Week 8

I roll over into a puddle of pee at 7:30 this morning. What am I doing still in bed at 7:30? You’re thinking. Well, we actually don’t get up at 6:00a.m. anymore, because we actually have places to be every morning now. We only get up at the crack of dawn in the summer, when there is no place to be.
Mac, the guilty party, is asleep. In his own – and, may I add, dry -- bed. Sailor and I go to the kitchen for breakfast. It’s not easy keeping a three-year-old quiet. Especially an especially loud three-year-old. Especially when your kitchen is right outside the bedroom of the child for whom you are trying to stay quiet. Still, I do my best. I slowly and gently unload the dishwasher. I fix scrambled eggs and banana slices and bagels and milk. And when Sailor insists on making weird and unnecessary squawking noises he earns himself a time-out.
“I think you owe me an apology, Mom,” Mac calls out from beneath the covers.
“What for?” I am game. I am fair. I will issue requisite apologies.
“For making so much noise.”
The words that run through my head are unfriendly ones. Unfit for print.
I do not apologize.
Mac drags himself out of bed after 8:00. We discuss why he was in his bed and not mine. We discuss the puddle. We discuss how I now have to find time to haul my, um, comforter, back to the Laundromat and sit for another 3 hours and $9 to wash the damn thing and how it’s much too cold out to be without it now. We discuss how he is not invited into my bed for awhile. He has to pee. Now. He runs to the bathroom, peeper in hand. Sailor is in there. Doing some sit-down business. I hear some yelling.
“I couldn’t wait, Mommy,” says the big brother, standing at the side of the potty. Sailor is still sitting.“Mac peed on my elbow,” Sailor whines.
Boys need rules for the bathroom. If they could understand them at an early age, like say, 5 and 3, they would be better men. They would also make better smelling bathrooms.
Boys Bathroom Rules
1. Only one person may use the toilet at any given time. (Though admittedly, I do recall hopping on with my sister at least once during our one-bathroom childhood.)
2. Do not pee on your brother.
3. Do not pee on your mother.
4. Do not pee on yourself.
5. Do not pee on the wall. (Sailor actually pointed out, and quite proudly, the other day, “Look, Mommy, I’m not peeing on the wall!”)
6. Wipe up any pee that does not make it into the potty.
7. (And the golden rule of the potty shall be…) When you are done pooping, GET OFF THE POT!

Sailor wants me to carry him from the car to gym class. He is going in to exercise. I am wearing boots. With heels. And it’s muddy. With an extra 30 pounds in my arms I am sinking in with every step. I disobey the rules along with 4 other parents and stay on the bleachers during class. I think about why bleachers are called bleachers. When you sit on them out in the sun, say at a baseball game, you get tanned, not bleached. I read the new-ish book by CNN’s Anderson Cooper. I watch a dad sooth his newborn, who then falls asleep in his arms. He paces back and forth with the tiny boy and at the same time he is reading a book! I am stunned at this man’s unparalleled ability to multitask. His wife should know how lucky she truly is. (And if she doesn’t she should pass him along to someone who does.) Then I witness this same dad have a conversation with his wife. Not about the baby, or the older child in the gym class, or things for the baby or their older child in the gym class. A conversation about real-life people stuff. I am so shocked by this that I find it difficult to concentrate on my book.
We drive to Trader Joe’s after sorting and dropping off the recycling . The kids really love this job, especially Mac. The kids ask to push their own mini-shopping carts at Trader Joe’s. I go over the rules: No running. No bumping. Push your cart like grown-up men.
Before we leave the store with 5 items totaling $20, both boys have had their carts and their licenses to drive them repossessed.
Mac chooses crab cakes and tomato soup over PBJ’s for lunch. Sailor doesn’t much care for these, or the fresh green beans I have sautéed over butter (ok, I burned them but they still taste good!). He eats only the oyster crackers. We have the French family coming over after school and I want to vacuum the hall stairs. Mac runs down, “Mom, there’s been a spill.”
“Clean it up,” I shout over the vac.
Mac returns, “Sailor is throwing soup at me.”
“Clean it up,” I repeat.
I assume Mac means Sailor has flicked some soup in his general direction but when I return to the kitchen, there is indeed tomato soup splashed all over the floor, the fridge, the table, the wall, and Mac’s bedroom door and floor. I am, understandably, furious. I hand Sailor a load of paper towels and order him to clean it up. I take Mac into his room to put on clean, tomato soup-free clothes for school. Did I mention I am furious? I am furious. I have to mop before we leave for school because it will be stuck to everything if I leave it. I am furious. I mop. I wipe. I yell a little. I am furious.
