I am furious. Absolutely furious. Before bedtime tonight Mac wants to do his homework, which involves a small bit of coloring. Sailor decides he wants to color, too, and attempts to deface Mac’s homework. I supply him with a coloring book. They sit on the playroom floor coloring while I have a quick chat on the phone with my sister. I am cool with the work they are doing because quite frankly Sailor is doing a bang-up job coloring in the lines of a Spiderman picture. He tears out the picture so I can scan it and email it to his doting aunt.
We get pajamas on. We read The Cat in the Hat Comes Back and Dr. Seuss’ ABC’s. Sailor is hungry despite it being a mere hour or so past the end of dinner, which he ate well. I pour a bowl of cereal. Mac is hungry despite two helpings of dinner. I pour him a bowl of cereal. Sailor slips because, like his big brother, the Velcro on his butt that is meant to keep him on his seat is non-functional. He falls and bumps his ribs. Water spills all over Mac’s chair and the floor. I react and then realize Sailor is hurt. He snuggles in my lap to finish his cereal and we hustle off to bed.
Sailor is in bed and I am picking up his room. There is always a floor of debris in there by the end of the day. I pick up books and socks and jeans…. That is when I see it. As I stretch out his jeans to see if they are still clean enough to avoid the laundry basket, I notice the rip in the knee of the little pants. At first it seems innocuous. After all, he is the third boy to wear these jeans and it stands to reason that he may have worn out the knee. But it doesn’t look like a rip. It looks like a cut. “Mac cut it,” Sailor offers. “Sailor asked me to,” Mac rebuts. I am incredulous. I am speechless.
“WHAT?!”
And I then recall having heard Sailor say something about, “We were cutting pants and shirts.” Which I had assumed to mean that they were cutting the shapes of pants and shirts out of paper.
What do you say when your children do something so terribly naughty? Something you know for certain that they know better than to do.
“What else did you cut?”
“My jeans,” Mac offers, “But just at the bottom part where it was already ripped in the back from walking on it.”
I send Mac to bed and he goes. I say good night to Sailor. But not before letting them both know that they have punishments coming tomorrow. And, that they owe me money for Sailor’s jeans.
Sailor is crying, and I tell him it is ok to be upset.
In Mac’s room I examine the shirt he was wearing. I see no evidence of foul play, which is good for Mac, as he was wearing a relatively new shirt. “Did you cut Sailor’s shirt, too?”
“Yes.”
Back in Sailor’s room I pull the damaged shirt form the laundry basket. Sure enough there is a slice in each sleeve. Sailor is asleep so I bring the shirt to Mac. “Did you do this yourself or did Sailor cut some?”
“Sailor cut the part right there,” he says, poking his finger at a hole right in the front of the shirt. I am livid. I turn into the kitchen and toss the shirt in the trash.
I pull Mac’s jeans from his laundry basket. The back of one leg’s cuff is scissored badly. “Is this what you did?”
“Yes.”
I pull on both sides of the rip and pull the pants apart all the way up to the back pocket.
Have I mentioned that I am furious?
I let them know that they owe me money for the two pair of ruined jeans and shirt.
I also let Mac know that he is not to use scissors again until he is 6, which is in three months. This is not his first infraction of the law of scissors. Last year he cut a piece of a boy’s hair in one of his classes at FTK, and then later in the summer he cut a hole in the front of a brand new shirt he was wearing. I cleverly stitched the shirt in many places with bright colored thread, saving the shirt from the garbage heap. But this time is too much.
“Sailor told me to do it.”
“You are the big brother and the one responsible to tell him that, no, we do not cut our clothes.”
Sailor’s shirt and Mac’s pants are in the trash. I will sew a patch on Sailor’s jeans. I am furious indeed. Such naughtiness is unacceptable. Such naughtiness will not go unpunished. But what punishment is appropriate for a 5- and 3-year-old?
In the morning I have an epiphany. The best punishment for my 5- and 3-year-old is a week without their beloved StarWars toys. They take their punishment like men.
I pick Sailor up from school on Thursday and he has his face painted with a black nose and whiskers. He looks absolutely adorable. As do his classmates. Apparently they are celebrating Dr. Seuss’ birthday. Sailor is also sporting a red construction paper bow tie, which he has painted with something that makes dots. The overall effect is quite cute. We decide that when we get home he can put on his official Cat in the Hat costume, or has he calls it, his Cat-a-Hat suit.
Except that getting home presents more of a challenge than one might expect. As we wait in the car for Miss H to open the door for the kindergarteners (it’s raining cats and dogs outside) Mac and Sailor ask if they can push buttons. They push everything from defrost to the stereo eject and when Mac pushes the button to search radio stations the next number up plays just static. “That’s just the water, right Mommy?” Ah, the water station. So when Mac exits the car and I attempt to start it up something goes wrong and nothing happens at all. Shoot! We are stranded outside the big school in a rain storm. And I don’t really want to walk home. Besides, or as Mac says, DEsides, if I leave my car unattended in front of the school I will have a ticket to deal with, or better yet, they will tow it away (which might indeed be actually better – if they would tow it to the garage!) One of the French moms is still outside and I ask her if she can jump my car. Alas, my hood is stuck shut again. I pull hard and nothing happens. Dang it! I realize my lights are still on and so after 5 tries the car turns over as if nothing happened. You see, my ten-year-old Honda is due for about $1000 worth of maintenance, which I do not have the money for. Thus I am bound to find myself in these situations more and more often, until….
We are home and Sailor is asking for his Cat-a-Hat suit. Which I dig out for him. It’s in a garbage bag in my closet with all the other costumes that I confiscated a while back because neither of my children would put them away after pulling them all out to find the one they wanted. It was not an isolated incident. It happened three times in one week. So, bye-bye costumes. Because there is not enough junk in my closet already.
Sailor is fussy, crabby, whiny while I struggle to help him into his costume. Nothing is right. The leg will hurt the (teensy tiny) booboo on his knee, his shirt sleeves will go up if I don’t let him take off his shirt, waah, waah, waah. He is really tired! And we’re off for a nap. Which he has no intention of taking. He cries and fusses and refuses and claims he is not tired. “I don’t want to take a nappy” he says. Over and over and over like a broken record. I am Patient Mommy today and I perch on his rocking chair, laptop and coffee in hand. He cries until he finally changes his tune. “I am too HUNGRY to take a nap.” Of course I have offered him pizza at least 7 times in the past hour. I tell him where he can find his lunch (in a Tupperware in my bag). He gets his lunch, brings it to his room, sits on his bed and eats the slice of Trader Joe’s Margherita pizza in silence. And them my wonder child puts the crust in the Tupperware, sets the Tupperware on the floor, lies down and pulls up the covers. And I know that he really is a good boy. And I know that he really is a tired boy. I love him so. Before I finish this paragraph he is asleep.
I need to give the pediatrician a ring. Mac woke up in the middle of the night because his CD was stuck on a song and the repetition was bothersome. He came to my bed to tell me he had a bloody nose, but in my cozy state of sleepiness I merely mumbled, “Lie on your back.” In the morning, my cell phone, which seems to know when I need to get up early and when I do not, starts alarming. I let it go off 4 times before getting up at 7:22. I am out of the shower when Sailor comes in to tell me that Mac had a blood nose. “Had or has?” I ask. “Had,” Sailor tells me.
Mac shows up at the bathroom door covered in blood. But I see that it is dry and so we set about washing his face and hands and stripping off his Sponge Bob pajama top. We check his room and find blood on the pillow, sheet, and of course on the down comforter. There are large spots on the floor in his room. I feel sick. Not because of the blood itself but because it looks like a massacre occurred. And because I know that nose bleeds can be innocent and not so innocent. I think it’s time to call the doctor. I wait till 9:00 to find out that they don’t open till 10:00. although Mac seems tired and out of sorts a bit he claims to feel fine and I am reluctant to spend $20 on a copay to find out that he just has a cold. But when his nose springs a leak again right as we are about to leave to pick up Sailor from school I rethink the whole doctor thing. Especially when he gets so scared he wants to stay home from school. I fully expect him to have another gush while he is at school this afternoon.
Sailor comes to my room at 10:30 tonight. Creeps in and starts to crawl. He is sick. He woke up from the nap and stayed with my dad for 45 minutes and by the time I got back he was “freezing.” I bundled him up but he would not stop whining. We did workbooks with Mac and while both boys did great work, Sailor would still not stop whining. It finally occurs to me that his whining and the way he is breathing are fever induced. I take his temp. 101.5. So here he is shivering in my bed and he wants to know: "Mommy, what’s in donuts?"
Sick kids are the sweetest children on Earth. Sailor has a fever again and has asked me to stay in his room with him while he falls asleep. “You can even bring your ku-pewter,” he offers. He is rolled up in a baby comforter and he says he is too hot. His fever is not horrible but he didn’t like the Motrin last night, said it made his throat hurt. And I think if I remember correctly from my childhood a fever is a good thing because it fights the virus/bacteria that is making ya’ sick. So every time we suppress our kids’ fevers with the red-dye-#40-artifically-flavored-saccharin-laden-pediatrician-approved-pain-killer-and-fever-reducer, we are not allowing the little body to heal itself. Am I right? Thus the lingering of the illness. This way, Sailor’s little body is working hard to fight off the yucky germs and he should be better in no time. Don’t worry, I won’t let his fever become dangerous. I am bright enough to recognize that the short term benefits outweigh the long term damage. But I still don’t want to pump my baby full of crap.
Mac has had five bloody noses in 2 days. Am I worried? You betcha. But I am working hard to hide my concern from the little man. Tonight he comes out of bed to tell me he can’t breathe. His nose is so full of stuff that he can’t get a clear breath in. So we sit down in the bathroom with tissues, Q-tips, saline, and a flashlight and I get to work. He hates what I am doing. He does not complain though. And at the end of a good long 10 or 15 minutes I teach him how to blow his nose. He finds my example inexplicably hilarious. But he can do it. And his nose is clear enough to safely pull air into his lungs once again. And what does this amazing child do as soon as he is able to breathe clearly again? He throws his arms around my neck and tells me I am the best doctor ever. I have found little to be more gratifying than my children thanking me for making them feel better through some gentle but persistent and unpleasant procedure. Like the time when Mac was 2 ½ and he had gotten an eye infection from the then baby Sailor. I had to administer horrible eye gel to both eyes three times a day. It was a battle each time and he hated every dose. But when the medicine was done and his eyes were all better as promised, my tiny miracle thanked me for the yucky eye medicine. It was then that I knew I had a special child on my hands.
They are asleep now. It is snowing. Has been since before 4:15 this morning. That’s when I got up to pee and bring Sailor milk. I didn’t shovel today. Didn’t have time. Didn’t feel like it. Will do it tomorrow.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Week 22: What I Have Learned
If the weeks of school were a pregnancy I would have been able to learn the gender of my unborn baby by now. Since this is not a pregnancy I will say what I have learned this week.
The deep freeze we were suffering for, what was it two weeks, three? It’s over. But, as I told my favorite French mom this afternoon when she asked, yes, it can happen again. The temps can plunge and there could be another blizzard all the way through till sometime in April. Our weather here is that unpredictable. With the warming of the temperature – seriously folks, we have gone from low around zero to 45 degrees F! – comes the melting of the snow. And, much to the delight of my two little boys and little boys all over the city – PUDDLES! The preschoolers walked right out of school yesterday and straight into a puddle. None of them wore boots. Sailor has needed his pants changed on several occasions and more than once in a day due to the changes in weather. As has Mac. So, what I have learned here is that snow boots are not waterproof, but rain boots are. Snow boots only come up slightly above the ankles, maybe to mid-calf, but rain boots come up almost to the knees. Rain boots are not as warm as snow boots. But perhaps since they keep the feet actually DRY they are the better choice. The jury is still out and I am baffled at the incongruity of it all.
And speaking of rain boots, I might mention that Sailor’s are cows. Not cowboy, but cows. White with black cow splotches and a face down there covering his toes. He wore them yesterday when we went to get Mac from school. He was dressed, from the waste up, for winter: winter coat, hat, mittens dangling from clips. From the waste down he was pure spring: cotton blue pants (no, not jeans, actual blue pants, like khakis only faded out navy blue – an unfortunate fashion choice, to be certain) and the cow boots. And in his hands? A sand pail and shovel, fresh from the dollar store and meant for snow play. Except the snow is melting and revealing dirt dirt dirt. And lots and lots of dog poop. And garbage. Otherwise known to Mac as treasures. This afternoon he trailed a box of dental floss three yards behind him as we walked home. He found it, there in the melting snow. A treasure. To be added (after washing, he assures me) to his box of scraps and junk that he is now keeping in his room. Much to my dismay. Ok perhaps dismay is the wrong word. Let’s go with horror! He wants to emulate Anakin Skywalker, who built R2-D2 from scraps. G-d help me! I gave his room a deep cleanout the other night while he slept. I removed all the toys and returned them to the playroom, eliminated all the baby books and re-shelved the remaining books, took down the tattered Harry Potter poster (which he has yet to notice, but I stowed it in his closet just in case), and made the room functional again. And now he informs me that it’s ok that I forgot to vacuum because his room is always going to be dusty because it is his workshop. I need to help him find a better place than his room for all the garbage he is collecting!
Yesterday Sailor’s best pal from preschool invited us out to lunch after school. Ok, his mom invited us. It was fun. Sailor doesn’t get to do this big kid stuff much. It was a nice outing and I learned that a tofu sandwich is divine!
This morning Sailor fell and whacked a hole in his forehead. We were playing at this big indoor play room near home. He and I were building towers to knock down. He turned to go do I don’t know what and tripped over some mom’s big bag that should not have been left where it was. And he cut a hole in his forehead over his right eye. It looks deep. There was quite a bit of blood as there always is with a head wound. And he was rubbing his eyes for crying so blood was all over his face and hand. Looked macabre. He was scared afterwards, he said, but he couldn’t say of what. Just scared. He fell asleep in my arms as I chatted with another mom.
What I learned with all of this? Just because you are wearing a Curious George shirt does not mean you have to wear a matching Curious George band aid. Scooby Doo will do just fine!
The big question of the day from all the moms at the play place today (whose kids were significantly younger than my 2) was, “When does it get easier?” I couldn’t remember, so I said that it gets easier when the little one learns to talk, which I think is true.
It’s been a crazy week already and it’s just Wednesday. On Sunday I spent way too much money buying curtains for the living room in an attempt to make the room more livable. On Monday the kids and I had a rumbly day but we did a lot of fun stuff. Yesterday Mac had the daughter of the cleaning crew company over and I wanted to declare no more play dates til forever. Children, even the nice, smart, well-behaved ones, can be so rude and out of control. I am tired and I still have to get the garbage out tonight. But I won’t. Sailor has to be at school by 9 tomorrow a.m. and the boys both need baths as none of us can remember (though Mac believes it was Sunday) when they were last bathed. I need to be up early tomorrow. Earlier than 8:00! I think I need to invest in an alarm clock.
When I pick up Sailor from school on Thursday afternoon he tells me, “Andrew is a bog boy now.” I assume his little friend is out of diapers or has just turned three. “Is he three now?” I ask. Sailor answers seriously, “I don’t know if he is three now.” It must be the new underpants then. “So why is he a big boy?” I ask. “Because he is all done with his passy,” and then without missing a beat, “What’s a passy?”
We never used the terms "passy" for pacifier. In fact we never really used the pacifier at all. And for reasons unclear to me, I developed a whole new baby language exclusively for Mac, which I modified for Sailor. Pacifier, in my language, became sucker. After all that’s what you do with one, you suck it.
Mac stayed home from school today. I think he might be coming down with something. Which, in and of itself is not reason enuf to keep a child home from school. However, when said child is crying over insignificant things such as eating cookies before lunch (I said no) and drinking milk (I wanted him to) I notice something might be amiss. After lunch he is still whiney and tired and my dad comes up to watch him while I get Sailor from school. An hour later he is playing with Sailor and I make the mistake of suggesting that if he is well enuf to play he is well enuf to go to school. He agrees but then I realize it’s 1:30. By the time we would get there it would easily be 2:00. Not worth our time or effort. Another tantrum ensues, confirming my original plan to keep him home. He falls alseep and wakes after 3:30 with a low fever.
Meanwhile Sailor is gallivanting around the house in a new pair of sandals. Yes, sandals. In February. I saw them at one of the children’s stores last week and put them on hold while I waited for a coupon to arrive in the mail. 20% off one item did me well, and I got his summer shoes for under $16, albeit 4 months early. And although I was careful to buy a big enough size I doubt they will still fit in June. He is excited to have new shoes, nonetheless. He is a true shoe-a-holic. And he has happy feet. I will let him wear them this afternoon but then we have to put them away until summer. So he asks, “When I wake up it will be summer?” Oh how I wish! “One of these mornings,” I assure him.
Friday comes off like a day off because Mac went to sleep with a fever last night. A two-day week? Ok, I will take that. We hang low on Friday, run a few errands. I realize I am not feeling myself either. But I have a party to attend tonight. At the preschool. It’s the annual Parents’ Night. Or to be a bit more accurate, the annual “get dunk and party all night with the preschool teachers and parents you have never seen before even though your child has been in school for 6 months already” party. I hear it went on till 2 a.m. last year. I have always gone with another mom as my “date.” This year I am going with Jack’s mom. I dress up as if I have a real date, complete with extra eye make-up and a thong. So I can hang out in the preschool. It’s a fun night as always. There are wine bottles everywhere and the food spread just gets better and better every year. Grapes, three kinds of popcorn, cheese, something with spinach, mini pulled pork sandwiches, cookies, veggie trays. The place is packed. There are rules to follow, written by our little ones, which include “no pinching,” and “if you are hungry eat the food.” On the walls are drawings. I find Sailor’s. He has drawn three faces, which, at this stage, are merely two slightly round eyes above a smile. The caption is hilarious. “Sailor, Mommy and Mac going to Target.” You think we shop too much? It’s a fun party. Lots of cute dads. I am the only single parent in the school. But it is still fun to talk. I stay until my mother calls my cell phone at 11pm asking whether or not I am still at my preschool party. I give hugs and kisses, grab a few cookies for the boys and walk home.
In the morning when the boys say they are hungry I let them know there are cookies on the dining room table for them. It takes some searching but they find them amidst all the debris. They play and I sleep in. We spend the afternoon at Home Depot trying to find the right color paint for our living room. We have trouble with the elevator and press all the wrong buttons and an amused guy who is riding with us tells us we are really out of it. My stomach is bothering me so I have neglected to eat anything today. By the time we get home I am half starved and we stop at Cosi for an expensive bite. The boys scarf down turkey sandwiches and I have a cup of soup and bread. I feel more energetic when we head home. My sister and I are going to see Josh Groban in concert. If you are unfamiliar with Josh Groban all I will say is go buy his CDs. He will be 26 years old on Friday next and he has a big beautiful voice, and he’s quite a cutie.
His concert, however, fails to live up to my expectations. It is too loud. I don’t say that because I am getting old but because it is actually too loud. You know how when you crank your stereo to get the full effect of your favorite artist’s music? And then sometimes you go just one notch too far and the sound is tinny, distorted? Well that’s how the concert sounded, as if he needed to be turned down just a notch. And he was flat a few times. And we had to listen to some strange music for the opening act and then sit for another 25 minutes intermission. So the 8:00 concert actually began at 9:00. Oh, and did I mention that it is snowing/raining? There’s a winter storm warning tonight and the weather is truly ugly. It’s windy but, thank goodness, not terribly cold. So Josh is cute. At least he looks cute from the screens dropped down on either side of the stage. As far as being able to actually see Josh, well, from our $55 nose-bleed seats, anyone could be singing down there. Half the time I can’t even find him with all the band members and the orchestra. And the worst part is that I don’t recognize the music. I know, I know, I got his latest CD for Christmas, but I have spent most of my CD time listening to the Bee Gees, and almost no time listening to Josh. I expect to hear his older songs. He sings just two. Yet my sister and I spend a total of $70 on two t-shirts anyway.
