday went with both kids and no stroller today I am ready to scream. The boys run this way and that while I try on $70 jeans and my sister waits for coffee. We stop to get Mac a short sleeve shirt, as it’s gotten warmer out and I have packed every extra type of clothing except short sleeves for Mac. That one shirt costs me over $40 because Sailor has to have a new shirt too, one my sister chooses with a plaid shark that I think is hilarious. And I love the matching red, white and blue polos I find at the front of the store. The boys are trying on their new shirts just outside the dressing rooms becuz I can’t even deal with looking for someone who possesses a key to the dressing rooms. I have a 20% off coupon, which pleases me no end and saves me $10. The kids are out of control, or maybe just out of the stroller. Although he will be 6 in a couple of days, Mac does the dumbest thing ever and it’s all I can do to keep myself from totally losing it. I ask him to keep his hands out of the fancy fountain. Not only does he put his hands in it but he follows the lead of a foreign two-year-old who appears to be visiting the fountain with two old grandfathers and is drinking the water. When I see water down Mac’s front I wonder where I was looking for 2 seconds that I completely missed this act of utter stupidity. Before we even head to the car Mac is wet and his new shirt is dirty and I am beside myself with frustration by the time we leave though we do have one very cute photo of my soon-to-be-6-year-old. We get Starbucks for everyone and drive out to the west ‘burbs for a big outdoor fundraiser party for a girl we know who has cystic fibrosis. We make a donation and get some free game tickets, which the boys use for the “dump tank” as Mac calls it, complaining that he does not want to go in it. Mac sinks the dunkee on his 3rd ball, which surprises me a great deal and Sailor sinks the dunkee as well! I am high-5-ing them all over the place. I love it! I make Mac a plate of food. Sailor is barely awake. When he comes to, he wants a plate of food too. Exactly the foods Mac has, nothing more, nothing less. We get on the wrong express way to get back and end up out by the airport, where I pump gas at the oasis. $37.88!
Sunday we drive out to the same north ‘burb area we visited on Saturday and attend a birthday party for one of Sailor’s school friends. It’s at a place that has gigantic inflatables to jump in. My boys favor a slide that must be 15 feet high. They slide down with reckless abandon and no fear. It’s wild. Sailor convinces me to come along for a ride and when I get to the top, holy crap! It’s a long steep slide down. And I scream all the way. And proceed to slide down 5 more times, equally as terrified each time. It was exhilarating and I only scrape my knee. And Sailor is in total heaven that I am playing with him. After pizza and cake we stop at no fewer than five stores on the way home to get everything we need for Mac’s 6th birthday tomorrow. We get home after 6:00. Six years ago my water was breaking and I was heading to the hospital.
I am whipping up a batch of icing for Mac’s cupcakes for school tomorrow and Mac says he is so tired he has to go to bed. Right now. I stop what I am doing and put sheets on his bed. And where do I find him when I have his bed already for him? In the living room – which I told them was off limits – jumping off the sofa!
Both boys fall asleep quickly. But Mac has a hard time staying asleep and makes his way to the bathroom at least 4 times, covering his eyes each time he passes thru the dining room so as not to see what I am doing. I put Sailor back to bed twice when he wakes up crying (once) and falls out of bed (once). It is midnight before I finish frosting and decorating 35 cupcakes colored with all natural food coloring -- which is really muddy looking and should be a lot more impressive for $17 -- packing up said cupcakes, cleaning up as much of the house as possible (the cleaning girls will be here at 1:00 tomorrow), decorating the dining room and wrapping all 17 gifts from Sailor and me. I am so creative with the wrapping, as I have run out of wrapping paper and I don’t want to waste money buying more just to throw it away. I pull out my bin of used wrappings and each of Mac’s gifts is wrapped in something that has been used before and can be used again and it’s such a variety that it looks like many more than one person brought him these gifts. I do some other tasks to get things looking nice and then I fall into bed … wide awake!
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