We are too late to walk to school. Sailor knows better than to say anything once we are in the car. He knows I am furious. Mac is on time. It is explained to Sailor that he will go straight home and to bed for nap when we get home. For once, he does not argue. He merely nods his wrapped-to-walk-in-the-cold head. Sailor is asleep by the time we get home and does not wake for over an hour. But when he does wake he is hungry. However, he remembers that I told him there would be nothing to eat until dinner. He hints, “I see some snacks,” and “I smell your banana,” and then straight to the point, “I’m hungry.”
I finally give in, but only a little. He may have his lunch. I heat up more soup, set out the crab cakes and oyster crackers. He enjoys the crackers and nothing else. I eat the remaining crab cakes and remove the soup and Sailor from the table. “But I’m hungry!”
Silently I turn and walk the offender back to the table. I re-seat him and re-place his soup in front of him. He leans over the bowl and spoons some of the room temperature soup in to his mouth. He doesn’t finish but soon enough he is happy again, “I finished my soup!”
Has anyone seen my award for patience lying around here anywhere?
We bring the French family home with us. The kids devour an apple, crackers, grapes and pretzels. “There is no more food!” the little French girl says, in French. “I’m STARVING!” Mac tells me. And so they tackle two pizzas, broccoli, and mini ice cream sandwiches while la mama and I look on in awe. I am still hungry when the meal is complete. She says she is fine. I want to believe her. But I feel bad. Of course, lately I am the one eating as if I were nursing baby again! I am hungry!
We have had wine. My French gets better. Her English gets cloudier. My sister has stopped by. She tries to understand. “A word here and there,” she smiles.
For once my house looks relatively normal when our guests leave. But darn it, the French mom broke my rule. Now I will have to help clean up next time we play at her house.
Sailor refuses to go to bed. (So what’s new?) Mac and I discuss the wearing of a diaper at bed time. Sailor taunts him, “Diapers are yucky! Diapers are for babies!” Mac cries. “I don’t want to wear a diaper.” Again I explain that I don’t want to change sheets again. I hate changing sheets. I never did it when his dad lived here. That was one of his jobs. I hate listening to my mother (who kindly washes our laundry) tell me that my kids are not potty trained, “at least not over night," she qualifies. I have never changed so many sheets in my entire life as I have changed in the past year or so. I set the diaper on the book shelf where he can see it.
We look at his “Big Brother Story” book, which I wrote for him. We study the photos. He is sooooo little at the time of his baby brother’s birth. Just 28 months old. He seemed so much older, like a 4-year-old, at the time. I feel so guilty for not seeing how small he actually was when he actually was that small. I don’t think he has suffered. But I know I have.
Sailor is asleep behind me in my desk chair. It’s time to head to bed. I will be sleeping on the couch tonight. I am out of bed-changing energy.

Tuesday. Many moms shower at night to save time in the morning. I have started eating breakfast at night. Cereal. Toast…. It’s a good plan, really. I can eat what I want in peace and quiet. No one questions how much sugar I am dumping on my cereal or why he can’t have any sugar on his cereal. Nothing gets cold or warms up to room temperature while I pop up and down from my seat retrieving dropped forks or cooking more scramma eggs. I don’t have to share….
I notice, as I am freezing my patooties off, that not only is Halloween a week away, but Christmas is just around the corner. I am thinking already about all the people deserving of our thanks, our photo cards and our holiday cheer. Our mailman, our doctors, the boys’ teachers – all how many of them? Mac’s reading buddy, the 4th grade boy whom he insists is named Hoolian (I think it just has to be spelled “Julian”) and who reads to him in class every Thursday. I think I will forget someone important. I’ll be making a list and checking it twice and most certainly I will be continuing my Christmas shopping, which began two weeks ago.
Yesterday Mac informed me that his class is no longer receiving French lessons. I begin a mental gymnastics routine to figure out not only how much it’s going to cost me to put both kids back into their old French classes, but also how I am going to raise said money, and when we might possibly fit an 85-minute class into our already insane schedule. I wonder if they have anything at 7:00 a.m. This morning I find a French page in Mac’s backpack. Relief. Though I am still somewhat put off by the way they are learning just one or two words a week. Mac is already way past that, as my new French friend has noticed. So maybe their old Frencg class is going to have to put up with us once again.
Many kindergarten parents have mentioned, following their stints as class parent volunteer, that Miss H could use some help. Instead of tending to other business, I decided to bother the entire afternoon kindergarten class last night. Via email. Would anyone be interested in creating a daily parent volunteer program? I’ll organize this, I promise. Sure. In my spare time. When the kids are in French class, perhaps.
Mac brought home his chocolate factory yesterday. Part of the cardboard box community built and painted by the kindergarten class a few weeks ago. He has two squat buildings – a Grape Nuts box and a granola bar box – and four smoke stacks – two tall paper towel rolls, two short toilet paper rolls. He asked me to purchase his factory for 9 cents. He put it on my dresser.