I have to do some serious ice scraping to get our car out of the lot. It’s raining ice and I need protective eye wear to get my windows clear. Mascara is running down my face by the time we are ready to drive home. I stay up reading till 1:30. I can’t get over my utter disappointment.
On Sunday morning I show Mac and Sailor my concert tshirt. Mac is awed. “Is that Andy?” Sailor asks, referring to Andy Gibb. “No,” I tell him, “It’s Josh Groban.” “But Josh Groban is dead,” Mac says, “Remember? He died in a plane crash.” “That was John Denver,” I remind him. “Oh. Yeah. Right. Why do I always get those two confused?” he asks. I don’t know.
At breakfast Sailor asks me, “What controls me, you know, from the inside?” Is this kid only
3 ½? No. Actually he is not even 3 ½. “Your brain,” I answer, “Or G-d.” Or maybe both.
We spend more than an hour cleaning slush from the sidewalk and water from the next door neighbors’ backyard. This is part of my job with the garbage. We are soaked when we come inside. But not freezing this time. It’s actually rather pleasant outside.
Sailor is eating a bed time snack. “Mommy you are the best mommy I ever had.” My heart soars. I love when he says this. But for reasons unknown Mac pipes up from his room, “I would not assume anything.” What?! His explanation is lame. Something about how I’m not always the best mommy in the world because of when I am bad. Bad? “When you yell at us,” he explains. “You mean when I yell at you because you’ve been naughty?!”
“Yes,” he is backing down.
Sheesh!
Late in the evening the 79th annual Academy Awards are on television. Sailor is exhausted by 5:30 and while I have him in bed before 7:00 he refuses to go to sleep until he crawls, literally, into my bed. He is asleep by 8:00 p.m. Mac on the other hand is coughing, sniffing, mouth breathing, and grunting. I don’t think he is well yet. Though I don’t think the original illness was a cold, it sure is now. He brings us each a cookie and spreads crumbs all over my bed. He can’t seem to keep his hands off my laptop, and while he watches the Oscars with me he makes note of the fact that the Oscar looks like R2-D2. Of course.
As we watch the commercials Mac hears the tag line to one: “There’s an M&M in all of us.” “Is there really an M&M in me?” he wants to know. Do I explain this or do I just make it easy? Tonight I go with easy. “Haye you eaten any M&Ms lately?” I ask him.
“I have,” he says. I have? What 5-year-old talks like this? By the way, this week my 5-year-old became 5 ¾. He is so excited. Only three months until he turns 6. This is a whole quarter of a year away, I realize. But because he is my first child his birthday is actually my favorite holiday of the year. After all, his birthday is the day I became a mom.
Another week ahead. Lots to do. I have become the queen of avoidance and have come up with great home improvement projects in order to avoid things I should be doing but really don’t want to do, such as dealing with my lawyer and his opinions regarding my never-ending divorce.
The deep freeze we were suffering for, what was it two weeks, three? It’s over. But, as I told my favorite French mom this afternoon when she asked, yes, it can happen again. The temps can plunge and there could be another blizzard all the way through till sometime in April. Our weather here is that unpredictable. With the warming of the temperature – seriously folks, we have gone from low around zero to 45 degrees F! – comes the melting of the snow. And, much to the delight of my two little boys and little boys all over the city – PUDDLES! The preschoolers walked right out of school yesterday and straight into a puddle. None of them wore boots. Sailor has needed his pants changed on several occasions and more than once in a day due to the changes in weather. As has Mac. So, what I have learned here is that snow boots are not waterproof, but rain boots are. Snow boots only come up slightly above the ankles, maybe to mid-calf, but rain boots come up almost to the knees. Rain boots are not as warm as snow boots. But perhaps since they keep the feet actually DRY they are the better choice. The jury is still out and I am baffled at the incongruity of it all.
And speaking of rain boots, I might mention that Sailor’s are cows. Not cowboy, but cows. White with black cow splotches and a face down there covering his toes. He wore them yesterday when we went to get Mac from school. He was dressed, from the waste up, for winter: winter coat, hat, mittens dangling from clips. From the waste down he was pure spring: cotton blue pants (no, not jeans, actual blue pants, like khakis only faded out navy blue – an unfortunate fashion choice, to be certain) and the cow boots. And in his hands? A sand pail and shovel, fresh from the dollar store and meant for snow play. Except the snow is melting and revealing dirt dirt dirt. And lots and lots of dog poop. And garbage. Otherwise known to Mac as treasures. This afternoon he trailed a box of dental floss three yards behind him as we walked home. He found it, there in the melting snow. A treasure. To be added (after washing, he assures me) to his box of scraps and junk that he is now keeping in his room. Much to my dismay. Ok perhaps dismay is the wrong word. Let’s go with horror! He wants to emulate Anakin Skywalker, who built R2-D2 from scraps. G-d help me! I gave his room a deep cleanout the other night while he slept. I removed all the toys and returned them to the playroom, eliminated all the baby books and re-shelved the remaining books, took down the tattered Harry Potter poster (which he has yet to notice, but I stowed it in his closet just in case), and made the room functional again. And now he informs me that it’s ok that I forgot to vacuum because his room is always going to be dusty because it is his workshop. I need to help him find a better place than his room for all the garbage he is collecting!
Yesterday Sailor’s best pal from preschool invited us out to lunch after school. Ok, his mom invited us. It was fun. Sailor doesn’t get to do this big kid stuff much. It was a nice outing and I learned that a tofu sandwich is divine!
This morning Sailor fell and whacked a hole in his forehead. We were playing at this big indoor play room near home. He and I were building towers to knock down. He turned to go do I don’t know what and tripped over some mom’s big bag that should not have been left where it was. And he cut a hole in his forehead over his right eye. It looks deep. There was quite a bit of blood as there always is with a head wound. And he was rubbing his eyes for crying so blood was all over his face and hand. Looked macabre. He was scared afterwards, he said, but he couldn’t say of what. Just scared. He fell asleep in my arms as I chatted with another mom.
What I learned with all of this? Just because you are wearing a Curious George shirt does not mean you have to wear a matching Curious George band aid. Scooby Doo will do just fine!
The big question of the day from all the moms at the play place today (whose kids were significantly younger than my 2) was, “When does it get easier?” I couldn’t remember, so I said that it gets easier when the little one learns to talk, which I think is true.
It’s been a crazy week already and it’s just Wednesday. On Sunday I spent way too much money buying curtains for the living room in an attempt to make the room more livable. On Monday the kids and I had a rumbly day but we did a lot of fun stuff. Yesterday Mac had the daughter of the cleaning crew company over and I wanted to declare no more play dates til forever. Children, even the nice, smart, well-behaved ones, can be so rude and out of control. I am tired and I still have to get the garbage out tonight. But I won’t. Sailor has to be at school by 9 tomorrow a.m. and the boys both need baths as none of us can remember (though Mac believes it was Sunday) when they were last bathed. I need to be up early tomorrow. Earlier than 8:00! I think I need to invest in an alarm clock.
When I pick up Sailor from school on Thursday afternoon he tells me, “Andrew is a bog boy now.” I assume his little friend is out of diapers or has just turned three. “Is he three now?” I ask. Sailor answers seriously, “I don’t know if he is three now.” It must be the new underpants then. “So why is he a big boy?” I ask. “Because he is all done with his passy,” and then without missing a beat, “What’s a passy?”
We never used the terms "passy" for pacifier. In fact we never really used the pacifier at all. And for reasons unclear to me, I developed a whole new baby language exclusively for Mac, which I modified for Sailor. Pacifier, in my language, became sucker. After all that’s what you do with one, you suck it.
Mac stayed home from school today. I think he might be coming down with something. Which, in and of itself is not reason enuf to keep a child home from school. However, when said child is crying over insignificant things such as eating cookies before lunch (I said no) and drinking milk (I wanted him to) I notice something might be amiss. After lunch he is still whiney and tired and my dad comes up to watch him while I get Sailor from school. An hour later he is playing with Sailor and I make the mistake of suggesting that if he is well enuf to play he is well enuf to go to school. He agrees but then I realize it’s 1:30. By the time we would get there it would easily be 2:00. Not worth our time or effort. Another tantrum ensues, confirming my original plan to keep him home. He falls alseep and wakes after 3:30 with a low fever.
Meanwhile Sailor is gallivanting around the house in a new pair of sandals. Yes, sandals. In February. I saw them at one of the children’s stores last week and put them on hold while I waited for a coupon to arrive in the mail. 20% off one item did me well, and I got his summer shoes for under $16, albeit 4 months early. And although I was careful to buy a big enough size I doubt they will still fit in June. He is excited to have new shoes, nonetheless. He is a true shoe-a-holic. And he has happy feet. I will let him wear them this afternoon but then we have to put them away until summer. So he asks, “When I wake up it will be summer?” Oh how I wish! “One of these mornings,” I assure him.
Friday comes off like a day off because Mac went to sleep with a fever last night. A two-day week? Ok, I will take that. We hang low on Friday, run a few errands. I realize I am not feeling myself either. But I have a party to attend tonight. At the preschool. It’s the annual Parents’ Night. Or to be a bit more accurate, the annual “get dunk and party all night with the preschool teachers and parents you have never seen before even though your child has been in school for 6 months already” party. I hear it went on till 2 a.m. last year. I have always gone with another mom as my “date.” This year I am going with Jack’s mom. I dress up as if I have a real date, complete with extra eye make-up and a thong. So I can hang out in the preschool. It’s a fun night as always. There are wine bottles everywhere and the food spread just gets better and better every year. Grapes, three kinds of popcorn, cheese, something with spinach, mini pulled pork sandwiches, cookies, veggie trays. The place is packed. There are rules to follow, written by our little ones, which include “no pinching,” and “if you are hungry eat the food.” On the walls are drawings. I find Sailor’s. He has drawn three faces, which, at this stage, are merely two slightly round eyes above a smile. The caption is hilarious. “Sailor, Mommy and Mac going to Target.” You think we shop too much? It’s a fun party. Lots of cute dads. I am the only single parent in the school. But it is still fun to talk. I stay until my mother calls my cell phone at 11pm asking whether or not I am still at my preschool party. I give hugs and kisses, grab a few cookies for the boys and walk home.
In the morning when the boys say they are hungry I let them know there are cookies on the dining room table for them. It takes some searching but they find them amidst all the debris. They play and I sleep in. We spend the afternoon at Home Depot trying to find the right color paint for our living room. We have trouble with the elevator and press all the wrong buttons and an amused guy who is riding with us tells us we are really out of it. My stomach is bothering me so I have neglected to eat anything today. By the time we get home I am half starved and we stop at Cosi for an expensive bite. The boys scarf down turkey sandwiches and I have a cup of soup and bread. I feel more energetic when we head home. My sister and I are going to see Josh Groban in concert. If you are unfamiliar with Josh Groban all I will say is go buy his CDs. He will be 26 years old on Friday next and he has a big beautiful voice, and he’s quite a cutie.
His concert, however, fails to live up to my expectations. It is too loud. I don’t say that because I am getting old but because it is actually too loud. You know how when you crank your stereo to get the full effect of your favorite artist’s music? And then sometimes you go just one notch too far and the sound is tinny, distorted? Well that’s how the concert sounded, as if he needed to be turned down just a notch. And he was flat a few times. And we had to listen to some strange music for the opening act and then sit for another 25 minutes intermission. So the 8:00 concert actually began at 9:00. Oh, and did I mention that it is snowing/raining? There’s a winter storm warning tonight and the weather is truly ugly. It’s windy but, thank goodness, not terribly cold. So Josh is cute. At least he looks cute from the screens dropped down on either side of the stage. As far as being able to actually see Josh, well, from our $55 nose-bleed seats, anyone could be singing down there. Half the time I can’t even find him with all the band members and the orchestra. And the worst part is that I don’t recognize the music. I know, I know, I got his latest CD for Christmas, but I have spent most of my CD time listening to the Bee Gees, and almost no time listening to Josh. I expect to hear his older songs. He sings just two. Yet my sister and I spend a total of $70 on two t-shirts anyway.
I have to do some serious ice scraping to get our car out of the lot. It’s raining ice and I need protective eye wear to get my windows clear. Mascara is running down my face by the time we are ready to drive home. I stay up reading till 1:30. I can’t get over my utter disappointment.
On Sunday morning I show Mac and Sailor my concert tshirt. Mac is awed. “Is that Andy?” Sailor asks, referring to Andy Gibb. “No,” I tell him, “It’s Josh Groban.” “But Josh Groban is dead,” Mac says, “Remember? He died in a plane crash.” “That was John Denver,” I remind him. “Oh. Yeah. Right. Why do I always get those two confused?” he asks. I don’t know.
At breakfast Sailor asks me, “What controls me, you know, from the inside?” Is this kid only
3 ½? No. Actually he is not even 3 ½. “Your brain,” I answer, “Or G-d.” Or maybe both.
We spend more than an hour cleaning slush from the sidewalk and water from the next door neighbors’ backyard. This is part of my job with the garbage. We are soaked when we come inside. But not freezing this time. It’s actually rather pleasant outside.
Sailor is eating a bed time snack. “Mommy you are the best mommy I ever had.” My heart soars. I love when he says this. But for reasons unknown Mac pipes up from his room, “I would not assume anything.” What?! His explanation is lame. Something about how I’m not always the best mommy in the world because of when I am bad. Bad? “When you yell at us,” he explains. “You mean when I yell at you because you’ve been naughty?!”
“Yes,” he is backing down.
Sheesh!
Late in the evening the 79th annual Academy Awards are on television. Sailor is exhausted by 5:30 and while I have him in bed before 7:00 he refuses to go to sleep until he crawls, literally, into my bed. He is asleep by 8:00 p.m. Mac on the other hand is coughing, sniffing, mouth breathing, and grunting. I don’t think he is well yet. Though I don’t think the original illness was a cold, it sure is now. He brings us each a cookie and spreads crumbs all over my bed. He can’t seem to keep his hands off my laptop, and while he watches the Oscars with me he makes note of the fact that the Oscar looks like R2-D2. Of course.
As we watch the commercials Mac hears the tag line to one: “There’s an M&M in all of us.” “Is there really an M&M in me?” he wants to know. Do I explain this or do I just make it easy? Tonight I go with easy. “Haye you eaten any M&Ms lately?” I ask him.
“I have,” he says. I have? What 5-year-old talks like this? By the way, this week my 5-year-old became 5 ¾. He is so excited. Only three months until he turns 6. This is a whole quarter of a year away, I realize. But because he is my first child his birthday is actually my favorite holiday of the year. After all, his birthday is the day I became a mom.
Another week ahead. Lots to do. I have become the queen of avoidance and have come up with great home improvement projects in order to avoid things I should be doing but really don’t want to do, such as dealing with my lawyer and his opinions regarding my never-ending divorce.
Week 21 – Happy Valentine’s Day? Already?
It’s Wednesday, evident by the disaster that trails from my front door through to the kitchen in back. There’s everything…. Wet boots, stray mittens and bright colored pompomed hats, glue sticks, school auction donations, legal papers, art class rosters, dirty laundry, mass quantities of clean laundry, birthday gifts to be wrapped…. I care. Greatly. But I am too tired to tackle any aspect of it.
Today is Valentine’s Day. Already. Quite frankly I am shocked. It seems as if it were only maybe 3 weeks ago when we’d just cleaned up after Christmas. The Valentine’s Day merchandise was already on display by New Year’s Eve. And I was dismayed that I was being forced to think about making more purchases. And then the day is upon us.
It isn’t even 7:00 a.m. when my two little Valentines wake me up. I tell them it isn’t time. Sailor leaves the bedroom and comes back to report, “No presents. Cupid didn’t come.” “He came,” I assure my little one. “But,” I tell him, "the presents are invisible because it’s too early. Go back to sleep.” This works. For about 15 minutes or so. We are all up by 7:18. Sailor is thrilled to find gifts and cards on the kitchen table.
Each boy opens a gift. Sailor has received the belt he asked for a couple weeks ago when we shopped at the Baby Gap. A soft, plush thing that velcros around his waste, it has a heart on the front for Captain Heartbreaker. Originally $16.50, I tracked down this little item last week for $6.99. Good thing, too, because last night as I am reminding the boys that they have to get to bed so Cupid can come, Sailor, standing on a dining room chair, says quite seriously, “He is bring my belt!” And then, “I am very good at sleeping.”
Mac opens a new Geronimo Stilton book. A Valentine one. Mac can read most of his card from me. He makes me so proud.
I cut waffles into hearts and decorate their plates with fresh strawberries. I pour their milk into red cups. No red food coloring for us this year.
Despite this early yet promising start we do not have the best day. It’s not their fault tho, it’s mine. I am suddenly suffering from acute PMS, which will resolve itself before bedtime.
We go ice skating with Sailor’s best preschool buddy and his mom. Except Sailor is scared and doesn’t want to skate without me. Mac won’t skate without the “walker.” I let Sailor stay aside so I can skate but then he cries and yells. When we get off the ice I realize they are not much fun to skate with. I am not happy. Sailor asks if they are going to their room. (No.) Mac asks if we are going home. (No, but we are leaving.)
We make a quick grocery store run. Or what should have been a quick grocery store run. It’s not bad until the cereal asile where I try to decipher label ingredients and Mac holds up box after box of cereal asking over and over again, “Can we buy this one, Mom? Can we buy this one?” I try hard to block out the sound but I can’t and finally have to acquiesce and look at the label of his box.
When we check out I am double charged for my expensive box of three bags of organic microwave popcorn. Mac, bundled in snowpants, etc. has to go to the bathroom. It’s one of those mornings, for sure. We hustle and drive off to kindergarten while the boys lunch in the car – heart shaped pb&j sandwiches. We are right on time. Sailor is asleep in the car. The mother of the triplets watches Sailor while I run in to the school to drop off items for the upcoming auction. I have been recruited to the committee because I think I am going to want to attend the festive evening but I am quite certain the price of the ticket will equal something around the amount I usually have allotted for a month’s worth of preschool. My research led me to the head of the committee and my offer to solicit donations on my own. I am excited to have solicited more than 20 donors, some of whom have donated more than one fab item. I just wish I had the funds to bid on every item I solicited. Everything is great.
I drive Sailor home and my father opens the door and my mother takes my sleeping Valentine from me. I set to the task of shoveling snow outside our house and the neighbors’ apartment building. I have little time to accomplish my task so I work quickly, which makes the job that much more exhausting. A man walks by and I comment, “There has to be an easier way to do this.” “Call someone to do it,” he suggests. “I am the someone they called,” I tell him. He tells me I am doing a great job and thanks me for the cleared path and then tells me to come by later and get a coffee. It is only then that I realize he is one of my neighborhood Baristas. I finish my job, run in and check email and phone messages, put away the three bags of groceries that I have carried in all at once (which sounds like no big deal until you learn that there are two gallons of milk and two bottles of juice), make a quick phone call, and head off to Starbucks. Indeed I have been offered a free coffee. I let the Baristas choose my bev and specify only decaf, iced and whole (as in milk). I am treated to a venti decaf iced mocha. I tell the Baristas they are my Valentines.