At 12:05 this morning I found the following email from my sister:
Tonight when I went to kiss Mac goodnight I noticed his lower lip looked chapped. I asked him if he wanted me to get something to make his lip feel better. He said, "Yes, a glass of milk." Sailor wanted to read the Grover book and told me that there were buttons to push. Then he told me that he wanted to be a button for Halloween so people could push him. I asked him what would happen when he got pushed and he said that he would say "Ho dear" (like Grover does).
I can’t even begin to guess how many miles I walked today. But I think I have worn out the soles of my feet. Sailor is reluctant to go to school again today. He says he is tired and that we should all put our jammies back on and spend the day in bed, “Mac and you, too!” If only! Even with Curious George (wearing a blood pressure cuff on his arm) under his arm, as usual, I have to leave him in S’s lap, screaming for me. I try not to feel guilty for leaving him. And I try even harder not to feel guilty for wanting to leave him. He has been such a pill lately that I just want to drop him off. Wherever. Yet the reality of that statement is that I still can’t stand to be without my babies!
Mac and I drop the car at the garage to be fixed. We need a tune-up, among other things, I am sure. I walk home. Mac rides in luxury in the double jogger. We had planned a nice morning at the bookstore’s coffee shop, but someone forgot his back pack. Which would be not big deal except we have saved his homework for this morning’s outing. UURRGGHH!!!
At home we tackle homework. We’re on letter F and he can read most of the poem this week. There is a French coloring page that he hasn’t finished, so I get out the crayons. An hour later we abandon the incomplete coloring page and head out to get Sailor. Except Mac can’t seem to follow a few simple directions, such as please go pee and put your coat on. I find him in the playroom reading. I repeat my instructions. Why on earth, I wonder, does it take him ten minutes to pee and wash his hands. This is not an activity!
We walk to preschool to retrieve Sailor. He is the last guy in class. Wearing only his hat he is insisting, according to S, that the last remaining coat in the classroom is not his. Funny boy!
We have 30 minutes to make the 20 minute walk so I get distracted talking to one of Sailor’s classmate’s moms. We are late for school not only because of this but because Mac (and, somehow, the stroller) has stepped in dog poop and we have to stop at a small puddle and then scrape-walk along the grass, and then Sailor and Mac want pretzels but Sailor wants to hold the bag so that every time Mac wants more he has to ask Sailor an I have to stop the stroller so Sailor can hand over the goods, and Sailor still needs his coat put on… I explain all this to Miss H when I bring Mac into class along with the class snack, which we are responsible for today. We bring juice boxes and cheese sticks. 27 juice boxes are heavy! Mac had to walk to school so the juice boxes could ride. We go out and come back in because we forgot something.
At home Sailor wants to play and continuously issues me a “just a minute” each time I ask him to join me for lunch. He is a busy boy but he finally comes to the table. Keeping him there, however, is the challenge. He plays and I sit down in the living room. Yes, that’s right. Sit down. On the couch. Where it’s soft. And my feet don’t have to work. Like a cat to a can opener Sailor is immediately upon me the moment I turn on the tv. “What we watching?” He disapproves of my choice: A John Denver concert video. “I want watch a boy vee-yo.” I didn’t ask what you wanted to watch. “I don’t like this.” Neither do I. He talks. And talks and talks and talks so it’s of little consequence whether or not I enjoy this video. I invite him to return to the playroom and his beloved toys. He invites me to read to him. Book after book. Until eventually it’s time to retrieve Mac. I ask him to put the books away and he drops them on the floor. I repeat this morning’s directions to Mac, to Sailor. Pee and put your coat on. He wanders around. He talks. He chatters over my request. I must be heard! I resort to yelling. “Listen to me!” I am tired. He obeys. By sitting down on the potty to poop. Was he NOT going to do this? Was he just going to leave the house with me, having to poop?!
Mac runs off again after he greets us after school. Which part of “stay with me” does he not understand? I ask him. He looks sheepish and cute. I explain that there are so many people and that it’s hard to run around looking for him while keeping hold of the double jogger, which takes up a ton of space on the narrow sidewalk. We walk. And walk and walk and walk and I can feel my feet falling apart. We walk no fewer than 9 city blocks. Mac walks without complaint. I am extremely proud of him. We deserve a break.
Sailor is asleep and we head into Borders and straight for the coffee. Mac requests a decaf iced latte and a cookie, but I convince him to get chocolate milk instead, which he changes to hot chocolate. We sit. We drink. We share a big cookie that the coffee guy offers to warm up but then doesn’t. We work on Mac’s homework! Yes, it’s done a full 19 hours before school starts tomorrow. Hurray! We chat. He looks at books. I look at him. The sun is on his face. The hot chocolate is on his chin. I look at his light red eyebrows, his lashes, the tiny red freckles that spill over his nose onto his cheeks. He is my baby.