I arrive at the kindergarten exactly on time. I am winded. And exhausted. We, a group of about 10 moms, are there to run the children’s Valentine’s Day party. It soon becomes clear that we have 40 minutes to take our groups through a whirlwind of activities that includes decorating a popsicle stick frame (bearing photos of each student -- some cute and some weird) with candy conversation hearts, filling in words of a poem and gluing the poem to a piece of construction paper, eating a very-bad-for-them snack, gluing hearts to a paper plate to make a wreath, searching for candy conversation hearts in the cafeteria upstairs and then separating them into groups, counting and graphing them, and “mailing” each of their 27 Valentines to one another’s little brown shopping bags, which they must have decorated yesterday. Exhausted just reading about it? It as draining on not only the moms but on the children, who had just come in from gym class. My group accomplishes everything except the end of the graphing exercise. Of course, my group is smaller than the others because one member is absent. I have Mac, of course, and one of the slowest children in the class, whom I will not name, but whom I wish had an “on” switch, and one of the Olivias, whose mother is also in our group, and who eventually goes off and just works at her own pace (which is slower than that of the two boys) with her mom. No one has his or her coat on when the bell rings at 3:15. I am not even sure what time it is when I get Mac from the classroom’s carpet and leave. We are the last ones to go because I have helped several children get their coats put together. I get on each child’s case about her or his lack of hat and scarf, snow pants and warm mittens. It is truly appalling given the frigid temps we have been having these past few weeks and the foot of snow that fell yesterday and this morning. One of these cherubs is the new Australian girl who just started kindergarten yesterday. She doesn’t seem to understand or perhaps hear me well because following everything I say she says, “Pardon?” with her cute Australian accent. It becomes funny eventually. And when she tells me her thin-as-nobody’s-business little mittens are wet because she was playing in the “snor,” I am having a hard time concealing my amusement.
Because we are running late it seems appropriate that Mac has to be at FTK 15 minutes earlier for class this week than usual. And Mac is wearing boots and snow pants, making it harder than usual to walk. Making it harder still is the fact that despite my warnings not to walk in the deep snow so he doesn’t get wet, Mac insists on walking thru the deep snow. Our walk takes forever. I don’t know if we are late or not.
While Mac is at FTK, I return a DVD, recycle a bag of batteries, purchase more non-toxic lip products from The Body Shop, look for boots for the boys (theirs get wet quickly and they don’t dry quickly so a second pair would be beneficial) and find that there are none (tho I am not surprised – it’s like looking for a shovel), drop off film, sit in the bookstore and check phone messages…. I make it back to FTK just in time and Mac is ravenous and begging for food and not paying attention to the weekly video that we are all forced to watch.
By the time we leave I am way too tired to walk home. And Mac is still trudging thru the snow so I am freezing. He tells me I am walking too fast and he can’t catch up! Sailor is in his underwear when we get home. No one seems to know why. Mac and I come upstairs to get ready for dinner. I am taking the boys out for a Valentine’s Day dinner. But when we arrive at the restaurant I find the menu has a new and overwhelming format so I have to just guess at what I want. Mac chooses fried shrimp for himself and Sailor. And a shake, of which he finishes not only his 1/3 but mine as well. Sailor whines that he is starving and wants to eat food right now. But when the food arrives he eats almost nothing. I have cut parts of my sandwich for each boy and Sailor wants to sit on my lap. I want to eat. I am served my glass of wine and balk at the tiny juice glass it comes in. The manager comes by to listen to my complaints about the menu and the wine in a juice glass. He comps the $6 glass of wine. Mac eats up and then tries to go to sleep in his chair. It takes longer to pay the bill than it did to eat.
We open Mac’s Valentines over desert when we get home. We enjoy the last of our homemade heart cookies, fresh strawberries and whip cream, which I make for the boys. Mac amazes me with his generosity. He thinks nothing of sharing the candies with Sailor and offers me several pieces as well. Sailor sorts thru things and there is no possessiveness from Mac. He doesn’t even mind that I am opening most of his Valentines for him. They suck down sugar. Sailor gets whipped cream on his face and I completely gross him out by acting silly and licking it off his face. “MOM!” he screams, “you are ‘SGUSTING!” He is mortified by my behavior.
I am really impressed with all the home made Valentines, and with everyone's nice penmanship. I know what a task this was for Mac to complete and so I truly appreciate the effort of each and every one of our little ones.
There are two Valentine's that have no signature: One is a store bought Barbie one in an envelope, the other is a handmade one with an impressive drawing of a person (I assume Mac) on the inside and a big heart with a swirly ribbon on the outside. I actually have these narrowed down to three little girls. I send out an email of investigation.
I make the mistake of sending the boys to the bathroom to brush their teeth instead of escorting and supervising them. The phone rings three time and the doorbell rings. I ask the boys how long it takes to brush their teeth and Mac calls back that they are not brushing their teeth. The bathroom is nearly flooded, there are bath toys everywhere, mail and wet towels on the floor… and both boys’ pajamas are wet. I take them to their rooms, change their pajamas and bring them back to the bathroom and brush their teeth for them, which I should have done in the first place. I kiss my little Valentines good night and retreat to the bathroom to ready myself for bed. My body aches from the physical effort of this day. I contemplate a bath but decide against it in the interest of time. As I wash my face Mac shows up. I decided a couple of weeks ago that it’s unfair of me to get angry when Mac comes out of bed on some nights. He has only me to come to and he needs me and tough love at that point no longer feels right. But I am glad that I am not in the bath. I welcome him to the bathroom. He is just here to poop tho, not to complain that he can’t sleep. As he sits down to poop he tells me, “You should buy a swivel sweeper.” He goes on to give me an entire infomercial about this item I need to purchase because it would allow me to sweep my floors without having to move any chairs. It comes with a battery pack, he tells me. And a small removable brush. “Where did you see this?” I ask him. “On tv last night.” We didn’t watch tv last night. “Last night?” I ask him. “Yes, when I came into your bed. Before you turned it off.”
My big Valentine (I asked him this morning if he’d be my Valentine and he said, “Of course.”) comes into my room a few minutes after I tuck him in. He is lonely. He is also exhausted so I ask him to return to his room and tell him I will come get him in five minutes if he’s still awake. I know he will not be.
I am nearly ready to sleep. But I am starving. My butt is numb from sitting in bed. My body is sore all over. I am looking in the fridge for something quick and I hear, “GrandDad! GrandDad! GrandDad!” Sailor is calling and it’s not even midnight yet. I go to him. Comfort him. Return to the fridge. When I return to my room there is a baby in powder blue footie pajamas sleeping in my bed.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Today is Valentine’s Day. Already. Quite frankly I am shocked. It seems as if it were only maybe 3 weeks ago when we’d just cleaned up after Christmas. The Valentine’s Day merchandise was already on display by New Year’s Eve. And I was dismayed that I was being forced to think about making more purchases. And then the day is upon us.
It isn’t even 7:00 a.m. when my two little Valentines wake me up. I tell them it isn’t time. Sailor leaves the bedroom and comes back to report, “No presents. Cupid didn’t come.” “He came,” I assure my little one. “But,” I tell him, "the presents are invisible because it’s too early. Go back to sleep.” This works. For about 15 minutes or so. We are all up by 7:18. Sailor is thrilled to find gifts and cards on the kitchen table.
Each boy opens a gift. Sailor has received the belt he asked for a couple weeks ago when we shopped at the Baby Gap. A soft, plush thing that velcros around his waste, it has a heart on the front for Captain Heartbreaker. Originally $16.50, I tracked down this little item last week for $6.99. Good thing, too, because last night as I am reminding the boys that they have to get to bed so Cupid can come, Sailor, standing on a dining room chair, says quite seriously, “He is bring my belt!” And then, “I am very good at sleeping.”
Mac opens a new Geronimo Stilton book. A Valentine one. Mac can read most of his card from me. He makes me so proud.
I cut waffles into hearts and decorate their plates with fresh strawberries. I pour their milk into red cups. No red food coloring for us this year.
Despite this early yet promising start we do not have the best day. It’s not their fault tho, it’s mine. I am suddenly suffering from acute PMS, which will resolve itself before bedtime.
We go ice skating with Sailor’s best preschool buddy and his mom. Except Sailor is scared and doesn’t want to skate without me. Mac won’t skate without the “walker.” I let Sailor stay aside so I can skate but then he cries and yells. When we get off the ice I realize they are not much fun to skate with. I am not happy. Sailor asks if they are going to their room. (No.) Mac asks if we are going home. (No, but we are leaving.)
We make a quick grocery store run. Or what should have been a quick grocery store run. It’s not bad until the cereal asile where I try to decipher label ingredients and Mac holds up box after box of cereal asking over and over again, “Can we buy this one, Mom? Can we buy this one?” I try hard to block out the sound but I can’t and finally have to acquiesce and look at the label of his box.
When we check out I am double charged for my expensive box of three bags of organic microwave popcorn. Mac, bundled in snowpants, etc. has to go to the bathroom. It’s one of those mornings, for sure. We hustle and drive off to kindergarten while the boys lunch in the car – heart shaped pb&j sandwiches. We are right on time. Sailor is asleep in the car. The mother of the triplets watches Sailor while I run in to the school to drop off items for the upcoming auction. I have been recruited to the committee because I think I am going to want to attend the festive evening but I am quite certain the price of the ticket will equal something around the amount I usually have allotted for a month’s worth of preschool. My research led me to the head of the committee and my offer to solicit donations on my own. I am excited to have solicited more than 20 donors, some of whom have donated more than one fab item. I just wish I had the funds to bid on every item I solicited. Everything is great.
I drive Sailor home and my father opens the door and my mother takes my sleeping Valentine from me. I set to the task of shoveling snow outside our house and the neighbors’ apartment building. I have little time to accomplish my task so I work quickly, which makes the job that much more exhausting. A man walks by and I comment, “There has to be an easier way to do this.” “Call someone to do it,” he suggests. “I am the someone they called,” I tell him. He tells me I am doing a great job and thanks me for the cleared path and then tells me to come by later and get a coffee. It is only then that I realize he is one of my neighborhood Baristas. I finish my job, run in and check email and phone messages, put away the three bags of groceries that I have carried in all at once (which sounds like no big deal until you learn that there are two gallons of milk and two bottles of juice), make a quick phone call, and head off to Starbucks. Indeed I have been offered a free coffee. I let the Baristas choose my bev and specify only decaf, iced and whole (as in milk). I am treated to a venti decaf iced mocha. I tell the Baristas they are my Valentines.
I arrive at the kindergarten exactly on time. I am winded. And exhausted. We, a group of about 10 moms, are there to run the children’s Valentine’s Day party. It soon becomes clear that we have 40 minutes to take our groups through a whirlwind of activities that includes decorating a popsicle stick frame (bearing photos of each student -- some cute and some weird) with candy conversation hearts, filling in words of a poem and gluing the poem to a piece of construction paper, eating a very-bad-for-them snack, gluing hearts to a paper plate to make a wreath, searching for candy conversation hearts in the cafeteria upstairs and then separating them into groups, counting and graphing them, and “mailing” each of their 27 Valentines to one another’s little brown shopping bags, which they must have decorated yesterday. Exhausted just reading about it? It as draining on not only the moms but on the children, who had just come in from gym class. My group accomplishes everything except the end of the graphing exercise. Of course, my group is smaller than the others because one member is absent. I have Mac, of course, and one of the slowest children in the class, whom I will not name, but whom I wish had an “on” switch, and one of the Olivias, whose mother is also in our group, and who eventually goes off and just works at her own pace (which is slower than that of the two boys) with her mom. No one has his or her coat on when the bell rings at 3:15. I am not even sure what time it is when I get Mac from the classroom’s carpet and leave. We are the last ones to go because I have helped several children get their coats put together. I get on each child’s case about her or his lack of hat and scarf, snow pants and warm mittens. It is truly appalling given the frigid temps we have been having these past few weeks and the foot of snow that fell yesterday and this morning. One of these cherubs is the new Australian girl who just started kindergarten yesterday. She doesn’t seem to understand or perhaps hear me well because following everything I say she says, “Pardon?” with her cute Australian accent. It becomes funny eventually. And when she tells me her thin-as-nobody’s-business little mittens are wet because she was playing in the “snor,” I am having a hard time concealing my amusement.
Because we are running late it seems appropriate that Mac has to be at FTK 15 minutes earlier for class this week than usual. And Mac is wearing boots and snow pants, making it harder than usual to walk. Making it harder still is the fact that despite my warnings not to walk in the deep snow so he doesn’t get wet, Mac insists on walking thru the deep snow. Our walk takes forever. I don’t know if we are late or not.
While Mac is at FTK, I return a DVD, recycle a bag of batteries, purchase more non-toxic lip products from The Body Shop, look for boots for the boys (theirs get wet quickly and they don’t dry quickly so a second pair would be beneficial) and find that there are none (tho I am not surprised – it’s like looking for a shovel), drop off film, sit in the bookstore and check phone messages…. I make it back to FTK just in time and Mac is ravenous and begging for food and not paying attention to the weekly video that we are all forced to watch.
By the time we leave I am way too tired to walk home. And Mac is still trudging thru the snow so I am freezing. He tells me I am walking too fast and he can’t catch up! Sailor is in his underwear when we get home. No one seems to know why. Mac and I come upstairs to get ready for dinner. I am taking the boys out for a Valentine’s Day dinner. But when we arrive at the restaurant I find the menu has a new and overwhelming format so I have to just guess at what I want. Mac chooses fried shrimp for himself and Sailor. And a shake, of which he finishes not only his 1/3 but mine as well. Sailor whines that he is starving and wants to eat food right now. But when the food arrives he eats almost nothing. I have cut parts of my sandwich for each boy and Sailor wants to sit on my lap. I want to eat. I am served my glass of wine and balk at the tiny juice glass it comes in. The manager comes by to listen to my complaints about the menu and the wine in a juice glass. He comps the $6 glass of wine. Mac eats up and then tries to go to sleep in his chair. It takes longer to pay the bill than it did to eat.
We open Mac’s Valentines over desert when we get home. We enjoy the last of our homemade heart cookies, fresh strawberries and whip cream, which I make for the boys. Mac amazes me with his generosity. He thinks nothing of sharing the candies with Sailor and offers me several pieces as well. Sailor sorts thru things and there is no possessiveness from Mac. He doesn’t even mind that I am opening most of his Valentines for him. They suck down sugar. Sailor gets whipped cream on his face and I completely gross him out by acting silly and licking it off his face. “MOM!” he screams, “you are ‘SGUSTING!” He is mortified by my behavior.
I am really impressed with all the home made Valentines, and with everyone's nice penmanship. I know what a task this was for Mac to complete and so I truly appreciate the effort of each and every one of our little ones.
There are two Valentine's that have no signature: One is a store bought Barbie one in an envelope, the other is a handmade one with an impressive drawing of a person (I assume Mac) on the inside and a big heart with a swirly ribbon on the outside. I actually have these narrowed down to three little girls. I send out an email of investigation.
I make the mistake of sending the boys to the bathroom to brush their teeth instead of escorting and supervising them. The phone rings three time and the doorbell rings. I ask the boys how long it takes to brush their teeth and Mac calls back that they are not brushing their teeth. The bathroom is nearly flooded, there are bath toys everywhere, mail and wet towels on the floor… and both boys’ pajamas are wet. I take them to their rooms, change their pajamas and bring them back to the bathroom and brush their teeth for them, which I should have done in the first place. I kiss my little Valentines good night and retreat to the bathroom to ready myself for bed. My body aches from the physical effort of this day. I contemplate a bath but decide against it in the interest of time. As I wash my face Mac shows up. I decided a couple of weeks ago that it’s unfair of me to get angry when Mac comes out of bed on some nights. He has only me to come to and he needs me and tough love at that point no longer feels right. But I am glad that I am not in the bath. I welcome him to the bathroom. He is just here to poop tho, not to complain that he can’t sleep. As he sits down to poop he tells me, “You should buy a swivel sweeper.” He goes on to give me an entire infomercial about this item I need to purchase because it would allow me to sweep my floors without having to move any chairs. It comes with a battery pack, he tells me. And a small removable brush. “Where did you see this?” I ask him. “On tv last night.” We didn’t watch tv last night. “Last night?” I ask him. “Yes, when I came into your bed. Before you turned it off.”
My big Valentine (I asked him this morning if he’d be my Valentine and he said, “Of course.”) comes into my room a few minutes after I tuck him in. He is lonely. He is also exhausted so I ask him to return to his room and tell him I will come get him in five minutes if he’s still awake. I know he will not be.
I am nearly ready to sleep. But I am starving. My butt is numb from sitting in bed. My body is sore all over. I am looking in the fridge for something quick and I hear, “GrandDad! GrandDad! GrandDad!” Sailor is calling and it’s not even midnight yet. I go to him. Comfort him. Return to the fridge. When I return to my room there is a baby in powder blue footie pajamas sleeping in my bed.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Week 20 February – The Coldest Weather in 11 Years
It is cold outside. Not just cold like, wear a scarf, but cold like, stay home at all costs. But Mac has his talking doctor appointment this morning and I figure by the time we are all up she is probably heading into the office already. If she can get there we should be able to as well. Except it is COLD outside, and our car is parked uncharacteristically around the corner. Despite the extra glove I have on under my heavy duty mitten, my fingers are in pain by the time both boys are strapped safely into their car seats. I contemplate getting out of the car and taking the boys back to the house.
We park in the lot and I am just amazed that the stairwell to get down and out is COLDER than it is outside. Luckily we are parked on 2, not 4, today. It is COLD. We head into the building and Mac has his appointment. Sailor is happy to watch Teletubbies on tv while sitting in my lap and eating apple slices and snowman noses (a.k.a. baby carrots). I tell him I will snuggle him forever. Even when he is an old man. I try to picture myself, an old lady, holding a little old man Sailor. Which is when it dawns on me that when he is 70 years old, which I don’t consider ancient, I will be 105. I plan to live that long, but who knows if I actually will or not. So I start thinking about how old I would be when my own father would be 105, an age I sincerely doubt he wants to see for himself. I would be only 65. The math starts to hurt and I make a frantic attempt to refocus on the Teletubbies.
Mac emerges in what seems like little more than ½ an hour and I have a brief chat with the therapist and then we head to the next building to have our parking pass validated. On the way down the elevator the boys get into a tussle and throw the switch to turn the elevator off and then Sailor gets tossed to the wall. I am reprimanding when two passengers climb onto the now broken elevator.
We climb back up the ice box of a stairwell and look for our car. On the way out we see there is no one to take our ticket and the gate is up. So much for the time we wasted validating. I assume the attendant was too cold to remain in the little booth.
I don’t want to come out again. I want to go home and stay home. Which means Mac gets a day off. We drive to Trader Joe’s and park in the indoor lot (I love their indoor lot!). Each boy gets his own cart and fills it with all sorts of fun goodies. Cereal, “guller bars,” shortbread cookies, whole wheat pretzels, yogurt, milk, risotto, and for Mama, a bottle of Chianti. I don’t know how long this cold snap is set to last but I don’t want to go out again until it is over.
In the car we discuss Sailor’s need for a nap when we get home. “I don’t want a nap!” he protests once, twice, three times. And then he is asleep. I put the groceries in the front stairwell and then find a parking space. There are plenty but I want one right out front. Sailor is way too heavy to carry in full cold weather attire. But carry him I do. He is HEAVY. Did I mention that? I am puffing when I get to the top of the 2nd flight. I try not to drop him onto the sofa.
Mac and I spend the afternoon doing his workbook, writing a very nice letter S, and having a French lesson. Nothing missed by ditching school today. Except he is missed by the school, who has left a message. I call back immediately thanking them profusely for calling me to check on his whereabouts. The secretary thinks I am a little bit crazy as I repeat, “Thank you thank you thank you for calling! That is so awesome of you!” She tells me she has to be sure he wasn’t dropped off and then didn’t make it in the building. I am grateful and I also now understand that it is not an optional courtesy to call when Mac will be absent, but rather it is my responsibility.
We play a finding shapes and colors game in the play room, and Mac thinks he is supposed to be putting away the items he finds. I almost slip and tell him otherwise, but catch myself. The play room is cleaned up by the time we are done playing. I let them watch an educational video and Sailor comes to tell me, “Stop and Shop, Mama.” He has heard a rhyme.
I make a very healthful dinner of tofu, broccoli, brown rice and your choice of sauce. Mac eats 2 ½ bowls full. There is not much else to do with our day. We head to bed early. Sailor brings his box of cereal. “This is just mine?” he wants to know. We eat it as if it’s popcorn. Then I turn out the lights. They are restless. We didn’t do enough today.