We shop for the triplets in Mac’s class. Their mother has already shared the date of their birthday party, to which the entire class will be invited. I do not know the protocol for this kind of situation. Mac is friendly with the boy, and I had one of the girls in my field trip group, but the third triplet, another girl…. Neither Mac nor I have any relationship with her. Still, sticking within my price range, and using a $10 off coupon and the rest of a store credit, I am able to stick within my budget, purchasing matching gifts for the girls and a do-it-yourself super hero kit for the boy. Mac chooses 2 Halloween books and I pick up the Halloween book S was unable to find in her classroom this morning. I have a rich heart and an empty pocket.
The car is in need of roughly $1100 worth of “recommended maintenance.” I am told the car is now worth about $2000. However, nothing is really wrong with it and at a mere 83,000 my dear Honda could run well for a couple more years. We’ll celebrate its 10th birthday next month. I pay for an inspection, an oil change and replaced break lites. Finally we can drive. My feet hurt and I am exhausted. I think I have walked maybe 5 or 6 miles today. Not a big deal, except I have a cold and my stomach has been bugging me for 2 days, so I am a little run down.
Mac requests homemade spaghetti-o’s for dinner. They’re good. They go great with the popcorn shrimp I pull out of the freezer and the fresh asparagus I sautee in butter. The kids won’t eat the greenery. I share it with their dad, who has arrived in time for dinner. We chat as if we are happily married. I tell him all about the $1100 worth of maintenance my car needs in order to stay running safely enough to transport our children.
I skate and go to Target while the guys stay home. Sailor is in my bed. Mac is in his own. And I am in neither. Typical.
Wednesday. I am awake and out of bed for 9 seconds. Sailor wants his pajamas put back on. (No, I don’t know why they are off, or how, in the frigid morning these boys are playing wearing nothing but their underwear.) I numbly bend over to untangle the fleecy footy pajamas and Mac attempts to shove the earpieces of his toy stethoscope into my ears so I can hear him make the sounds of the ocean. I brush them away. I have been up for 13 seconds. I head to the bathroom while Sailor asks if I brought him Star Wars guys from Target last night. I did not. He cries. What did you bring, he wants to know. Well, I think… mittens for Mac. And for me? He asks. No honey you already have mittens. Cries again. Mac tells Sailor he’s supposed to say, “Oh, yeah, I forgot.” Sailor is undeterred. He continues to whine. I shut the bathroom door. I haven’t even finished peeing yet. I have no strength for this. I have only been out of bed for 19 ½ seconds. He whips the door open and cries in protest. I escort him out and slam the door shut. I get into the shower. Mac calls through the closed door, “I spelled INK.” “You did? Spell it for me,” I call back in my most enthusiastic see-I’m-still-paying-attention-to-you-even-tho-I’m-in the-shower voice. Silence. A thought occurs to me. “Spelled or spilled?” I call back. Though in retrospect I realize there is no ink in the house that could be spilled. “SPELLED!!!!” he shouts and disappears.
I am showered and getting dressed. They argue with me over why I won’t give them back their light sabers. I know I should never have let those toy weapons into the house. Mac is satisfied with getting his back when he is 6. Sailor finds more reason to cry. Mac is cold and needs me to choose his clothes for the day. Not that he was cold while playing in his underwear for G-d knows how long before I got up. “Yes I was!” he insists. Sailor wants breakfast. I want to go grocery shopping. My goal today is to get it all for under $80.
The rest of Wednesday is a blur of exhaustion. Our morning activity is grocery shopping. For fun I make lists for both of the boys. They have drawings of 4 items and the corresponding word. I think I am brilliant. The kids are kind of excited, too. The store is going out of business and I am like a kid in a candy store. I want to buy everything because it’s all on sale 10% or more off! I get the entire cart full for $64. I am thrilled. Except when we get in the car it is already 11:30. Mac wants to go see our friend’s new twins, whom he has yet to meet. I rudely tell him I don’t care what he wants and go on to list off, in detail, the things we are going to have to accomplish in less than an hour.
Drive home – 10-15 minutes. Find a parking space -- 0-60 minutes. Haul in the groceries 10 minutes (we live two flights up). Put away all of the perishables (10-15 minutes). Make and eat lunch (15 minutes). Walk to school (9 minutes).