I don’t want to go out tomorrow. Taking both boys to school means going out three times. No way! I do not want to do that again.
Sailor has told me he likes it when I say he’s cute. He is so cute. And now he says, “In order to me sleep, will you give me a kiss?”
I hate thinking that someday they will be old men. I want us all to stay as we are now. They are so cute and little. But they are growing so much all of a sudden. Sailor, who finally finished wearing size 2T in November is now outgrowing 3T. And Mac is just getting so tall. I am not tall enough to have tall children.
Me, I still detest this masculine, messy haircut I got on my birthday. And I feel as if I have gained 5 pounds suddenly and I feel as if I look like crap. Winter? Or just my brand new age?
Meanwhile Mac is hot from my laptop and Sailor’s butt hurts. Mommy duties call!
Tuesday morning Sailor wakes up and says, “I smell pee!” Alas, Mac has peed in my bed. But I am not angry. It has literally been months since the last time this happened and so I figure it’s really no big deal. And aside from the fact that I am lying in it, I am happy that he has missed both the down comforter and the top comforter. He continues to sleep in the pee while Sailor and I get up. First thing he tells me when he wakes up is, “Mommy, I peed in your bed.” “Ok,” I tell him, “now that you are up I can strip the sheets.” Nothing more needs to be said. It was an accident. I pop him in the tub and he has an uneventful bath. I, on the other hand, have not yet had a chance to change out of my slightly damp and no doubt smelly pajamas.
It seems cold out still. So I call the preschool and leave a message that Sailor will be absent. He is thrilled. Mac begs to stay home again and I tell him we’ll see. The boys play all over the house all morning. Eventually Sailor is headed for his bath. Which is also uneventful. And that is when I decide that despite the obvious waste of water and time, I will try to bathe my children separately during the week and let them have one long bath together on the weekend. This might just be another thing that saves my bath time sanity. No more water all over the floor. No more toys ending up in the trash because kids won’t keep them out of their moths. No more fighting over who gets to have his hair washed second. That said, I also tell Mac that when he turns 6, he will shower like his friends do. Of course I do not tell him that I did not give up baths for the occasional shower until I was nine.
Eventually I get my own shower in. I try to wear this ridiculously bad hair cut curly. It looks like a permed bob. You know, the ones the high school girls were wearing in the early to mid-1980s. I’m only 20-some years late!
Out the window I think I see snow. “Mac, is it snowing?” he instinctively turns toward the t.v., which is showing the weather channel, for his answer. It is indeed snowing and continues to do so for the rest of the day. I am glad, because the outfit I have chosen to wear today does not match any of my winter shoes. I can stuff the pants into my boots!
I step outside on the front steps and discover that it’s not as cold as one might have expected. Which means Mac is going to school.
We trudge along. I am carrying some heavy-ish bags and my boots are ill-fitting and no one has shoveled and the sun is in our eyes. Still, it feels good to be out, to be walking. At school I ask Miss H if I needed to have written a note excusing Mac’s absence from school on Monday. She says I do. Inside her classroom she hands me a 2”x2” piece of paper and asks, “Is this big enough?” I write a request that Mac's absence be excused because he was “under the weather.” Then I see that all the children are bagging up their snowy, wet outdoor clothes. “Lice.” Miss H mouths the word at me. Fantastic. Glad I just had Mac’s hair cut short! I offer to send in my children’s book about head lice to read to the class but she says she hasn’t told them and that when she looked at their scalps yesterday she told them she was making sure their hair was healthy. Ok. Nonetheless, I slip the book into Mac’s backpack on Wednesday.
The snow continues to fall and the temperature is holding at something reasonable. Snow pants, long johns, mittens…. The kids are probably too bundled to play. Sailor wants to wear just his “best” without a coat over it. I tell him it has to be warmer to wear just a vest. “Maybe in the spring!” he suggests.
Mac makes a terrific snow angel and Sailor does too, except his did not scrape away all the snow down to the sidewalk the way Mac’s did, so he gets mad, does not believe me that his is good, and stomps all over it. We sweep and shovel and Mac proves to be quite a strong, not to mention willing, worker. We stay out til my toes hurt.
During dinner, which neither of my children likes, my sister discovers for herself that Sailor can now say the word “favorite” correctly. “No,” she tells him, in deference to his old way of saying it, “it’s ‘fraze-it.’” Be he won’t give in and go back to his old ways. Coyly he also tells us, “I can say ‘cereal.’” NO! I love the way he’s always said “shay-o.”
Dinner is almost over and Mac is in time out in his room because he left the table to go play, causing Sailor to not want to finish his own dinner, and then giving me attitude when I asked him to please sit at the table and keep us company until we are all finished. I cannot imagine what kind of teen this boy is going to be. And this is when their father shows up for his weekly 2-hour visit. He chats with my sister and me as both boys use him as a human jungle gym. The noise level is truly outstanding.
We leave them playing StarWars in the playroom and head back to the salon to get my hideous hair-do rectified. 90 minutes later I look like a pixie on crack. My face is tired and my make-up re-do is worn off. My hair hasn’t been this short since I was in my 20s, and there is a reason for that. The back of my neck stings from the electric razor (yes, that short!). Yet it does look reasonably better and the color looks right again. And I am grateful. I count 5 months until June, the summer, when I hope my hair is at least grazing my shoulders again. The stylist tells me I look younger and I think now she is the one on crack. I look, at last, like a mommy who has given up trying to look cute or sexy or hip. I look like a mommy who just wants to wash her hair and be done with it.
So far 39 is just not looking very good.
Then, as I hand her the tip (a buck more than I might have ordinarily tipped, due to the fact that this is a free re-do, per the salon’s policy), she tells me in her dense accent, “I think you have to pay.”
“No,” I remind her, “this was a re-do. When I called for the appointment the girl on the phone specifically told me I would not have to pay.”
“No,” she smiles at me, “you have to pay. Because I give you a whole different hair cut.”
“Because I hated the first one.”
“You only get free when you have a bad haircut.”
“Right,” I am calm and feeling very stupid, “it was bad haircut.”
My sister steps in here. “Who is to judge whether a hair cut is bad or not?”
“Well,” the stylist continues, “it’s bad if it is uneven.” Believe it or not she is still smiling.
I have been going to this girl on and off since a week after Sailor was born. Suddenly I don’t like her so much anymore.
“And,” she continues, “When you left the other day you say you like it.”
“No, actually I didn’t,” I remind her. Because I didn’t like it then. What I had said was, “I’m not going to be able to make it look like this tomorrow.” In other words, great, thanks a lot for making my hair look like crap.
I hand over my credit card and tell her I don’t want to argue about it. But she goes on anyway. She says something about having not wanting to tell me before she cut my hair that I would have to pay. It would have been nice to have been given the choice!
“Fine,” I tell her, “just charge my card.” So I will have a record of this, which I can possibly cancel later. She hands back the tip, “You take this, your mother she tip me very well last week.”
“No,” I say, “you did the work, you keep the tip.” How much more humiliating does this have to get for me?
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, my sister has quietly put the corporate phone number, which is listed beneath the sign that describes the salon’s guarantee, into her cell phone.
I am in hair hell.
And the worst part about this (aside from the fact that I now have SHORT hair) is that my mother was trying to buy me a nice birthday gift by treating me to the haircut last week.
Back at home Sailor is asleep and Mac is not and their father is standing in the dining room in anticipation. He has his coat on already. He listens to me bitch for a moment, while holding someone on hold on his cell phone. He hands me an envelope with, what turns out to be, a very small check in it. He tells me he is not sure he’ll be able to hang out with us on Friday when he stops by with more moo-lah, and I tell him we have a party to go to on Friday anyway.
My sis and I chit chat about important stuff while a hungry Mac hauls cereal, milk, bowls and spoons out to the dining table and proceeds to fix us all a little late-night snack. Eventually he gains enough of our attention to tell us more about his time in heaven, before he was born.
“I lived in a house with a lot of other children. I didn’t have a mom or dad. I was an orphan. There was one lady who took care of us all.”
“Was Sailor your brother?” my sister asks.
“No.” All of his answers and dialog are quite matter-of-fact. He tells us about meeting his friend Ethan.
“Did you get to pick me to be your mom?” I ask.
“No. G-d picked you out. He picked the right choice. He picked the right family. But actually I wasn’t expecting Michael,” he says, referring to his father.
He goes on. “The Nana and GrandDad were perfect, and you [indicating his favorite Aunt M with a nod of his head]."
“What about Sailor?” my sister asks.
“G-d did it again, picked the right family for my brother.”
He reminds us (because I ask this question a lot) that he bought his gorgeous red hair at the hair store.
There was some compliment in there for me being a great mom and all around I am pretty floored.
My sister is somewhat freaked out. But I am comforted in a strange way.
My sister leaves. I put the wonder child to bed. I watch something I can now no longer remember on tv and fall asleep to the noise. My dreams are about a cruise or a trip. Maybe to England. And there is unrest in the world, making our trip very unsafe.
Wednesday morning as I am washing up after a batch of pancakes the boys help me make (accidentally omitting the 3 teaspoons of baking powder) I realize that my anxiety level is peaking. Probably due to last night’s convo with Mac and my ensuing dreams. As soon as I acknowledge this within myself, however, I feel a calm come over me. I wash the rest of the dishes and set about baking mini blueberry muffins for Sailor to bring to preschool tomorrow. He doesn’t want help. Neither does Mac. They both go back to their rooms, leaving the flat pancakes mostly un-eaten. Sailor comes out wearing underwear and a blanket. I can’t see if he is wearing undies or not. He shows me that he is and I see that he has pretty much outgrown his 2T/3T undies. They look like a pair of Speedos. No problem, tho, as the boy owns somewhere upwards of 40 pair of little “unnies” as he used to call them. He is getting big. He is gaining weight, as evidenced by the fact that he can no longer snap his own pants. Just the other day he said to me, “Mommy, you remember [when] I was 2?”
“Yes, I do.” Summer doesn’t seem all that long ago, despite the fact that it’s 80 degrees colder outside than an average summer day.
“I wish I was still two…” he says. Three is so bad?
The boys play in various stages of dress all morning and Sailor is really happy when I tell him that no, he does not have to take a bath today.
My new hair looks relatively decent, but damn short, when I am done with my shower. Actually it looks slightly sexy when it is wet. Too bad it’s not summer.
Around 11:30 I notice that the boys are still running back and forth thru the house, from the kitchen to the living room grabbing bites of pancakes and returning to play. And yet it’s time for lunch. In the kitchen I find a plate of syrup. Expensive, pure, only-Mommy-is-aloud-to-pour it, maple syrup. Apparently Sailor has taken it upon himself to be a big boy and pour his own syrup. Unlike the gelatinous muck of fake syrup, which is predominantly killer high fructose corn syrup, pure maple syrup is neither thick nor excessively tenacious and it runs right out of the bottle like the liquid that it is. And so Sailor has a plate full of the stuff. And it’s on the table.
“Sailor!” I am not unkind, or even particularly angry. “Did you pour syrup?” I call from the kitchen.
“Coming!”
He runs in and we have a little talk about letting Mommy be the syrup pourer. In his defense, of course, I did leave the syrup, uncapped, on the table. Gladly the bottle was nearly empty. Now it’s even more nearly empty.
And there is water all over the floor. This, I realize, is what Mac was trying to tell me about an hour ago. That there was water spilling from a bowl set too high in the pile of hand-wash-only dishes in the sink while the dishwasher was running. I didn’t realize there was that much water. I send the boys off to get dressed, describing to Mac what clothes I would like for him to wear, rather than getting them out for him. I get out the mop and clean up the mess.
Considering the vast amount of sugar my children have been ingesting over the course of the morning, I opt for vegetables, “scramma” eggs, the left-over tofu dish from the other night, and some left-over macker cheese for lunch.
My parents have both been to the dentist this morning. My father, at 79, has had a wisdom tooth pulled, and my mom has had a filling. They want to have Sailor, or as they call him, “the baby,” come down while I take Mac to school.
Both boys are giddy and silly and not paying attention. When this sugar high wears off it won’t be pretty. Mac walks in the snow, getting the bottom of his jeans wet. He is reprimanded. I even threaten that I will take him right back home if his pants are wet when we arrive at school. He splashes in every puddle he finds all the way to school. “At what age do they start to listen to their parents?” I ask one of the stay-at-home dads, whom we have caught up to, but not before I have the misfortune of watching him walk across the street leaving his small boy to trail dangerously behind him.
“Never?” the father tells me, but it is more of a question that an answer.
I run errands for the upcoming school auction on my walk home. I am soliciting donations so as to earn myself a ticket to the ball. Because, although I do not know the price of the event, I know it will be beyond my means. And I am fairly certain I may want to go. Though the more I think about it the more I realize I may in fact NOT want to go, as I will have to go stag, and I may even be required to don some sort of fancy clothes that currently reside somewhere other than my own closet. I am having fun soliciting the donations, though, and I am pretty impressed by those I have gotten so far, if I do say so myself. A free party at a bar, two free kids’ parties at a new local coffee shop, $100 in gift certs form our fave restaurant, a dentist’s services, ad space in a trendy women’s mag…. I am doing well pulling in from my “connections.”
This event is put on by the “Friends of….” the school organization. I am a member of the PTA. For which I have yet to do anything. Except have an email fight over the fact that two of my books went missing after the book fair two weeks ago. I think perhaps it’s time to switch organizations. Or maybe I will wait til the end of the year. Then next fall I can switch. Perhaps, just for the fun or it, I will switch every year! At least if I am not on the PTA I won’t have to go to the morning meeting every month.
Which reminds me that I think I am supposed to be cutting out hearts for the kindergarten class’s Valentine’s Day party next week.
Sailor is not sleeping when I get back but he wants to stay with my parents anyway. Why not? It’s 24-hour t.v. fest down there and he loves it. He is as addicted to t.v. as Mac was at this age.
I go back to get Mac from school. He says he was well-behaved at school today. We walk to FTK. His snack is apples and milk. “I had apples and apple juice for snack at school today,” he says, as he tries to pry the lid off the apple container. “You had both? Whose brilliant snack idea was that?” He tells me. I take the apples away. No need for him to suffer diarrhea in the middle of his FTK class. The alternative, because I have forgotten the pretzels in a bag on the dishwasher at home, is a granola bar. More sugar, Baby!
While he is making the most if his sugar buzz and disrupting his class for 2 hours, I run in and out of stores trying to get the pain in my frozen toes to subside. I rent the new Cinderella III DVD, which just came out yesterday, because, truth be told, I want to see it. I spend over $30 on a safe lipstick and a pot of body butter at the Body Shop. Justifying this by the fact that Mac’s skin feels like sandpaper and mine is covered in scrapes, bruises and rash from all the scratching of dry skin. So what’s $17 for body lotion if it saves our skin? It’s the only skin we have! At Borders I find a Valentine’s Day Geronimo Stilton book for Mac (Cupid will leave this on the kitchen table on Valentine’s Day morning) as well as some new work books. My blood sugar bottoms out and I head for eatzies. I pick up a chicken and mango quesadilla and some veggies for dinner after my mom calls inviting us to eat with them tonight, an invitation for which I am grateful. $60 later I head back to get Mac.
I feel like I have hit the lowest low when we, and all my shopping bags, board the bus to go home. I feel like a poor person.
Mac chatters on loudly about his upcoming bus stop. When we are three stops away he mentions that we are close. When we are one stop away I instruct him to reach behind him and pull the buzzer cord. When I don’t hear the “ding” or “buzz” or whatever sound I’m supposed to hear, I pull myself. I hear a “ding.” We get up as the driver coasts thru the stop at our street.
“Hey, what happened to ---?” I name our street.
“Oh, did you want to get off there?”
“Yes!”
“You have to ring the buzzer.”
“We did!” And did you not hear my kid gabbing away for the last five minutes about the street we would be getting off at? I want to say.
“I didn’t hear it, and I didn’t see it come up on the sign.” He points to the overhead thingy that is lighting up with street names and other vital bus-riding information.
“Well I thought I heard it,” I say, and then, “I don’t ride the bus often.”
He stops the bus halfway between the stop we missed and the next stop. “Push the door,” he tells me, “and be careful when you get out.” I am grateful that he has let us off here, against the rules. Nonetheless, I am too irritated to say, “thank you,” which I usually say when departing a bus, on those rare occasions I ride one.
So much conflict in my little world.
Sailor is passed out sitting up in my dad’s big leather chair. He is adorable. He’s been asleep for about 30 minutes. Great timing. It’s 6:15. Mac and I go upstairs for dry shoes and for Mac to have some quiet time.
Dinner is ready in a few minutes so we head back down. Mom has a glass of wine poured for me. Everything on our plate is beige-ish yellow but tastes great. The spinach soufflé I picked up earlier is gross. We toss it. Sailor wakes up mid-meal and when he can’t get comfy enough to fall back asleep in my lap he allows me to feed him. He eats everything and more.
The boys and my father play a brief concert on their “kin-tars” as Sailor calls guitars. They do some ABC’s and I ask my dad to slow down his Twinkle-Twinkle-Lttle-Star-on-Speed so Sailor can keep up. No one will play any Bee Gees for me. My dad doesn’t understand why Mac can’t put his fingers in the exact same spots on the strings to play chords. Mac remembers, with only minor prompting, all the parts of the guitar, which I believe my father taught him before he was 3.
We are ready to go upstairs. Mac asks for ice cream. I say no. My mother gets out the ice cream, the ice cream scoop, 4 bowls (she is on a diet) and four spoons. I read the label. 21 grams of sugar. I say no again. My mother prompts Mac to ask for a little bit. I repeat no. “But it’s all good stuff. Just milk, and cream…” my mom tries to insist. “And sugar. 21 grams.” Mac bursts into fake tears. My father comes back in looking perplexed. My mother comforts Mac. He leaves the room and buries his face on the couch.
“Why can’t they have a little bit?” my mom asks.
“Because,” I begin, as if a mother should have to ever explain herself, and to her own mother no less, “the ice cream has 21 grams of sugar [did we miss this part?] and Mac and Sailor had a week’s worth of sugar in the maple syrup event this morning. And,” I continue, “Mac was not well-behaved at FTK this afternoon, and therefore should not get a treat.”
Perhaps I should have just said, “Because I am the mother and I said no.”
My dad reads a superhero comic to Mac (thank G-d he likes to read those things. I cannot read them aloud!), while I read this weird little book from the dollar store to Sailor that has a button to press to hear a satanic child say, “I LOVE Christmas cookies!” strangely, I find the book more amusing than annoying.
When my father leaves, Sailor asks me to stay in his room and keep him company. I bring my laptop in. As he is about to drift off Mac appears in the doorway of the tiny room. “I’m lonely,” he whines. “Go back to your room. Wait for me and I will be there as soon as Sailor falls asleep.” Which should be any moment.
“I’ll just stay here,” Mac says, plopping himself down on the hallway floor.
“Lie down there,” I suggest.
He puts one pair of my boots on his feet and another pair on his hands. He is exhausted and it is after 8:30. “Stop playing,” I whisper loudly.
“I’m not playing.”
I invite him to lie down on Sailor’s bedroom floor. He digs through the basket of blankets. It’s a production. And then he can’t lie still. Sailor watches him. Mac has suddenly developed an irritating case of sniffles. I ask him to go blow his nose. He ignores me. I ask him to return to his room. Again he ignores me. The phone rings. I get up to answer it. 3 minutes later Sailor is standing beside me. “I’m getting lonely in there.”