I contemplate calling my dad to ask him to make some grilled cheese for the boys. But decide I do better in my role as martyr. Until Sailor falls asleep and I realize I am in trouble. I dial and hand the phone back to Mac. No answer. Yes, I am really in trouble. There’s a parking space across the street! I hate bringing in the groceries. They are so heavy! Mac helps. And he brings all the bags to the kitchen and Sailor wakes up after I make a special trip to carry just him up into his bed. We play store and I ask the boys to stock the shelves. They do well though there are still boxes and cans all over the place when we finish our lunch of long, tubular foods: turkey hot dogs, cheese sticks and bananas. The boys lose their ears and are unable to listen to my anguished pleas to please go pee and put there coats on (haven’t we been here before?). The yelling starts. I lose it. We have 7 minutes to walk to school and not the aforementioned 9, which we need. We begin at a run because I am pissed. But while my plan is to make Mac see why he needs to listen, I realize I am physically unable to keep up the pace I have set. We slow down to a trot and I admonish Mac that when we arrive at school late he is to tell Miss H he is sorry he is late but he and his brother have a hard time listening to their mommy. “I’ll try to remember to tell her,” Mac says. “You’ll tell her,” I insist. But lo! Miracle of miracles we arrive while the children are still lining up. Don’t ask me how. Mac is beaming. “Now I don’t have to tell her!” “No, but you have to apologize to me for not listening to me and for making me run all the way to school.” The look on his face can only be described as “perplexed.”
There’s an appointment with Dr. Dentist to get to. The installment of my new porcelain tooth. All is well until Sailor tips the double jogger backwards while I am in the chair. We lunge to save him from certain stroller trauma. He is fine but embarrassed and Dr. Dentist spends minutes marveling over the poorly designed center of gravity of this expensive piece of travel gear.
I think I walk another 30 miles delivering fliers for work and then taking Sailor home for a blanket. His legs are cold. I will never fully understand how it is that we dress our children for the elements from the waist up – undershirt, turtleneck, sweater, winter coat, scarf, hat, mittens – but unless the temperature outside is hovering near zero and we add a second layer consisting of thin cotton long johns, we do nothing for the lower body but cover it in the same jeans they wear year-round and add a pair of ankle-high socks under the shoes. We pass the French mom on our way and have a brief French conversation about the weather.
We return to school for Mac. While waiting I talk with several moms about the undying issue of the school age cutoff. It is here that I realize why Mac is one of the shortest kids in his class: he is far and away one of the youngest. With so many of his classmates turning six now, Mac has a long way until he catches up. In fact he won’t be six until about three weeks before the end of the school year. I am relieved at this realization actually, as it provides reason, if not excuse, for Mac’s occasional inability to act as maturely as his classmates.
We walk Mac to FTK. Sailor wants to play in the playground. Which is a great idea until 40 minutes into pushing him on a swing he says, “Push me again!” and I do and he forgets to hold on tight and falls right off. I think this boy ought to be wearing a helmet today! Again he’s fine, but he’s done with the swings. And he has to pee. We return to FTK and pee and with an hour left of class I am at total loss for what to do. I just cannot fathom the thought of walking to the book store or home or anywhere else. I fantasize about a spa pedicure while Sailor promises to play quietly but instead runs back and forth down the narrow hallway brandishing his lights & sounds Batman sword. (I have been told that Batman doesn’t have a sword, but the toy makers and small boys seem to think otherwise.) There’s another 3-year-old boy waiting with us. He wants Sailor’s sword. He wants Sailor’s Batman helicopter. He wants everything Sailor has. He is causing Sailor to make too much noise. He is seriously irritating me. I am too tired to move or stop the child or even do much more than smile in sympathy when the child begins screaming his head off and punching at his nanny’s head and neck. All I can think of is a very unsolicitous, “Brat!” knowing full–well that Sailor is prone to the very same kind of behavior. Is class over yet? It is! I have a handful of our new fliers for the mom of the celeb who does the morning radio show. His boy twin tells me, “You can give them to me and I can give them to my mom for you.” What a grown-up boy. I hand over my stack. His mom explains that the twins’ private school has a policy against handing things like this out. I’ll never understand that. She takes 10 to pass along to her friends. The boy twin approaches me while I talk with the instructor and he slips his little hand into mine. Only my own boys have ever been so comfortable. He waits until I stop talking and looks up at me sadly and says, “I thought one of those was for me.” He is ecstatic when I hand him his very own flier. With Mac by my side and the boy twin in my heart I have more energy for the walk home.
Something is for dinner. The boys need to go to sleep. Miraculously, without much fuss they do. Oh yeah, they were sent to their rooms for making too much ruckus while I was trying to talk business with Aunt Minny. Mac walked off mumbling something about having not been the one to make any noise. He may have been right. Nonetheless he is asleep when I check on him and my guilt is raging like an out of control hormone. I didn’t even get to kiss him goodnight.
I talk on the phone until 11:00 pm. It’s the only way I am able to cut out 30 squares of fabric and turn them into newspaper-stuffed pumpkins. We have exactly 30 and no more. Which means that if any of the children whose mothers neglected to follow the rules of proper etiquette and RSVP for Sailor’s Halloween party on Friday actually show up we will basically be screwed and I’ll be the one who looks like a jerk for not making extras.