I return. Sailor is again about to drift off when, inexplicably, Mac decides it is imminently important to remove the clothing from Sailor’s Cabbage Patch doll, Danny. Danny’s jacket is made of some weird, noisy, sticky, vinyl-y stuff. R-i-i-i-i-i-p. R-i-i-i-i-p. What the heck!? “Mac!” I send him back to his room. Sailor appears to be asleep but is not when I get up to go check Mac a minute later. I don’t want my big boy going to sleep crying. Even though he won’t remember in the morning. “Please, I am a good boy you take me to your bed?” Sailor sleepily asks me. “Yes,” I tell him, knowing I don’t really mean it. So then, “And if you are asleep, you can come in when you wake up,” which he will do around midnight. “I love you, Mommy.”
He is truly precious.
Mac is not crying. I sit on his bed. “I don’t think you like me anymore,” he says.
Oh boy. It’s been that kind of day and I totally saw this coming.
I do my best to reassure him. I like you…. I love you…. Until I realize what I need to say. “I’m sorry Mac. I didn’t mean to make you feel as if I don’t like you.” Of course then I do go on to explain that I am not happy with some of his behavior today, but that he is still one of my top two favorite kids. I think he feels better. He is asleep momentarily. Tomorrow is our morning together. We have a bunch of errands to run and I hope we will have some time to sit and have coffee or lunch. I can’t have my kid thinking I don’t like him. Parenting is not easy. Decisions are hard to make. But this kid knows without a doubt that he is well-loved. But just in case he doesn’t, I will continue to tell him at every opportunity, every day, for the rest of his life.
I email my parents and sister with a list of days I need my beautiful boys cared for so that I can work, socialize or both. I include, while I am at it, the dates of Mac’s bday dinner and big bday party, Sailor’s preschool graduation ceremony in which he will participate (Sailor? Yeah, right! He’ll spend the 30 minutes crying in my arms), and a question about the actual date of Yom Kippur, taking us all the way to the end of September. Today is February 7th. I would say I am organized. My mother will say, “You are thinking too much,” but then will acquiesce that she is impressed by my organizational skills. My father will say, “Sure, Babe, if we are available.” And my sister will tell me that I am absolutely nuts to be planning Mac’s birthday yet, because it is still 3 months and two weeks away. On second thought, after 5 years of experience, she probably knows by now how much time and effort I put into the yearly celebration of the birth of my 1st born and will likely know also not to say a thing about it this year.
Thursday.
Sailor is allergic to poop. So he says. After a good session of gagging. Following Mac’s bout with minor diarrhea after school today. He smells Mac’s toilet deposit, gags, and informs me, “I am allergic to poop.” He has even started gagging over his own poop.
Mac has a note in his backpack this morning informing me that the 100th day of school is coming up next week. Mac is to count out 100 small pieces of “something fun” to bring to school. Examples given are pennies, paper clips and Cheerios. Fun? In my house fun is M&Ms. Which I also think will irritate the teacher because Mac and his classmates will want to eat them. I haul out the 54 oz bag of the little chocolate buggers.
We park in the lot and I am just amazed that the stairwell to get down and out is COLDER than it is outside. Luckily we are parked on 2, not 4, today. It is COLD. We head into the building and Mac has his appointment. Sailor is happy to watch Teletubbies on tv while sitting in my lap and eating apple slices and snowman noses (a.k.a. baby carrots). I tell him I will snuggle him forever. Even when he is an old man. I try to picture myself, an old lady, holding a little old man Sailor. Which is when it dawns on me that when he is 70 years old, which I don’t consider ancient, I will be 105. I plan to live that long, but who knows if I actually will or not. So I start thinking about how old I would be when my own father would be 105, an age I sincerely doubt he wants to see for himself. I would be only 65. The math starts to hurt and I make a frantic attempt to refocus on the Teletubbies.
Mac emerges in what seems like little more than ½ an hour and I have a brief chat with the therapist and then we head to the next building to have our parking pass validated. On the way down the elevator the boys get into a tussle and throw the switch to turn the elevator off and then Sailor gets tossed to the wall. I am reprimanding when two passengers climb onto the now broken elevator.
We climb back up the ice box of a stairwell and look for our car. On the way out we see there is no one to take our ticket and the gate is up. So much for the time we wasted validating. I assume the attendant was too cold to remain in the little booth.
I don’t want to come out again. I want to go home and stay home. Which means Mac gets a day off. We drive to Trader Joe’s and park in the indoor lot (I love their indoor lot!). Each boy gets his own cart and fills it with all sorts of fun goodies. Cereal, “guller bars,” shortbread cookies, whole wheat pretzels, yogurt, milk, risotto, and for Mama, a bottle of Chianti. I don’t know how long this cold snap is set to last but I don’t want to go out again until it is over.
In the car we discuss Sailor’s need for a nap when we get home. “I don’t want a nap!” he protests once, twice, three times. And then he is asleep. I put the groceries in the front stairwell and then find a parking space. There are plenty but I want one right out front. Sailor is way too heavy to carry in full cold weather attire. But carry him I do. He is HEAVY. Did I mention that? I am puffing when I get to the top of the 2nd flight. I try not to drop him onto the sofa.
Mac and I spend the afternoon doing his workbook, writing a very nice letter S, and having a French lesson. Nothing missed by ditching school today. Except he is missed by the school, who has left a message. I call back immediately thanking them profusely for calling me to check on his whereabouts. The secretary thinks I am a little bit crazy as I repeat, “Thank you thank you thank you for calling! That is so awesome of you!” She tells me she has to be sure he wasn’t dropped off and then didn’t make it in the building. I am grateful and I also now understand that it is not an optional courtesy to call when Mac will be absent, but rather it is my responsibility.
We play a finding shapes and colors game in the play room, and Mac thinks he is supposed to be putting away the items he finds. I almost slip and tell him otherwise, but catch myself. The play room is cleaned up by the time we are done playing. I let them watch an educational video and Sailor comes to tell me, “Stop and Shop, Mama.” He has heard a rhyme.
I make a very healthful dinner of tofu, broccoli, brown rice and your choice of sauce. Mac eats 2 ½ bowls full. There is not much else to do with our day. We head to bed early. Sailor brings his box of cereal. “This is just mine?” he wants to know. We eat it as if it’s popcorn. Then I turn out the lights. They are restless. We didn’t do enough today.
I don’t want to go out tomorrow. Taking both boys to school means going out three times. No way! I do not want to do that again.
Sailor has told me he likes it when I say he’s cute. He is so cute. And now he says, “In order to me sleep, will you give me a kiss?”
I hate thinking that someday they will be old men. I want us all to stay as we are now. They are so cute and little. But they are growing so much all of a sudden. Sailor, who finally finished wearing size 2T in November is now outgrowing 3T. And Mac is just getting so tall. I am not tall enough to have tall children.
Me, I still detest this masculine, messy haircut I got on my birthday. And I feel as if I have gained 5 pounds suddenly and I feel as if I look like crap. Winter? Or just my brand new age?
Meanwhile Mac is hot from my laptop and Sailor’s butt hurts. Mommy duties call!
Tuesday morning Sailor wakes up and says, “I smell pee!” Alas, Mac has peed in my bed. But I am not angry. It has literally been months since the last time this happened and so I figure it’s really no big deal. And aside from the fact that I am lying in it, I am happy that he has missed both the down comforter and the top comforter. He continues to sleep in the pee while Sailor and I get up. First thing he tells me when he wakes up is, “Mommy, I peed in your bed.” “Ok,” I tell him, “now that you are up I can strip the sheets.” Nothing more needs to be said. It was an accident. I pop him in the tub and he has an uneventful bath. I, on the other hand, have not yet had a chance to change out of my slightly damp and no doubt smelly pajamas.
It seems cold out still. So I call the preschool and leave a message that Sailor will be absent. He is thrilled. Mac begs to stay home again and I tell him we’ll see. The boys play all over the house all morning. Eventually Sailor is headed for his bath. Which is also uneventful. And that is when I decide that despite the obvious waste of water and time, I will try to bathe my children separately during the week and let them have one long bath together on the weekend. This might just be another thing that saves my bath time sanity. No more water all over the floor. No more toys ending up in the trash because kids won’t keep them out of their moths. No more fighting over who gets to have his hair washed second. That said, I also tell Mac that when he turns 6, he will shower like his friends do. Of course I do not tell him that I did not give up baths for the occasional shower until I was nine.
Eventually I get my own shower in. I try to wear this ridiculously bad hair cut curly. It looks like a permed bob. You know, the ones the high school girls were wearing in the early to mid-1980s. I’m only 20-some years late!
Out the window I think I see snow. “Mac, is it snowing?” he instinctively turns toward the t.v., which is showing the weather channel, for his answer. It is indeed snowing and continues to do so for the rest of the day. I am glad, because the outfit I have chosen to wear today does not match any of my winter shoes. I can stuff the pants into my boots!
I step outside on the front steps and discover that it’s not as cold as one might have expected. Which means Mac is going to school.
We trudge along. I am carrying some heavy-ish bags and my boots are ill-fitting and no one has shoveled and the sun is in our eyes. Still, it feels good to be out, to be walking. At school I ask Miss H if I needed to have written a note excusing Mac’s absence from school on Monday. She says I do. Inside her classroom she hands me a 2”x2” piece of paper and asks, “Is this big enough?” I write a request that Mac's absence be excused because he was “under the weather.” Then I see that all the children are bagging up their snowy, wet outdoor clothes. “Lice.” Miss H mouths the word at me. Fantastic. Glad I just had Mac’s hair cut short! I offer to send in my children’s book about head lice to read to the class but she says she hasn’t told them and that when she looked at their scalps yesterday she told them she was making sure their hair was healthy. Ok. Nonetheless, I slip the book into Mac’s backpack on Wednesday.
The snow continues to fall and the temperature is holding at something reasonable. Snow pants, long johns, mittens…. The kids are probably too bundled to play. Sailor wants to wear just his “best” without a coat over it. I tell him it has to be warmer to wear just a vest. “Maybe in the spring!” he suggests.
Mac makes a terrific snow angel and Sailor does too, except his did not scrape away all the snow down to the sidewalk the way Mac’s did, so he gets mad, does not believe me that his is good, and stomps all over it. We sweep and shovel and Mac proves to be quite a strong, not to mention willing, worker. We stay out til my toes hurt.
During dinner, which neither of my children likes, my sister discovers for herself that Sailor can now say the word “favorite” correctly. “No,” she tells him, in deference to his old way of saying it, “it’s ‘fraze-it.’” Be he won’t give in and go back to his old ways. Coyly he also tells us, “I can say ‘cereal.’” NO! I love the way he’s always said “shay-o.”
Dinner is almost over and Mac is in time out in his room because he left the table to go play, causing Sailor to not want to finish his own dinner, and then giving me attitude when I asked him to please sit at the table and keep us company until we are all finished. I cannot imagine what kind of teen this boy is going to be. And this is when their father shows up for his weekly 2-hour visit. He chats with my sister and me as both boys use him as a human jungle gym. The noise level is truly outstanding.
We leave them playing StarWars in the playroom and head back to the salon to get my hideous hair-do rectified. 90 minutes later I look like a pixie on crack. My face is tired and my make-up re-do is worn off. My hair hasn’t been this short since I was in my 20s, and there is a reason for that. The back of my neck stings from the electric razor (yes, that short!). Yet it does look reasonably better and the color looks right again. And I am grateful. I count 5 months until June, the summer, when I hope my hair is at least grazing my shoulders again. The stylist tells me I look younger and I think now she is the one on crack. I look, at last, like a mommy who has given up trying to look cute or sexy or hip. I look like a mommy who just wants to wash her hair and be done with it.
So far 39 is just not looking very good.
Then, as I hand her the tip (a buck more than I might have ordinarily tipped, due to the fact that this is a free re-do, per the salon’s policy), she tells me in her dense accent, “I think you have to pay.”
“No,” I remind her, “this was a re-do. When I called for the appointment the girl on the phone specifically told me I would not have to pay.”
“No,” she smiles at me, “you have to pay. Because I give you a whole different hair cut.”
“Because I hated the first one.”
“You only get free when you have a bad haircut.”
“Right,” I am calm and feeling very stupid, “it was bad haircut.”
My sister steps in here. “Who is to judge whether a hair cut is bad or not?”
“Well,” the stylist continues, “it’s bad if it is uneven.” Believe it or not she is still smiling.
I have been going to this girl on and off since a week after Sailor was born. Suddenly I don’t like her so much anymore.
“And,” she continues, “When you left the other day you say you like it.”
“No, actually I didn’t,” I remind her. Because I didn’t like it then. What I had said was, “I’m not going to be able to make it look like this tomorrow.” In other words, great, thanks a lot for making my hair look like crap.
I hand over my credit card and tell her I don’t want to argue about it. But she goes on anyway. She says something about having not wanting to tell me before she cut my hair that I would have to pay. It would have been nice to have been given the choice!
“Fine,” I tell her, “just charge my card.” So I will have a record of this, which I can possibly cancel later. She hands back the tip, “You take this, your mother she tip me very well last week.”
“No,” I say, “you did the work, you keep the tip.” How much more humiliating does this have to get for me?
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, my sister has quietly put the corporate phone number, which is listed beneath the sign that describes the salon’s guarantee, into her cell phone.
I am in hair hell.
And the worst part about this (aside from the fact that I now have SHORT hair) is that my mother was trying to buy me a nice birthday gift by treating me to the haircut last week.
Back at home Sailor is asleep and Mac is not and their father is standing in the dining room in anticipation. He has his coat on already. He listens to me bitch for a moment, while holding someone on hold on his cell phone. He hands me an envelope with, what turns out to be, a very small check in it. He tells me he is not sure he’ll be able to hang out with us on Friday when he stops by with more moo-lah, and I tell him we have a party to go to on Friday anyway.
My sis and I chit chat about important stuff while a hungry Mac hauls cereal, milk, bowls and spoons out to the dining table and proceeds to fix us all a little late-night snack. Eventually he gains enough of our attention to tell us more about his time in heaven, before he was born.
“I lived in a house with a lot of other children. I didn’t have a mom or dad. I was an orphan. There was one lady who took care of us all.”
“Was Sailor your brother?” my sister asks.
“No.” All of his answers and dialog are quite matter-of-fact. He tells us about meeting his friend Ethan.
“Did you get to pick me to be your mom?” I ask.
“No. G-d picked you out. He picked the right choice. He picked the right family. But actually I wasn’t expecting Michael,” he says, referring to his father.
He goes on. “The Nana and GrandDad were perfect, and you [indicating his favorite Aunt M with a nod of his head]."
“What about Sailor?” my sister asks.
“G-d did it again, picked the right family for my brother.”
He reminds us (because I ask this question a lot) that he bought his gorgeous red hair at the hair store.
There was some compliment in there for me being a great mom and all around I am pretty floored.
My sister is somewhat freaked out. But I am comforted in a strange way.
My sister leaves. I put the wonder child to bed. I watch something I can now no longer remember on tv and fall asleep to the noise. My dreams are about a cruise or a trip. Maybe to England. And there is unrest in the world, making our trip very unsafe.
Wednesday morning as I am washing up after a batch of pancakes the boys help me make (accidentally omitting the 3 teaspoons of baking powder) I realize that my anxiety level is peaking. Probably due to last night’s convo with Mac and my ensuing dreams. As soon as I acknowledge this within myself, however, I feel a calm come over me. I wash the rest of the dishes and set about baking mini blueberry muffins for Sailor to bring to preschool tomorrow. He doesn’t want help. Neither does Mac. They both go back to their rooms, leaving the flat pancakes mostly un-eaten. Sailor comes out wearing underwear and a blanket. I can’t see if he is wearing undies or not. He shows me that he is and I see that he has pretty much outgrown his 2T/3T undies. They look like a pair of Speedos. No problem, tho, as the boy owns somewhere upwards of 40 pair of little “unnies” as he used to call them. He is getting big. He is gaining weight, as evidenced by the fact that he can no longer snap his own pants. Just the other day he said to me, “Mommy, you remember [when] I was 2?”
“Yes, I do.” Summer doesn’t seem all that long ago, despite the fact that it’s 80 degrees colder outside than an average summer day.
“I wish I was still two…” he says. Three is so bad?
The boys play in various stages of dress all morning and Sailor is really happy when I tell him that no, he does not have to take a bath today.
My new hair looks relatively decent, but damn short, when I am done with my shower. Actually it looks slightly sexy when it is wet. Too bad it’s not summer.
Around 11:30 I notice that the boys are still running back and forth thru the house, from the kitchen to the living room grabbing bites of pancakes and returning to play. And yet it’s time for lunch. In the kitchen I find a plate of syrup. Expensive, pure, only-Mommy-is-aloud-to-pour it, maple syrup. Apparently Sailor has taken it upon himself to be a big boy and pour his own syrup. Unlike the gelatinous muck of fake syrup, which is predominantly killer high fructose corn syrup, pure maple syrup is neither thick nor excessively tenacious and it runs right out of the bottle like the liquid that it is. And so Sailor has a plate full of the stuff. And it’s on the table.
“Sailor!” I am not unkind, or even particularly angry. “Did you pour syrup?” I call from the kitchen.
“Coming!”
He runs in and we have a little talk about letting Mommy be the syrup pourer. In his defense, of course, I did leave the syrup, uncapped, on the table. Gladly the bottle was nearly empty. Now it’s even more nearly empty.
And there is water all over the floor. This, I realize, is what Mac was trying to tell me about an hour ago. That there was water spilling from a bowl set too high in the pile of hand-wash-only dishes in the sink while the dishwasher was running. I didn’t realize there was that much water. I send the boys off to get dressed, describing to Mac what clothes I would like for him to wear, rather than getting them out for him. I get out the mop and clean up the mess.
Considering the vast amount of sugar my children have been ingesting over the course of the morning, I opt for vegetables, “scramma” eggs, the left-over tofu dish from the other night, and some left-over macker cheese for lunch.
My parents have both been to the dentist this morning. My father, at 79, has had a wisdom tooth pulled, and my mom has had a filling. They want to have Sailor, or as they call him, “the baby,” come down while I take Mac to school.
Both boys are giddy and silly and not paying attention. When this sugar high wears off it won’t be pretty. Mac walks in the snow, getting the bottom of his jeans wet. He is reprimanded. I even threaten that I will take him right back home if his pants are wet when we arrive at school. He splashes in every puddle he finds all the way to school. “At what age do they start to listen to their parents?” I ask one of the stay-at-home dads, whom we have caught up to, but not before I have the misfortune of watching him walk across the street leaving his small boy to trail dangerously behind him.
“Never?” the father tells me, but it is more of a question that an answer.
I run errands for the upcoming school auction on my walk home. I am soliciting donations so as to earn myself a ticket to the ball. Because, although I do not know the price of the event, I know it will be beyond my means. And I am fairly certain I may want to go. Though the more I think about it the more I realize I may in fact NOT want to go, as I will have to go stag, and I may even be required to don some sort of fancy clothes that currently reside somewhere other than my own closet. I am having fun soliciting the donations, though, and I am pretty impressed by those I have gotten so far, if I do say so myself. A free party at a bar, two free kids’ parties at a new local coffee shop, $100 in gift certs form our fave restaurant, a dentist’s services, ad space in a trendy women’s mag…. I am doing well pulling in from my “connections.”
This event is put on by the “Friends of….” the school organization. I am a member of the PTA. For which I have yet to do anything. Except have an email fight over the fact that two of my books went missing after the book fair two weeks ago. I think perhaps it’s time to switch organizations. Or maybe I will wait til the end of the year. Then next fall I can switch. Perhaps, just for the fun or it, I will switch every year! At least if I am not on the PTA I won’t have to go to the morning meeting every month.
Which reminds me that I think I am supposed to be cutting out hearts for the kindergarten class’s Valentine’s Day party next week.
Sailor is not sleeping when I get back but he wants to stay with my parents anyway. Why not? It’s 24-hour t.v. fest down there and he loves it. He is as addicted to t.v. as Mac was at this age.
I go back to get Mac from school. He says he was well-behaved at school today. We walk to FTK. His snack is apples and milk. “I had apples and apple juice for snack at school today,” he says, as he tries to pry the lid off the apple container. “You had both? Whose brilliant snack idea was that?” He tells me. I take the apples away. No need for him to suffer diarrhea in the middle of his FTK class. The alternative, because I have forgotten the pretzels in a bag on the dishwasher at home, is a granola bar. More sugar, Baby!
While he is making the most if his sugar buzz and disrupting his class for 2 hours, I run in and out of stores trying to get the pain in my frozen toes to subside. I rent the new Cinderella III DVD, which just came out yesterday, because, truth be told, I want to see it. I spend over $30 on a safe lipstick and a pot of body butter at the Body Shop. Justifying this by the fact that Mac’s skin feels like sandpaper and mine is covered in scrapes, bruises and rash from all the scratching of dry skin. So what’s $17 for body lotion if it saves our skin? It’s the only skin we have! At Borders I find a Valentine’s Day Geronimo Stilton book for Mac (Cupid will leave this on the kitchen table on Valentine’s Day morning) as well as some new work books. My blood sugar bottoms out and I head for eatzies. I pick up a chicken and mango quesadilla and some veggies for dinner after my mom calls inviting us to eat with them tonight, an invitation for which I am grateful. $60 later I head back to get Mac.
I feel like I have hit the lowest low when we, and all my shopping bags, board the bus to go home. I feel like a poor person.
Mac chatters on loudly about his upcoming bus stop. When we are three stops away he mentions that we are close. When we are one stop away I instruct him to reach behind him and pull the buzzer cord. When I don’t hear the “ding” or “buzz” or whatever sound I’m supposed to hear, I pull myself. I hear a “ding.” We get up as the driver coasts thru the stop at our street.
“Hey, what happened to ---?” I name our street.
“Oh, did you want to get off there?”
“Yes!”
“You have to ring the buzzer.”
“We did!” And did you not hear my kid gabbing away for the last five minutes about the street we would be getting off at? I want to say.
“I didn’t hear it, and I didn’t see it come up on the sign.” He points to the overhead thingy that is lighting up with street names and other vital bus-riding information.
“Well I thought I heard it,” I say, and then, “I don’t ride the bus often.”
He stops the bus halfway between the stop we missed and the next stop. “Push the door,” he tells me, “and be careful when you get out.” I am grateful that he has let us off here, against the rules. Nonetheless, I am too irritated to say, “thank you,” which I usually say when departing a bus, on those rare occasions I ride one.
So much conflict in my little world.
Sailor is passed out sitting up in my dad’s big leather chair. He is adorable. He’s been asleep for about 30 minutes. Great timing. It’s 6:15. Mac and I go upstairs for dry shoes and for Mac to have some quiet time.
Dinner is ready in a few minutes so we head back down. Mom has a glass of wine poured for me. Everything on our plate is beige-ish yellow but tastes great. The spinach soufflé I picked up earlier is gross. We toss it. Sailor wakes up mid-meal and when he can’t get comfy enough to fall back asleep in my lap he allows me to feed him. He eats everything and more.
The boys and my father play a brief concert on their “kin-tars” as Sailor calls guitars. They do some ABC’s and I ask my dad to slow down his Twinkle-Twinkle-Lttle-Star-on-Speed so Sailor can keep up. No one will play any Bee Gees for me. My dad doesn’t understand why Mac can’t put his fingers in the exact same spots on the strings to play chords. Mac remembers, with only minor prompting, all the parts of the guitar, which I believe my father taught him before he was 3.
We are ready to go upstairs. Mac asks for ice cream. I say no. My mother gets out the ice cream, the ice cream scoop, 4 bowls (she is on a diet) and four spoons. I read the label. 21 grams of sugar. I say no again. My mother prompts Mac to ask for a little bit. I repeat no. “But it’s all good stuff. Just milk, and cream…” my mom tries to insist. “And sugar. 21 grams.” Mac bursts into fake tears. My father comes back in looking perplexed. My mother comforts Mac. He leaves the room and buries his face on the couch.
“Why can’t they have a little bit?” my mom asks.
“Because,” I begin, as if a mother should have to ever explain herself, and to her own mother no less, “the ice cream has 21 grams of sugar [did we miss this part?] and Mac and Sailor had a week’s worth of sugar in the maple syrup event this morning. And,” I continue, “Mac was not well-behaved at FTK this afternoon, and therefore should not get a treat.”
Perhaps I should have just said, “Because I am the mother and I said no.”
My dad reads a superhero comic to Mac (thank G-d he likes to read those things. I cannot read them aloud!), while I read this weird little book from the dollar store to Sailor that has a button to press to hear a satanic child say, “I LOVE Christmas cookies!” strangely, I find the book more amusing than annoying.
When my father leaves, Sailor asks me to stay in his room and keep him company. I bring my laptop in. As he is about to drift off Mac appears in the doorway of the tiny room. “I’m lonely,” he whines. “Go back to your room. Wait for me and I will be there as soon as Sailor falls asleep.” Which should be any moment.
“I’ll just stay here,” Mac says, plopping himself down on the hallway floor.
“Lie down there,” I suggest.
He puts one pair of my boots on his feet and another pair on his hands. He is exhausted and it is after 8:30. “Stop playing,” I whisper loudly.
“I’m not playing.”
I invite him to lie down on Sailor’s bedroom floor. He digs through the basket of blankets. It’s a production. And then he can’t lie still. Sailor watches him. Mac has suddenly developed an irritating case of sniffles. I ask him to go blow his nose. He ignores me. I ask him to return to his room. Again he ignores me. The phone rings. I get up to answer it. 3 minutes later Sailor is standing beside me. “I’m getting lonely in there.”
I return. Sailor is again about to drift off when, inexplicably, Mac decides it is imminently important to remove the clothing from Sailor’s Cabbage Patch doll, Danny. Danny’s jacket is made of some weird, noisy, sticky, vinyl-y stuff. R-i-i-i-i-i-p. R-i-i-i-i-p. What the heck!? “Mac!” I send him back to his room. Sailor appears to be asleep but is not when I get up to go check Mac a minute later. I don’t want my big boy going to sleep crying. Even though he won’t remember in the morning. “Please, I am a good boy you take me to your bed?” Sailor sleepily asks me. “Yes,” I tell him, knowing I don’t really mean it. So then, “And if you are asleep, you can come in when you wake up,” which he will do around midnight. “I love you, Mommy.”
He is truly precious.
Mac is not crying. I sit on his bed. “I don’t think you like me anymore,” he says.
Oh boy. It’s been that kind of day and I totally saw this coming.
I do my best to reassure him. I like you…. I love you…. Until I realize what I need to say. “I’m sorry Mac. I didn’t mean to make you feel as if I don’t like you.” Of course then I do go on to explain that I am not happy with some of his behavior today, but that he is still one of my top two favorite kids. I think he feels better. He is asleep momentarily. Tomorrow is our morning together. We have a bunch of errands to run and I hope we will have some time to sit and have coffee or lunch. I can’t have my kid thinking I don’t like him. Parenting is not easy. Decisions are hard to make. But this kid knows without a doubt that he is well-loved. But just in case he doesn’t, I will continue to tell him at every opportunity, every day, for the rest of his life.
I email my parents and sister with a list of days I need my beautiful boys cared for so that I can work, socialize or both. I include, while I am at it, the dates of Mac’s bday dinner and big bday party, Sailor’s preschool graduation ceremony in which he will participate (Sailor? Yeah, right! He’ll spend the 30 minutes crying in my arms), and a question about the actual date of Yom Kippur, taking us all the way to the end of September. Today is February 7th. I would say I am organized. My mother will say, “You are thinking too much,” but then will acquiesce that she is impressed by my organizational skills. My father will say, “Sure, Babe, if we are available.” And my sister will tell me that I am absolutely nuts to be planning Mac’s birthday yet, because it is still 3 months and two weeks away. On second thought, after 5 years of experience, she probably knows by now how much time and effort I put into the yearly celebration of the birth of my 1st born and will likely know also not to say a thing about it this year.
Thursday.
Sailor is allergic to poop. So he says. After a good session of gagging. Following Mac’s bout with minor diarrhea after school today. He smells Mac’s toilet deposit, gags, and informs me, “I am allergic to poop.” He has even started gagging over his own poop.
Mac has a note in his backpack this morning informing me that the 100th day of school is coming up next week. Mac is to count out 100 small pieces of “something fun” to bring to school. Examples given are pennies, paper clips and Cheerios. Fun? In my house fun is M&Ms. Which I also think will irritate the teacher because Mac and his classmates will want to eat them. I haul out the 54 oz bag of the little chocolate buggers.
Week 19
I am decorating my sleepy eyes with eyeliner and Mac is beside me, peeing. “We’re leaving in about 20 minutes,” I tell him, “we’re going to see your talking doctor today.”
“Today? I plumbed forgot!”
My sister is here with my friend Anna’s kids. Anna is on a biz trip. I think this might be what it would be like if my sister had two kids. I can pretend, anyway. I think she would have named her girls Amy and Nikki. They are playing well in the playroom. They always play well. Messes, yes, but cooperation and love, too. Amy is a month older than Sailor and they are best friends. Nikki is just about 19 months old. Which is how old Mac was when I found out I was pregnant with Sailor four years ago this past weekend. To me Nikki is still a baby in every sense. Mac was my baby but far from the stereotype for the age as he was having full conversations with me by then.
When Mac is done with his talking doctor we have too much time to kill. I suggest McDonald’s for free coffee day (for me, not for Mac). As we hit the drive-thru Mac asks for a “pack of French fries.” I think about the lunch I packed him. PB&J – all natural -- green beans and apples. I make him the deal that he can have the “pack of fries” if he eats his healthful foods. I spend a $1.10. I guess the coffee isn’t really free. It’s just a lure to get you to drive thru the golden arches.
In the car outside school, with more than 20 minutes left to kill, Mac tells me how much he likes to spend time with me. Which lasts only a minute because one of the Olivias shows up and Mac wants to get in line with her.
I park the car around the corner from my house. I will not be able to move it again until Friday. There is a movie shooting in our neighborhood this week and "no parking" signs have been posted everywhere. “I’ll move my car if they tell me where to park it and give me a part in their movie,” I said when I first saw the signs. “And you’ll get towed,” said whoever I was with at the time.
Sailor and Amy are in “bajamas” and baby Nikki is wandering around looking tired and lost. The house is a mess. But all three kids look happy. Sailor and Amy are having a blast playing in pj’s. Why? Because they are three.
Sailor falls asleep on the way to getting Mac. Mac tells me all about some fantasy involving a co-pilot whose assistance he needed today. I ask him what he did at school and he goes on. No, I repeat, what did you do at school today? For real? The boy has an active imagination to say the least. At home Mac does his homework. His class is on letter Qq. But the poem he is to read and circle all the Qq’s in contains exactly one Q and one q, including the capital Q in the title. I try to write a better poem. I find it ridiculous that people are paid to write this stuff and that no one checks it before it gets all the way home to the kindergarteners’ parents. The boys play, strangely clad, in the playroom. Mac has stripped off his sweater and jeans and wears long johns and an undershirt. He says it is hot in here. Sometime later Sailor has lost his pants. I check around the house and see how much needs to be cleaned up. I am inexplicably tired and cleaning up our Indian food leftovers does not appeal to me. I flick off every light, remembering the conversation I had with ComEd this afternoon about why my normally $53 electric bill is $82 this month. Rate hikes, I am told. 24% increase. Faaaaabulous! Because I need to be shelling out more of the piddly amount of money we get every month.
Mac has a book fair at school this week. I tell him I will help him choose one book. He tells me I am supposed to send money to school with him in a zip-lock baggie. He’ll be the only one in class with a $5 bill. But in his backpack there is an invitation to parents to help their kindergarteners choose books on Wednesday and so I will. That way how much money I can spend will only be an issue between the two of us. We also discuss books that would be appropriate for him to buy. Without prompting he comes up with Star Wars, Geronimo Stilton series, Magic Treehouse series, anything Rescue Heroes, and then Corduroy. “There’s a first book we don’t have you know, Mom.”
Sailor wants me to play with him. He gives me a three-inch tall plastic “Hermenny,” the girl in Harry Potter. “She is trapped and Ron has to save her,” he tells me. I drop Hermione down the V of my sweater. She is trapped. Ron will save her. He does and Sailor reiterates that “I am Ron and Mac you are Harry Potter, right and Mom is Hermenny.” Ron takes Hermione to safety and I am still lying comfortably on my couch. It’s not that hard to play with kids if you are creative. Now Hermione is running around as Batman tries to save her. I need chocolate.
I love listening to the things my kids say when they play. Or just when they think they are being serious. Yesterday at breakfast Sailor was distressed over having gotten some grits on his hands.
“It’s not getting off,” he said.
“Why don’t you lick it off?” I suggest. Grits are hard to wipe off.
“That’s ‘sgusting! Then I’ll get lick on my hands and have to wash it off!” he says, clearly stressed and agitated. Neat freak!
At which point Mac reminds me he doesn’t feel well. “Mom, I’m disinfected with something.”
Mac accidentally sits in and brakes part of the farmyard that I got Sailor for Christmas. I can see why the set cost a mere $10. It’s barely been a month and already the bird has lost his tail and the outhouse has lost a wall. And now the wall of the gate is off. I overhear Mac apologizing and explaining the nature of the accident. Sailor says maybe GrandDad can fix it. “Because he is the fixer guy,” I hear him say. A tribute to my father, for certain. After all, the man spent the better part of the 1970s decorating with contact paper and making all manner of household repairs with various colors of duct tape. The Fixer Guy. A well-earned title.
I am putting the boys to bed. They are, of course, hungry. Between them they consume yogurt with crunchies (wheat germ), macker cheese, a chicken leg, hash browns, milk and more macker cheese. It’s almost 8:30 when I tuck them in, each in his own room. Sailor asks me, “Next time when I wake up I haf’ go preschool?” His way of indicating his understanding of the concept of “tomorrow.”
“Yes,” I tell him.
“I am happy ‘bout this?” he asks, truly uncertain.
“Yes,” I tell him.
“Hurray!” He does a little happy dance. Crazy kid!
By the time I pick Mac up from school on Tuesday afternoon he has suffered both a mild head trauma and a bloody nose. The head trauma came at the hand of a boy in his class, whom I will call Dashiel because that is kind of what it sounds like when he says his name. While waiting in line to enter school, Dashiel pushes the one standing in front of him. In domino fashion, the next boy, not knowing what happened, stumbles forward knocking my precious one to his knees. His head hits the big, concrete banister just moments before Miss H opens the door to let the children enter. My poor baby. I started to yell at Dashiel but realized his mom is just over my left shoulder calling out his name. I taper my anger and say merely, “Be gentle with my boy!” I expect a big welt on Mac’s head at 3:15 but find none. Instead, “Mom, I had a bloody nose today.” Aw, jeez!
The father of my boys stops by this evening. 6:00 to 8:00. A play date. That’s what they want from him, play time. So he comes. We chat. They play. He leaves. I put them to bed. It is 8:30. Mac is asleep and Sailor is in the kitchen because he is “very, very hungry.” Well, that is what happens when you don’t eat dinner at dinner time. My boys are very lucky that I am not the kind of mom who gives out a “too bad, next time you’ll eat.” I was hungry as a kid thru no fault of my own parents, who fed me well. And my boys are little, which equals a state of moderate helplessness. If I don’t feed them they will be hungry and miserable. My only stipulation to late night eating is that I get to choose the foods, no arguments. Which means Sailor is getting the vegetable-filled tomato sauce on his pasta, which he refused at dinner. No arguments.
Outside, there is a truck making an irritating sound. I believe the movie company plans to shoot their film over night. Vince Vaughn will be in my neighborhood (or so I have heard). Woo hoo… Not my favorite actor, toput it mildly. And now I have to listen to truck sounds all night. How fun! And the compensation for the neighborhood that is being inconvenienced? Nada. Zero. Zip. Zilch.
Anyone know what a chicken blaster is? Mac seems to. He has been talking about his chicken blaster all day. It’s going to become one of those funny words.
A little less funny is that Mac hangs a belt on his closet bar and tries to hang from it. Not hang as in kill himself! Just hang as in swing. And the closet bar falls. “What happened?” “Nothing.” Innocent. One bracket is ripped out of the wall. Unfixable in a snap. It’s going to take a bit of time and measuring. Something Mac’s father doesn’t have this evening. He says he will come back on Thursday if I email him. I think Fix-it GrandDad may be up to the task tomorrow. Meanwhile Mac’s closet is a wreck and I can’t even go out to buy a new one because if I take my car out I will lose my precious parking spot around the corner and the movie company will force me to park in the next neighborhood over, making my life a living hell, especially if Sailor falls asleep in the car, which he is prone to do. Which explains why there are no groceries in our fridge. And why Sailor doesn’t have any organic sniffle medicine. And why I am more than a little put out that a movie company is filming in our neighborhood in the dead of winter, causing us to have to walk everywhere. Bet they have no idea. Hey, Vince, how ‘bout some groceries over here?!
I bake a batch of healthful chocolate chip muffins this evening. I had a craving to satisfy. Sailor runs to bed after finishing his pasta. He has eaten almost all of it. I go in to kiss him goodnight.
“This time when I wake up, I can eat a muffin?"
“Yes.”
“When I wake up alone and you are still sleeping?”
“Yes, I will leave one muffin on the table for you and one for Mac.” He smiles a sleepy smile at me.
“Who will eat the other muffins?”
“You, and Mac and Mommy.”
I get a big, satisfied smile for that one. So often we bake for others. This baking is for us. He is quite pleased. He gets lots of kisses goodnight. He is a sweet, sweet baby boy.
Wednesday the book fair at the big school begins. Afternoon kindergarten parents are invited to help their children shop. It would be nice if there were a place to ditch our coats, as we are bundled to the hilt against the chill outside. I let each of my boys choose one book, and then I feel like a heal when one of the moms I know tells me she spent $140 and another explains how she didn’t do the wrapping paper sale in September (neither did I) and she didn’t buy any holiday greenery (neither did I) so she makes this the one time she spends a little more at the school. Nice. But as it is I have to take money from the drawer to let the boys buy books. And as I hand Mac a $10 bill I forget to say, “Bring me the change,” and so he doesn’t and I don’t want to make a fuss in front of his whole class. He is trying to make me understand that it was his money and his book and so it’s his change. It is hard to argue with his practical reasoning. Nonetheless I am out five bucks. Sailor pays for his book, Santa is Stuck, which is a perfect choice for a child obsessed with wanting to know why Santa is fat. He puts his change in my pocket when I tell him to put it in his. Well if his brother is keeping $5 Sailor can keep 75 cents. We read the Santa book twice when we get home. Great book with a mediocre ending but Sailor loves it anyway.
On the way to get Mac after school Sailor asks me what his name will be when he is big. He says he will change his name. To Luke Skywalker. Because he will be big and have a light saver.
When we pick up Mac from school I am mid-conversation with the mom who is telling me about the extra money she spends at this event and I don’t see Mac come out of school. I look around. She doesn’t see him either so I go up and ask Miss H. She assumes he is still inside but I realize I think I know where he is. I look over the banister. “Get up here, RIGHT NOW!” He actually has the nerve to look surprised that he is in big trouble. Miss H asks if she can talk to him first, which is brilliant, “Please! He’s all yours!” I don’t know what she says to him but I know what I say to him. He apologizes. Twice.
I am feeling ill and nursing a can of ginger ale and have no energy to walk around with Sailor while Mac is at FTK. But we walk about anyway. I pick up more ginger ale and we get some food for dinner. Sailor chooses broccoli and grapes and I choose a loaf of sour dough bread and of course there are some cookies. He wants to ride the glass elevator all the way up. Which we do. We walk slowly back and he sleeps until we have picked up Mac and walked all the way home. It’s getting colder and it is snowing. It’s a beautiful night and Mac notices.