I last through the 11:05 showing of this morning’s Oprah.
Thursday morning we all wake up at 8:05. Not again! What is it about Thursdays? The boys eat cereal and bananas while I set outfits for them on my bed. They actually get dressed while watching the 2nd story of the Curious George ½ hour and by the time I am dressed they are ready to go. Easy. Really. Ok. Garbage out. Kids to car. Sailor to school. Moderate coaxing. I look around at all parents who may or may not have RSVP’d but decide to keep my mouth shut. We don’t have any material left to make more pumpkins anyway. Starbucks. Mac’s talking doctor. (I am told at the end of the appointment to expect that Mac may have rough day ahead. They talked about his dad during their session. I smile, sympathetic to my little boy and tell the talking doctor that I had a bad day yesterday so I suppose this is only fair.) I pay bills without having a heart attack. I read. We do the homework – reading “My F Book.” And then we head to Jake’s Bubba’s house where Mac will spend 90 minutes watching over Jake’s shoulder as the boy plays a tiny hand-held Star Wars video game. I suggest they play something Mac can participate in. I consider letting Jake play at our house in the future but not having Mac play at Jake’s again. I realize the time at 11:50 and bolt for the door. Why am I late for everything? I don’t want to keep Sailor waiting. Or for that matter. I kiss Mac goodbye and remind him to pee before he goes to school and to hold Jake’s Bubba’s hand when he crosses the streets as they walk and then toss a quick, “I never do this,” over my shoulder as I leave, signaling to the Bubba that I am entrusting her with my Hope Diamond.
The drive to Sailor’s school is shorter and more direct than I expect. I call Mac’s school and leave a message for Miss H relaying the warning about Mac’s potentially rough day ahead. and I am on time for Sailor. He has made me a pumpkin out of a paper plate. We return to the grocery store for all the party food I hadn’t thought to buy yesterday. Mid-shopping I ask Sailor for a kiss, which he willingly plants on my lips. “Are you happy now?” he asks sweetly. Yes, I am happy. The store is still closing so I buy out the stock of natural peanut butter – 6 jars (which, I will find out in May, last almost to the end of hte schoolyear) -- and the last 2 bags of whole wheat flour. My bill is almost as high today as it was yesterday. We make several more stops before returning home to start the cupcakes. Sailor loves to bake with me and is a very good mixer and taster. GrandDad finally comes home and I am able to drop Sailor downstairs to walk back in the rain to get Mac. Except first he wants to go then he doesn’t and after he gets his coat on and I call my dad to tell him Sailor is not coming down Sailor says, “Ok, I guess I just go GrandDad’s house.”
At the big school I am paid two compliments. The first by Jake’s Bubba who tells me Mac was very good at her house and I have to look up to see who is talking to me and even take a moment to register the fact that I had left Mac with her and that she had brought Mac to school a mere 2 ½ hours earlier. The second by the French mom who asked me a question in French. When I hesitated after having not heard the first part of the question, she apologized and said she’d forgotten I was not one of the French moms.
At home my mom and I scour the basement for a clown costume and a big red wig. We come up empty handed and Mac has to choose another costume for tonight’s dinner out. There is a costume contest at our local favorite restaurant, and though I really don’t need the first prize of a $100 GC to Toys R Us (ok, yes, maybe I could use it for some Christmas and birthday shopping) I am determined that a three-year-old in a Santa suit is a shoe in for the winner. I dress Sailor, pad his tummy with his baby pillow – “Look, I have a fat tummy!” – and paint his eyebrows white. He is the cutest little Santa ever. (Ok, maybe not “ever.” There was another really super cute 3-year-old Santa roaming around our neighborhood two years ago.) “Ho ho ho! What you want for breakfast? Ac’shly, what you want for Christmas?” Sailor/Santa asks.
I bake and frost four batches of chocolate cupcakes. Sailor goes to bed and Mac doesn’t. That’s a switch. My friend who had the big birthday bash last weekend calls to tell me that indeed she is pregnant with #3, which I was 99% sure of anyway. She says I can come to the birth again, as I did with #2. I drain the last of this morning’s Starbucks and feel no guilt for having recently upgraded my lattes to Grande. This cup of jo’ lasted no fewer than 11 hours. I look around me. The house is a mess and our friends from Kenosha are driving in for breakfast, or if you ask the boys, to return Darth Vader, whom we left at their house back in June. Theirs is the kind of house that begs you to clean up your own. But alas, mine is the kind of tired body that begs me to go to bed. Stay tuned to see who wins!
Friday morning. We are all up at the same time. Early. A flurry of social engagements await us on this day. We scramble around to tidy up our otherwise lived-in looking home. Our friends from Kenosha are headed our way. While I put things away I am barraged by a series of questions from Mac. All the same. When are they going to be here? I tell him they will be here in an hour (and panic as I have not yet showered, I’m on the phone with my best friend, and there is still vacuuming to do). Nine minutes later he is upon me again. It’s been an hour, he is certain. This is a job for the kitchen timer, which I set and hand over to him. He is excited. “This is for me?” Indeed it is. Except my friend calls me 20 minutes into the last 45 minutes on the timer to say they are stopping for a potty break at Micky D’s, in the county just north of ours. So when the timer rings so does the disappointment. But by 10:30 the car arrives and I escort the older girl in while I direct my friend to find parking “wherever.” It’s a mad morning. I have goodie bag tags to assemble, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches – two loaves of bread’s worth – to make, a car to load up. I feed three of the 4 children (my friend’s younger girl has dietary restrictions beyond even my healthy kitchen’s limits) and chat with my friend about all the things that have happened since we visited their house in June. I prepare all the pb&j’s and attempt to use cookie cutters to make them into witches and ghosts and pumpkins, but when I ask the 8-year-old what the witch looks like to her she says, “a blob of sandwich” thus saving me a colossal effort and a lot of wasted sandwich remnants.
We scoot out at 12:15. I’m in a proverbial tizzy because I have not only not left enough time to run back and forth to the car four times but I have also not left enough time to set up for Sailor’s party on the other end. Decked out in cowboy boots, tights, a very short denim skirt, and a bandana and cowboy hat choking the life out of me, I am having much difficulty trying to open the trunk of my car. With my booted foot. A nice man walking by stops to assist me. Could it be the short skirt or do I really look as if I am about to drop three trays of finely decorated cupcakes all at once?

We fly to school. I throw Mac out the car door and take off for the art studio. Ok, no, not really. Truth be told I stop to talk to a couple of moms despite the fact that I am leaving myself less than 15 minutes to set up Sailor’s Halloween party. When we arrive at the art studio Miss M is still chaperoning dawdling students and their moms out the door. The stress on her face to set up this party in 15 minutes mirrors my own. I toss her a turkey hot dog – Mac’s uneaten lunch—and we get going. Sailor’s girlfriend, Sadie, is joining us with her mom and baby sister. Four of the six classmates who have RSVP’d ‘yes’ arrive in due time. It’s awkward at best as none of us really know one another. The final two guests arrive quite late. A cell phone rings and the owner spends the first 15 minutes of the party engaged in a conversation peppered with enough, “Are you ok?”s to let us all know that this is a really important call. All too soon the children have finished both art projects, their cupcakes and their lemonade. Sadie’s mom to the rescue! The former librarian charms the children in the book corner while I try not to stick out like a sore thumb in my ridiculous cowgirl costume and make conversation with 6 moms I don’t know. The party ends just minutes before I need to leave to get Mac from school and bring him back for his party. The catch is, we first have to gently ease Sailor’s party guests out, then we have to re-set the stage for Mac’s party, then we have to drop off Sailor with Nana and GrandDad and then pick up both Mac and the German boy from school and get them back to the studio to finish setting up before the rest of the class can get there.
And miraculously, we make it. Twenty of the 22 guests who said they’d be here arrive. There are no fewer than 6 princesses and 5 super heroes (2 Batmans, 2 Spidermans and some flamey guy whom we called the “fire man”). There is a homemade clown costume, which I am most impressed with and the class Diva comes in a hand-made white furry cat suit, complete with professional make-up job. Mac is Darth Vader and he’s pleased that his buddy Jake is decked out in full Yoda gear. There is a girl dressed all in black who claims to be a Ninja, and a girl with very short hair who calls herself Rapunzel. (Did you already let down your hair? we wonder.) We have two Vaculas (Sailor’s way of saying Dracula) a girl is Chinese pajamas and flip flops, and a cowboy. When Mac sees the guns in his holster he takes note. He knows that gun play of any sort is not tolerated by Mommy. We serve a colossal amount of pbj’s and carrots and more than one child asks for seconds on cupcakes, but as there are only two to spare, I save them and allow Mac and the fancy cat to eat them when no other children remain and they are helping us clean up. Throughout the party I am continually impressed by the cohesiveness of this group. They have good manners and they follow directions well. They seem to like one another and more, they really seem to care about one another. As evidenced by the number of children who flocked to the beanbag to keep company with the clown, who had developed a post-pbj, pre-painting tummy ache, and the girl who politely told the French boy, “You might want to take off your Spiderman mask. You’re getting frosting all over it,” even though he couldn’t understand a word she said. The party was a great success as drop-off parties tend to be. I make a note to tell Miss H on Monday what a fab job she is doing with our kids. I then stand back to survey the mess. One like we have never before experienced at the art studio.