They are working hard to make our street look Christmas-y for the Vince Vaughn film when we get back. We have to walk down the middle of the street so as to avoid their equipment. Not a big deal, since they have the street actually blocked off to traffic. Lovely. I try to suppress my grumbling.
We eat and get ready for bed. Everyone is tired. But Sailor cries when I try to put him in bed for the 43rd time. It is too sad. He is asleep 5 minutes after I lay him in my bed. I watch Janice Dickinson’s Modeling Agency, my latest favorite show and try to catch a glimpse of Vince across the street. A group of people has gathered outside of my house. I want to tell the guy smoking on my steps to smoke elsewhere but I don’t. There is “quiet on the set” so I take out some garbage and close the door loudly when I come back in. The assembled group outside is not extras. They are neighbors. Nosy. I miss my photo opp and don’t get Vinny on the digicam. I go to sleep long before the shooting ends.
Thursday is pajama party day at preschool. Sailor doesn’t have to get dressed. But he does have to change becuz he has oatmeal on his pj’s. Because they will be watching videos at school today he is much less reluctant than usual.
Mac has an open house at school in the evening. I am signing my books at the book fair, so my parents come along to take the tour of the school, listen to the principal talk and hear the chorus sing. I think it must be odd for them, being the grandparents instead of the parents at the school they spent 12 parental years at in the 1970s and 1980s. I tell my mother to pretend she is 35 and Mac is me. She says she doesn’t remember much but what strikes her is that all the “wrong” people seem to be roaming the halls. “These weren’t the right people,” she explained, meaning she didn’t recognize anyone as the parents she knew back then.
I sell two measly books, for which I owe the school 10%. I meet a nice young lady who has cystic fibrosis (the topic of one of my books). I talk to a cute dad who wears no wedding ring and no hair. I snarf down a couple of cookies. See the tadpoles in Mac’s classroom. He shows me the life-cycle of a frog and when asked how long this will take he replies, “25 years!” I have a conversation with Miss H about how great it is to have her as Mac’s kindergarten teacher. She tells me how well Mac is doing with his French and how he recently told the new French girl she had forgotten her backpack: “Maxime, ton sac!” I beam with pride and am full of amazement at his ability!
We talk about how big of a deal it is to some of us that we are expected to just drop our children off because society tells us to, despite our own feelings or misgivings toward the activity. She tells me how much she understands the difficult position we are in as parents, having to trustingly leave our children with strangers called teachers. I knew there was a very good reason for liking this woman. Sailor already wants to be in her class and I ask her to please stay in kindergarten at least til then!
Then I embarrass myself. I bring two orchids from the book fair to Miss H for her classroom, and since I have already told her there is no pizza left en français she bids us farewell in French and then tells me she hopes the plants are still alive at the end of the year. I am not sure what she has said. I recognize her words but my brain has shut down and tho she speaks more slowly and repeats herself, I cannot make anymore out of the sentence than “Maybe your children will be less lively by the end of the weekend.” I have to laugh at the silliness of the sentence now, but as it is happening I am flushed with inability. What she said was, "Maybe the plants will still be alove at the end of the weekend."
Mac is almost asleep by the time we get home. Sailor, contrarily, has run all the way home. Stopping once, he finds some sort of “treasure.” It looks like a black plastic hook, perhaps the kind linked to socks before they are purchased. I am uncertain as I never quite get a good glimpse of the object. Mac stirs long enough to ask for it. “Give it to me.” He is demanding of his little brother. But Sailor won’t be had. “Finders, Keepers!” he declares. Finders, Keepers? Dear G-d, he is three! “Where did you learn that?” I am incredulous. “From Franks.” “Franks?” something about a video they watched at pajama party preschool this morning. I am definitely getting my money’s worth on his education. Jeez! I get them in bed, have cheese and crackers and cereal in my own bed and watch tv while I read. I pop in to check on them each and find Sailor with his nametag sticker from tonight’s festivities stuck to one finger, as if he is holding it out for me to take. So I do. He mumbles something. And I kiss him good night. I put name tag on his wall so he can see it when he wakes. In case he is unsure of his identity, I guess.
I fall to sleep thinking about the cute, ringless, hairless dad. I checked the school directory before retiring for the night. He is listed on his own line with his own address, phone number and email.
Friday is a day off. The teachers are preparing report cards for next Wednesday. I sleep in – til 8:30 – and then we putz around. The boys mop the kitchen floor (their choice) while I give the pantry a quick clean out. We do some workbook. Mac is really starting to read now and it is so exciting for me!
We take a walk. It is the last “warm” day in a while, tho actually this whole week has been freezing. The temperatures are scheduled to dip fiercely over the weekend. So we load up months and months of stale bread products and head toward the lagoon. Mac spies his classmate John on the way and the two run to each other like long lost lovers. They meet on a slippery patch of ice and embrace as if it has been far longer than a mere 16 hours since their last meeting. The embrace steadies them both and neither falls. They chat as we walk and then we part ways. There are no ducks. Anywhere. The pond is “ice frozen” as Mac puts it. We find geese by the second lagoon over. We toss pretzels, bread, cereal, matzoh, cake, cookies, high in the air and geese flock, two by two to their geese feast. It’s noisy and the geese are happy. It’s a good way to spend a cold day. We walk back. The boys find sticks and run. They are so cute. Sailor in his Santa hat, which bobs around as he runs. Mac’s hat has four pom poms on it and he looks adorable. I think about how this is what we should do every day. It lifts our moods, if only for the moment. They find a low wall and drop over it. Again and again and again. Their jeans are dirty. Sailor’s scarf is trailing thru mud. I don’t care. They are being boys. They are happy.
We lunch with my dad and they feast on Thanksgiving plates. Now they are in the bathroom playing in the sink with a tiny frog Mac received from school yesterday. They are being naughty and giggling. But it’s a day off and I just can’t be bothered to care.
Sunday morning Mac wakes me at 8:00. He is starving and wants me to wake up and make breakfast right now. What happened to the days when he used to get his own early morning snack? He pesters while Sailor climbs back into bed with me. I grumble. I was out late last night on a rare ladies’ night out. In celebration of my birthday, which is on Wednesday. Only about 4 ½ or 5 hours have passed since I started to sleep semi-soundly. But I am ok to get up. Shuffle to the kitchen. Start two bowls of oatmeal. “I’m thirsty. What’s this?” Sailor wants to know what is in his sippy cup. “Milk.” Of course. “I want juice.” Didn’t we have this dead-end conversation yesterday morning? “We don’t get juice for breakfast.” He starts to cry and I firmly ask him to stop and remind him that he didn’t have juice yesterday morning either. He begins a fake cry, moaning whimper. And he won’t stop. I ask him to stop. I tell him to stop. I tell him I will give him a reason to cry if he really wants one. This stops him momentarily as he is unsure what I mean. I tell him he can go to his room and he cries harder. I start a mantra in my head and unload the dishwasher. Put a mug in the “mikermave” for tea and try to keep my cool. It is 8:15. I continue the mantra. I explain quietly that I am very tired and didn’t have much sleep. Still, Sailor persists. My tea is ready. The dishwasher is empty. Sailor hops off his seat. Do we even know why he is crying anymore? Certainly he no longer recalls. And still he won’t stop. And I blow up. It has been 20 minutes since Mac has dragged me from beneath my down comforter to make food. I have poured milk, sectioned a Clementine, dished out applesauce, decorated oatmeal with pure maple syrup, made tea, and emptied the dishwasher all while listening to Sailor’s incessant whining and before I even get to pee and brush my teeth. I sit Sailor back in his seat, show him the food in front of him and recommend he eat it, apologize to Mac for ruining his breakfast, and storm off to the shower. Before I can even finish peeing Mac has finished his oatmeal and knocks on the door. Sweetly, “Mommy?” Not so sweetly, “WHAT?” Can’t I just pee? “Is the dishwasher clean or dirty?” Did he not just finish watching me empty the whole thing??
I am showered. The boys are bathed. We are dressed and dried and ready to go. Where? I want to take the boys down the street to breakfast. It is 10:00 a.m. I offer up pancakes, sausage…. They don’t want to go. They have gotten it into their heads to watch tv today, which I have not agreed to. “You can make pancakes here at home,” Mac suggests. “I want French toast,” I sound like an insolent child. “You can make French toast here at home.” “I don’t want to make food at home.” No rest for the mother. It is a fact. So there they are in the living room. A room I insist on keeping tidy despite the fact that the only ones who ever get to use the room are the children. They are watching their favorite “Ruxo Huroes.” (No, I don’t let them watch Star Wars!) And here I am. Laundry to put away. Christmas photo cards to take down. Work to do…. No one cuts the Mommy a break. Ever. But I guess that is what I signed on for. So no complaints. But I really just want to go out for some French toast.
We do the brunch thing on Sunday morning. My dad comes along. The buffet is a great deal and the food is satisfying. I load up everyone’s plate and return to the table. I have a bite or two and Mac asks, “Can you please get me some more melon and strawberries?” I am happy to and start back to the buffet. “And make sure there’s eggs and another waffle and three pieces of bacon and another sausage.” Alrighty then.
We spend Sunday in front of the tv. My boys choose Tarzan, Beauty and the Beast (which Sailor calls simply “Beast”) and Grease. I read. We eat from a 54 oz. bag of M&Ms ("Nemnems," Sailor calls them). It is a pleasant afternoon. At night a TLC program about drastically obese people comes on. Remarkably and disgustingly, it makes us hungry.
“Today? I plumbed forgot!”
My sister is here with my friend Anna’s kids. Anna is on a biz trip. I think this might be what it would be like if my sister had two kids. I can pretend, anyway. I think she would have named her girls Amy and Nikki. They are playing well in the playroom. They always play well. Messes, yes, but cooperation and love, too. Amy is a month older than Sailor and they are best friends. Nikki is just about 19 months old. Which is how old Mac was when I found out I was pregnant with Sailor four years ago this past weekend. To me Nikki is still a baby in every sense. Mac was my baby but far from the stereotype for the age as he was having full conversations with me by then.
When Mac is done with his talking doctor we have too much time to kill. I suggest McDonald’s for free coffee day (for me, not for Mac). As we hit the drive-thru Mac asks for a “pack of French fries.” I think about the lunch I packed him. PB&J – all natural -- green beans and apples. I make him the deal that he can have the “pack of fries” if he eats his healthful foods. I spend a $1.10. I guess the coffee isn’t really free. It’s just a lure to get you to drive thru the golden arches.
In the car outside school, with more than 20 minutes left to kill, Mac tells me how much he likes to spend time with me. Which lasts only a minute because one of the Olivias shows up and Mac wants to get in line with her.
I park the car around the corner from my house. I will not be able to move it again until Friday. There is a movie shooting in our neighborhood this week and "no parking" signs have been posted everywhere. “I’ll move my car if they tell me where to park it and give me a part in their movie,” I said when I first saw the signs. “And you’ll get towed,” said whoever I was with at the time.
Sailor and Amy are in “bajamas” and baby Nikki is wandering around looking tired and lost. The house is a mess. But all three kids look happy. Sailor and Amy are having a blast playing in pj’s. Why? Because they are three.
Sailor falls asleep on the way to getting Mac. Mac tells me all about some fantasy involving a co-pilot whose assistance he needed today. I ask him what he did at school and he goes on. No, I repeat, what did you do at school today? For real? The boy has an active imagination to say the least. At home Mac does his homework. His class is on letter Qq. But the poem he is to read and circle all the Qq’s in contains exactly one Q and one q, including the capital Q in the title. I try to write a better poem. I find it ridiculous that people are paid to write this stuff and that no one checks it before it gets all the way home to the kindergarteners’ parents. The boys play, strangely clad, in the playroom. Mac has stripped off his sweater and jeans and wears long johns and an undershirt. He says it is hot in here. Sometime later Sailor has lost his pants. I check around the house and see how much needs to be cleaned up. I am inexplicably tired and cleaning up our Indian food leftovers does not appeal to me. I flick off every light, remembering the conversation I had with ComEd this afternoon about why my normally $53 electric bill is $82 this month. Rate hikes, I am told. 24% increase. Faaaaabulous! Because I need to be shelling out more of the piddly amount of money we get every month.
Mac has a book fair at school this week. I tell him I will help him choose one book. He tells me I am supposed to send money to school with him in a zip-lock baggie. He’ll be the only one in class with a $5 bill. But in his backpack there is an invitation to parents to help their kindergarteners choose books on Wednesday and so I will. That way how much money I can spend will only be an issue between the two of us. We also discuss books that would be appropriate for him to buy. Without prompting he comes up with Star Wars, Geronimo Stilton series, Magic Treehouse series, anything Rescue Heroes, and then Corduroy. “There’s a first book we don’t have you know, Mom.”
Sailor wants me to play with him. He gives me a three-inch tall plastic “Hermenny,” the girl in Harry Potter. “She is trapped and Ron has to save her,” he tells me. I drop Hermione down the V of my sweater. She is trapped. Ron will save her. He does and Sailor reiterates that “I am Ron and Mac you are Harry Potter, right and Mom is Hermenny.” Ron takes Hermione to safety and I am still lying comfortably on my couch. It’s not that hard to play with kids if you are creative. Now Hermione is running around as Batman tries to save her. I need chocolate.
I love listening to the things my kids say when they play. Or just when they think they are being serious. Yesterday at breakfast Sailor was distressed over having gotten some grits on his hands.
“It’s not getting off,” he said.
“Why don’t you lick it off?” I suggest. Grits are hard to wipe off.
“That’s ‘sgusting! Then I’ll get lick on my hands and have to wash it off!” he says, clearly stressed and agitated. Neat freak!
At which point Mac reminds me he doesn’t feel well. “Mom, I’m disinfected with something.”
Mac accidentally sits in and brakes part of the farmyard that I got Sailor for Christmas. I can see why the set cost a mere $10. It’s barely been a month and already the bird has lost his tail and the outhouse has lost a wall. And now the wall of the gate is off. I overhear Mac apologizing and explaining the nature of the accident. Sailor says maybe GrandDad can fix it. “Because he is the fixer guy,” I hear him say. A tribute to my father, for certain. After all, the man spent the better part of the 1970s decorating with contact paper and making all manner of household repairs with various colors of duct tape. The Fixer Guy. A well-earned title.
I am putting the boys to bed. They are, of course, hungry. Between them they consume yogurt with crunchies (wheat germ), macker cheese, a chicken leg, hash browns, milk and more macker cheese. It’s almost 8:30 when I tuck them in, each in his own room. Sailor asks me, “Next time when I wake up I haf’ go preschool?” His way of indicating his understanding of the concept of “tomorrow.”
“Yes,” I tell him.
“I am happy ‘bout this?” he asks, truly uncertain.
“Yes,” I tell him.
“Hurray!” He does a little happy dance. Crazy kid!
By the time I pick Mac up from school on Tuesday afternoon he has suffered both a mild head trauma and a bloody nose. The head trauma came at the hand of a boy in his class, whom I will call Dashiel because that is kind of what it sounds like when he says his name. While waiting in line to enter school, Dashiel pushes the one standing in front of him. In domino fashion, the next boy, not knowing what happened, stumbles forward knocking my precious one to his knees. His head hits the big, concrete banister just moments before Miss H opens the door to let the children enter. My poor baby. I started to yell at Dashiel but realized his mom is just over my left shoulder calling out his name. I taper my anger and say merely, “Be gentle with my boy!” I expect a big welt on Mac’s head at 3:15 but find none. Instead, “Mom, I had a bloody nose today.” Aw, jeez!
The father of my boys stops by this evening. 6:00 to 8:00. A play date. That’s what they want from him, play time. So he comes. We chat. They play. He leaves. I put them to bed. It is 8:30. Mac is asleep and Sailor is in the kitchen because he is “very, very hungry.” Well, that is what happens when you don’t eat dinner at dinner time. My boys are very lucky that I am not the kind of mom who gives out a “too bad, next time you’ll eat.” I was hungry as a kid thru no fault of my own parents, who fed me well. And my boys are little, which equals a state of moderate helplessness. If I don’t feed them they will be hungry and miserable. My only stipulation to late night eating is that I get to choose the foods, no arguments. Which means Sailor is getting the vegetable-filled tomato sauce on his pasta, which he refused at dinner. No arguments.
Outside, there is a truck making an irritating sound. I believe the movie company plans to shoot their film over night. Vince Vaughn will be in my neighborhood (or so I have heard). Woo hoo… Not my favorite actor, toput it mildly. And now I have to listen to truck sounds all night. How fun! And the compensation for the neighborhood that is being inconvenienced? Nada. Zero. Zip. Zilch.
Anyone know what a chicken blaster is? Mac seems to. He has been talking about his chicken blaster all day. It’s going to become one of those funny words.
A little less funny is that Mac hangs a belt on his closet bar and tries to hang from it. Not hang as in kill himself! Just hang as in swing. And the closet bar falls. “What happened?” “Nothing.” Innocent. One bracket is ripped out of the wall. Unfixable in a snap. It’s going to take a bit of time and measuring. Something Mac’s father doesn’t have this evening. He says he will come back on Thursday if I email him. I think Fix-it GrandDad may be up to the task tomorrow. Meanwhile Mac’s closet is a wreck and I can’t even go out to buy a new one because if I take my car out I will lose my precious parking spot around the corner and the movie company will force me to park in the next neighborhood over, making my life a living hell, especially if Sailor falls asleep in the car, which he is prone to do. Which explains why there are no groceries in our fridge. And why Sailor doesn’t have any organic sniffle medicine. And why I am more than a little put out that a movie company is filming in our neighborhood in the dead of winter, causing us to have to walk everywhere. Bet they have no idea. Hey, Vince, how ‘bout some groceries over here?!
I bake a batch of healthful chocolate chip muffins this evening. I had a craving to satisfy. Sailor runs to bed after finishing his pasta. He has eaten almost all of it. I go in to kiss him goodnight.
“This time when I wake up, I can eat a muffin?"
“Yes.”
“When I wake up alone and you are still sleeping?”
“Yes, I will leave one muffin on the table for you and one for Mac.” He smiles a sleepy smile at me.
“Who will eat the other muffins?”
“You, and Mac and Mommy.”
I get a big, satisfied smile for that one. So often we bake for others. This baking is for us. He is quite pleased. He gets lots of kisses goodnight. He is a sweet, sweet baby boy.
Wednesday the book fair at the big school begins. Afternoon kindergarten parents are invited to help their children shop. It would be nice if there were a place to ditch our coats, as we are bundled to the hilt against the chill outside. I let each of my boys choose one book, and then I feel like a heal when one of the moms I know tells me she spent $140 and another explains how she didn’t do the wrapping paper sale in September (neither did I) and she didn’t buy any holiday greenery (neither did I) so she makes this the one time she spends a little more at the school. Nice. But as it is I have to take money from the drawer to let the boys buy books. And as I hand Mac a $10 bill I forget to say, “Bring me the change,” and so he doesn’t and I don’t want to make a fuss in front of his whole class. He is trying to make me understand that it was his money and his book and so it’s his change. It is hard to argue with his practical reasoning. Nonetheless I am out five bucks. Sailor pays for his book, Santa is Stuck, which is a perfect choice for a child obsessed with wanting to know why Santa is fat. He puts his change in my pocket when I tell him to put it in his. Well if his brother is keeping $5 Sailor can keep 75 cents. We read the Santa book twice when we get home. Great book with a mediocre ending but Sailor loves it anyway.
On the way to get Mac after school Sailor asks me what his name will be when he is big. He says he will change his name. To Luke Skywalker. Because he will be big and have a light saver.
When we pick up Mac from school I am mid-conversation with the mom who is telling me about the extra money she spends at this event and I don’t see Mac come out of school. I look around. She doesn’t see him either so I go up and ask Miss H. She assumes he is still inside but I realize I think I know where he is. I look over the banister. “Get up here, RIGHT NOW!” He actually has the nerve to look surprised that he is in big trouble. Miss H asks if she can talk to him first, which is brilliant, “Please! He’s all yours!” I don’t know what she says to him but I know what I say to him. He apologizes. Twice.