Nonetheless we are home before 7 and devouring a large cheese pizza by 7. We are wiped out and my feet have had it. A full day in cowboy boots is such a bad idea, no matter what the circumstances. Tomorrow is Saturday and we only have to be in Mt. Prospect to see Kelly’s new baby by 10:00 and then get to my best friend’s house by 10:30 so we can take our costumed kinder (Mac in a last-minute toss-on: a Tigger towel he received as baby gift; Sailor as Curious George – who else?; and my friend’s kids as a cowboy and a baby cow) to a fall fest where we get to choose our own pumpkins and take a hayride and let the kids eat their very first entire candy bars with only a little help from Mama, and then traipse out to another Halloween party in Palatine by 6:00. No biggie!
The afternoon is nice and I insist on feeding my friend’s baby and let him fall asleep in my arms, thus rendering me useless in the parenting department for the other kids and providing myself with a good old fashioned Mommy break. When the baby wakes up after Mac not-so-gently gives him a hello squeeze of the head, Sailor asks to cheer him up. I suggest he sing a song. In good Beegees form, Sailor sings “You should be dancin’ YEAH!” until the baby quiets down and Sailor declares, “It worked!”
It really doesn’t occur to me that I was supposed to bring my own costume to the evening party until it’s far too late to have done so. And so when Snow White asks me who I am supposed to be, I say, confidently, “A hot mommy!”
“In that outfit?” she returns, “not a hot mommy!” Thus completely crushing my entire sense of who I am and what I truly look like in contrast to how I have thought I looked all this time. After all, I am actually wearing one of my real hot mommy outfits, or so I had thought.
The bold word that flies through my head is not one that I was actually able to say aloud. But a few minutes later I gather my wits about me enough to face the princess again and explain that actually I was not wearing a costume but was in fact a true life hot mommy.
My self-esteem and self image have still taken a major blow, however.
When we get home it’s late and my Tigger and Curious George are asleep in their car seats. I find a parking spot nearby, but not right out front. So I call in the troops. GrandDad comes out and sits in the car with Curious while I haul 42 lbs of sleeping Tigger down the block and up two flights of stairs and thru the house to his bed. At least I have the foresight to change from my boots to my comfy walking shoes before making the trek. Without benefit of a spouse, moments like this can be a challenge. Thank goodness for my parents. I’d be lost without them.
It’s only just past 10:00 so I make the mistake of checking emails and the answering machine. I hang up from talking with my sister at midnight. I don’t bother changing the clocks back, as I plan to remain in daylight savings time denial for at least a week. And it won’t matter much when my boys wake up at a time that begins with a six because the VCR has automatically changed the time for me. We have nothing planned for most of Sunday. We’ll just have a nice leisurely day at home. I’ll start by making a batch of orange pancakes that I use cookie cutters to make into Halloween shapes. Then I’ll haul 7 loads of laundry and a box of summer gear to the basement, fold and put away four baskets of laundry, tidy up the entire house with the help of the kids (twice), bake a batch of muticolored cut-out sugar cookies (hey, we are on such a sugar high already, why not!?), create a basket-of-laundry costume for Mac and a garbage bag costume for Sailor only to have him decide he’d rather be Santa again, take the kids by bus to a nearby grade school called Nettlehorst (which Mac hears as the Metal Horse School) Halloween Hoopla because Mac can’t sit in his carseat while wearing a laundry basket, carry a sleeping Santa off the bus and back into the house after the fair, rescue my sister from being locked out of her car, autograph and package up two books, pay a bill, write three thank you notes, build a haunted house out of a small cardboard box and a bunch of little skeletons, paint, and rubbery frogs with Mac and Sailor, make lunch and a snack and cook diner and sweep the kitchen floor twice and unload the dishwasher twice and set out another round of costumes appropriate for gym class in the morning, paint Sailor’s face, and console Mac just moments after tucking him into bed for the night. Seems he is still angry at his dad for leaving. Which I can understand. But the fact that he is also angry at me for getting a divorce is more than I can handle. I patiently, oh so patiently, explain to Mac again that the demise of my marriage to his father had absolutely nothing to do with me except for the fact that I am a female. Sailor finds us in the bathroom in the middle of this teary heart-to-heart and asks, “Hey ever’body, what you doing in here? I brought you a snack.” He proceeds to eat his big box of cereal and babble babble babble on about things he thinks are relevant to the conversation Mac and I are having (“I’m sad, too. I’m sad Uncle Marvin died.") until I finally have to tell him to be quiet. Which sends him away in tears. Oh the drama of it all. And a fine ending to a quiet, peaceful, easy Sunday!
I wish I could say Monday might be a calmer day. But late in the day I realize I have two extra activities to squeeze between our regularly scheduled Monday activities and I am so confused by it all when I call my mom to make appropriate babysitting arrangements that I just can’t wait to see who I forget to pick up or where I forget to leave one of the kids. At least there is no school this coming Friday….