I am feeling ill and nursing a can of ginger ale and have no energy to walk around with Sailor while Mac is at FTK. But we walk about anyway. I pick up more ginger ale and we get some food for dinner. Sailor chooses broccoli and grapes and I choose a loaf of sour dough bread and of course there are some cookies. He wants to ride the glass elevator all the way up. Which we do. We walk slowly back and he sleeps until we have picked up Mac and walked all the way home. It’s getting colder and it is snowing. It’s a beautiful night and Mac notices.
They are working hard to make our street look Christmas-y for the Vince Vaughn film when we get back. We have to walk down the middle of the street so as to avoid their equipment. Not a big deal, since they have the street actually blocked off to traffic. Lovely. I try to suppress my grumbling.
We eat and get ready for bed. Everyone is tired. But Sailor cries when I try to put him in bed for the 43rd time. It is too sad. He is asleep 5 minutes after I lay him in my bed. I watch Janice Dickinson’s Modeling Agency, my latest favorite show and try to catch a glimpse of Vince across the street. A group of people has gathered outside of my house. I want to tell the guy smoking on my steps to smoke elsewhere but I don’t. There is “quiet on the set” so I take out some garbage and close the door loudly when I come back in. The assembled group outside is not extras. They are neighbors. Nosy. I miss my photo opp and don’t get Vinny on the digicam. I go to sleep long before the shooting ends.
Thursday is pajama party day at preschool. Sailor doesn’t have to get dressed. But he does have to change becuz he has oatmeal on his pj’s. Because they will be watching videos at school today he is much less reluctant than usual.
Mac has an open house at school in the evening. I am signing my books at the book fair, so my parents come along to take the tour of the school, listen to the principal talk and hear the chorus sing. I think it must be odd for them, being the grandparents instead of the parents at the school they spent 12 parental years at in the 1970s and 1980s. I tell my mother to pretend she is 35 and Mac is me. She says she doesn’t remember much but what strikes her is that all the “wrong” people seem to be roaming the halls. “These weren’t the right people,” she explained, meaning she didn’t recognize anyone as the parents she knew back then.
I sell two measly books, for which I owe the school 10%. I meet a nice young lady who has cystic fibrosis (the topic of one of my books). I talk to a cute dad who wears no wedding ring and no hair. I snarf down a couple of cookies. See the tadpoles in Mac’s classroom. He shows me the life-cycle of a frog and when asked how long this will take he replies, “25 years!” I have a conversation with Miss H about how great it is to have her as Mac’s kindergarten teacher. She tells me how well Mac is doing with his French and how he recently told the new French girl she had forgotten her backpack: “Maxime, ton sac!” I beam with pride and am full of amazement at his ability!
We talk about how big of a deal it is to some of us that we are expected to just drop our children off because society tells us to, despite our own feelings or misgivings toward the activity. She tells me how much she understands the difficult position we are in as parents, having to trustingly leave our children with strangers called teachers. I knew there was a very good reason for liking this woman. Sailor already wants to be in her class and I ask her to please stay in kindergarten at least til then!
Then I embarrass myself. I bring two orchids from the book fair to Miss H for her classroom, and since I have already told her there is no pizza left en français she bids us farewell in French and then tells me she hopes the plants are still alive at the end of the year. I am not sure what she has said. I recognize her words but my brain has shut down and tho she speaks more slowly and repeats herself, I cannot make anymore out of the sentence than “Maybe your children will be less lively by the end of the weekend.” I have to laugh at the silliness of the sentence now, but as it is happening I am flushed with inability. What she said was, "Maybe the plants will still be alove at the end of the weekend."
Mac is almost asleep by the time we get home. Sailor, contrarily, has run all the way home. Stopping once, he finds some sort of “treasure.” It looks like a black plastic hook, perhaps the kind linked to socks before they are purchased. I am uncertain as I never quite get a good glimpse of the object. Mac stirs long enough to ask for it. “Give it to me.” He is demanding of his little brother. But Sailor won’t be had. “Finders, Keepers!” he declares. Finders, Keepers? Dear G-d, he is three! “Where did you learn that?” I am incredulous. “From Franks.” “Franks?” something about a video they watched at pajama party preschool this morning. I am definitely getting my money’s worth on his education. Jeez! I get them in bed, have cheese and crackers and cereal in my own bed and watch tv while I read. I pop in to check on them each and find Sailor with his nametag sticker from tonight’s festivities stuck to one finger, as if he is holding it out for me to take. So I do. He mumbles something. And I kiss him good night. I put name tag on his wall so he can see it when he wakes. In case he is unsure of his identity, I guess.
I fall to sleep thinking about the cute, ringless, hairless dad. I checked the school directory before retiring for the night. He is listed on his own line with his own address, phone number and email.
Friday is a day off. The teachers are preparing report cards for next Wednesday. I sleep in – til 8:30 – and then we putz around. The boys mop the kitchen floor (their choice) while I give the pantry a quick clean out. We do some workbook. Mac is really starting to read now and it is so exciting for me!
We take a walk. It is the last “warm” day in a while, tho actually this whole week has been freezing. The temperatures are scheduled to dip fiercely over the weekend. So we load up months and months of stale bread products and head toward the lagoon. Mac spies his classmate John on the way and the two run to each other like long lost lovers. They meet on a slippery patch of ice and embrace as if it has been far longer than a mere 16 hours since their last meeting. The embrace steadies them both and neither falls. They chat as we walk and then we part ways. There are no ducks. Anywhere. The pond is “ice frozen” as Mac puts it. We find geese by the second lagoon over. We toss pretzels, bread, cereal, matzoh, cake, cookies, high in the air and geese flock, two by two to their geese feast. It’s noisy and the geese are happy. It’s a good way to spend a cold day. We walk back. The boys find sticks and run. They are so cute. Sailor in his Santa hat, which bobs around as he runs. Mac’s hat has four pom poms on it and he looks adorable. I think about how this is what we should do every day. It lifts our moods, if only for the moment. They find a low wall and drop over it. Again and again and again. Their jeans are dirty. Sailor’s scarf is trailing thru mud. I don’t care. They are being boys. They are happy.
We lunch with my dad and they feast on Thanksgiving plates. Now they are in the bathroom playing in the sink with a tiny frog Mac received from school yesterday. They are being naughty and giggling. But it’s a day off and I just can’t be bothered to care.
Sunday morning Mac wakes me at 8:00. He is starving and wants me to wake up and make breakfast right now. What happened to the days when he used to get his own early morning snack? He pesters while Sailor climbs back into bed with me. I grumble. I was out late last night on a rare ladies’ night out. In celebration of my birthday, which is on Wednesday. Only about 4 ½ or 5 hours have passed since I started to sleep semi-soundly. But I am ok to get up. Shuffle to the kitchen. Start two bowls of oatmeal. “I’m thirsty. What’s this?” Sailor wants to know what is in his sippy cup. “Milk.” Of course. “I want juice.” Didn’t we have this dead-end conversation yesterday morning? “We don’t get juice for breakfast.” He starts to cry and I firmly ask him to stop and remind him that he didn’t have juice yesterday morning either. He begins a fake cry, moaning whimper. And he won’t stop. I ask him to stop. I tell him to stop. I tell him I will give him a reason to cry if he really wants one. This stops him momentarily as he is unsure what I mean. I tell him he can go to his room and he cries harder. I start a mantra in my head and unload the dishwasher. Put a mug in the “mikermave” for tea and try to keep my cool. It is 8:15. I continue the mantra. I explain quietly that I am very tired and didn’t have much sleep. Still, Sailor persists. My tea is ready. The dishwasher is empty. Sailor hops off his seat. Do we even know why he is crying anymore? Certainly he no longer recalls. And still he won’t stop. And I blow up. It has been 20 minutes since Mac has dragged me from beneath my down comforter to make food. I have poured milk, sectioned a Clementine, dished out applesauce, decorated oatmeal with pure maple syrup, made tea, and emptied the dishwasher all while listening to Sailor’s incessant whining and before I even get to pee and brush my teeth. I sit Sailor back in his seat, show him the food in front of him and recommend he eat it, apologize to Mac for ruining his breakfast, and storm off to the shower. Before I can even finish peeing Mac has finished his oatmeal and knocks on the door. Sweetly, “Mommy?” Not so sweetly, “WHAT?” Can’t I just pee? “Is the dishwasher clean or dirty?” Did he not just finish watching me empty the whole thing??
I am showered. The boys are bathed. We are dressed and dried and ready to go. Where? I want to take the boys down the street to breakfast. It is 10:00 a.m. I offer up pancakes, sausage…. They don’t want to go. They have gotten it into their heads to watch tv today, which I have not agreed to. “You can make pancakes here at home,” Mac suggests. “I want French toast,” I sound like an insolent child. “You can make French toast here at home.” “I don’t want to make food at home.” No rest for the mother. It is a fact. So there they are in the living room. A room I insist on keeping tidy despite the fact that the only ones who ever get to use the room are the children. They are watching their favorite “Ruxo Huroes.” (No, I don’t let them watch Star Wars!) And here I am. Laundry to put away. Christmas photo cards to take down. Work to do…. No one cuts the Mommy a break. Ever. But I guess that is what I signed on for. So no complaints. But I really just want to go out for some French toast.
We do the brunch thing on Sunday morning. My dad comes along. The buffet is a great deal and the food is satisfying. I load up everyone’s plate and return to the table. I have a bite or two and Mac asks, “Can you please get me some more melon and strawberries?” I am happy to and start back to the buffet. “And make sure there’s eggs and another waffle and three pieces of bacon and another sausage.” Alrighty then.
We spend Sunday in front of the tv. My boys choose Tarzan, Beauty and the Beast (which Sailor calls simply “Beast”) and Grease. I read. We eat from a 54 oz. bag of M&Ms ("Nemnems," Sailor calls them). It is a pleasant afternoon. At night a TLC program about drastically obese people comes on. Remarkably and disgustingly, it makes us hungry.
Week 18
“Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King!” Mac wakes me thus. “We didn’t buy a present!”
“He’s dead, Honey.”
“But we need to buy him a present!”
“But he’s dead. What time is it?” I can’t see the clock without my glasses and neither of my boys have rubbed their fingerprints all over my specs to deliver them to me yet.
“Seven four.” Oddly, he can tell time on an analog clock, but the digital still stumps him.
“Seven oh four? Or seven forty?”
“Seven forty.” Shoot! I put on my glasses. It’s actually 7:50. Shoot. Double shoot. We have to be at Mac’s talking doctor in an hour! I thought that going to bed early last night would entice an early morning. But I was wrong. Perhaps it was the fact that the boys actually didn’t fall asleep until almost 9:00 and then when I went to sleep at 9:30 for the night I didn’t expect to be awakened by a full-blast BeeGees concert in the middle of the night. For reasons I can’t explain, the stereo likes to perform CDs, apparently at will. And sometimes in the middle of the night. So I let the concert play. But when the StarWars music followed, that was it. And it was already 10:45 by then. Sailor woke in the night, came to my room, changed his mind, and wandered the house crying for a couple of minutes. I woke early with no one in my bed but me. But soon enough I woke again sandwiched between two tiny warm bodies. And then it was time to wake up. Or past the time, to be more accurate.
Cereal for breakfast. It never seems like an adequate meal to me. It’s the fall back, the we-don’t-have-for–me-to-cook-something breakfast. The cop-out breakfast. But a popular choice with my boys, nonetheless. Mac dresses quickly. Sailor dresses quickly when “prompted” to do so. I shower and dress and decide that perfect hair, especially on a snowy day, is over-rated. We are out the door on time and at our appointment on time. But we have forgotten Sailor’s Peter Pan DVD. The one I told him he could bring to his best pal’s house today. The one I told him to remind me about, which he did, but never when I was ready to grab a DVD from the living room, a room I rarely occupy.
So he lets me know about his disappointment during the car ride and for the first 30 minutes of Mac’s appointment. I promise him he can watch it when we get home, IF he stops whining about it. Eventually he stops and watches the fish “kiss the wall” of their tank and poke at rocks.
We meet our best friends at the mall and the three boys run all over the place with Mac as the leader. We, the mommies, are none too pleased, but I know it’s hard to stay cooped up in the winter so I am lenient. And the mall is not terribly crowded. In the toy store my boys immediately find swords and the three have a benign sword fight. In another store Mac finds the one and only light saber in the whole place. Amazing. I spend $8.20 in the food court on a turkey and Swiss, a Sprite and 2 juice boxes. I can’t even bring myself to get the boys a sandwich of their own to maul, play with and throw away, so I give them each one quarter of my hearty lunch and Sailor leaves half of what I give him behind claiming to be full. Money well not spent! Good call, Mama!
When we arrive back at our friends’ house, it is still early in the day. My friend pulls off her son’s hat to reveal some truly crazy hat hair. Mac pulls off his and I am reminded of yesterday, when he pulled off his hat to reveal some serious chicken hair. I tell the story aloud and Mac calls me a chick hair. Loudly. In my ear. I react badly and set the tone for the afternoon. During which time Sailor completely disassembles both of his friend’s precious train tracks in an attempt to simulate the aftermath of a flood. Mac knocks Sailor off a rocking horse and into their friend in an attempt, I can only guess, to see what would happen if he rocks the horse too far forward. Their friend slides down his bunk bed slide slamming Sailor’s head into a book shelf. And the baby (our friend’s) whines and cries and fusses. It is one of those afternoons that makes me tell my boys and their friend in no uncertain terms, that it will be some time before they will be allowed to play together again. These are the only three I know who require constant supervision when playing together. We leave in the snow. Sailor falls asleep right away. Mac falls asleep but wakes while I am pumping gas. He is starving, he says. And can I please stop for a snack?
“What kind of snack?”
“A sweet one.”
“Like what?”
“Like Dunkin’ Donuts.”
Uh, no.
And then we pass McDonalds. “There! Can I have a cheeseburger?”
“But that’s not sweet.”
“I don’t care!”
Well, it is free coffee day.
We stop at the Dollar Store a while later, waking up Sailor in the process. It’s 5:00, though, so not such a bad thing. But the Dollar Store doesn’t have bathtub treads, or whatever you call those things that keep you from falling and cracking your head open while you shower. I pulled all of ours off yesterday when I noticed one peeling to reveal something brown that I had to assume was under each one and not a healthy choice for letting my boys bathe in. Speaking of bathing, Sailor demonstrated his ability to put his whole face underwater over the weekend. I am not certain whether he is able to hold his breath or not or if he just goes under so fast that he doesn’t have to. But he can do it and I am pretty impressed considering another child who lives here (and who shall remain nameless given his extra 2 years of age) won’t even try.
I am not much for routine, yet I know how important it is to kids. So I am thinking a posted bedtime routine that includes cleaning up the playroom might be a good idea. That way, whether they are home with me, their dad, or my parents, they will get their jobs done: Pajamas on, clothes in their hampers, teeth brushed, playroom cleaned up. So we try it tonight. I give them one item to complete at a time. Except I notice Sailor’s room is a disaster, so he and I have to stop to work on that. And then there is the small matter of the offensive stench that seems to emanate from the floor around the toilet in our bathroom. I call the boys in to sniff. I ask them each to pee so that I may observe their technique. I ask outright which is the offender. Mac offers a sheepish, “Not me,” while Sailor points a low set finger at the nether regions of his big brother. Whoever the offender is (I am not offered clues by this evening’s technique display) I am tempted to invest in some old towels to lay around the toilet base each day. Towels that can be changed daily.
While watching Peter Pan, the case of which I have to literally break apart to get the DVD out, I notice that Mac has a particularly hard time sitting still. He fidgets, chews on things (a piece of Easter basket grass that is still on our floor despite the fact that it is January and that I have vacuumed about a million times since spring, and his pajama shirt collar), wiggles, acts as if he has to pee, gets up, wanders from one piece of furniture to another…. It is unsettling and I repeatedly repeat my instructions to please sit still. Sailor on the other hand, sits relatively still (contrary to his constant motion when he sleeps in my bed). Midway through the show he asks, “Mommy, dis is my bone?” He is pulling up the side of his shirt and rubbing his ribs. He seems very interested in bones lately. Also, after the movie I realize that he is a pro at making the sounds of a sword. As he and Mac gallop about the sofa as I try to write.
I tell Sailor he has school tomorrow. His response. “Yeah!” Then, “Right when we wake up?” That is how he expresses his understanding of morning, it’s ‘when we wake up.”
Well, as today is – was – Martin Luther King’s birthday, I think I would be remiss in not reading Mac his new Martin Luther King book to him.
Wednesday morning we sleep in. We make a good grits breakfast and I teach my kids the unfortunate saying, “Kiss my grits.” Why do I teach them this? I don’t know. Just because it comes rolling off my tongue. Because I grew up in the 70’s and watched Alice once in a while. The boys get a bath and I realize that no matter what I do to Mac’s hair he looks like a member of the Beatles. The boy needs a hair cut. Desperately. And even Sailor needs his bangs trimmed. Already. And I can hardly believe that my own short sassy do has grown so much in less than two months that I can no longer style is in the short sassy do style. Everyone in my family is going to have to have long hair from now on.
Mac works on his reading workbook. He reads about a cat named Kitty. What an unfortunate name for a cat, I tell him. Sailor attempts a page and while he is capable of completing the matching activity he prefers to scribble and dig holes in the paper with his pencil. Mac, I notice, is having trouble remembering words even if he has just worked them out earlier on the same page. I try not to show my frustration. He is not as good at concealing his. He is also having a very hard time sitting still, or, for that matter, remaining in his seat at all. I write a note to his teacher. On Curious George paper. I apologize for the paper.
I email all my friends who have kids asking them whether my kids are out of control and can’t play properly or is my friend whose little boy likes to play trains is just too uptight about things. I get a few responses. I feel as if my kids are not good enough to play at my friend’s house. It really isn’t fair to yell at them constantly just for being boys. I have been reprimanding Mac for not following the rules of perfection at my friend’s house for 5 years. I think it’s time to give my kids a break. I don’t think I need to give the friendship a break, but I think it’s too hard on all of us to play together anymore.
Breakfast runs so late that by lunch time no one is hungry. I pack up some snacks and we head to the car. And it won’t start. It is that cold out. This has never happened before. We haven’t left ourselves enough time to walk to school, nor have we quite bundled for walking. I coax the car and it eventually starts and we are on time for kindergarten.
I don’t let Sailor out of the car and he doesn’t get to kiss Mac good-bye. I do, but only by doing a weird stumbling act over one of the triplets and her backpack-on-wheels. Sailor cries through the drive-through bank, down the street and all the way to the dollar store. He only calms down when I offer him one of the cookies I am eating. He shyly accepts.
We tour the dollar store in search of things they either don’t carry or seem to be out of. We fill our cart but before we check out I put half the stuff back. Drain un-clogger, a shower curtain, Pringles…. It’s great what you can find at the dollar store. We hit the grocery store and then sit outside the big school waiting for Mac to come out. We wait for nearly 40 minutes but the car is warm and we have a good parking spot. I offer Sailor a snack while we wait. “Mommy, something about you is funny,” Sailor says. “What?” I ask. “You said shrimp!” Indeed I did. We read Harold and the Purple Crayon and Sailor wants to be "Harold," as he wants to be the hero of any and every story we ever read, ever. “Mommy, I’m him!”
Mac eats shrimp and Clementines in the car on the way to FTK. I feel bad, as I do every Wednesday, dropping him off there a mere 30 minutes after he gets out of school. I miss him. Sailor and I drive home and play catch in the kitchen with a weird squishy thing from the dollar store. I am trying to distract him from wanting to watch tv. I let him “help” me unclog the tub and bathroom sink drains. And then I realize I am tired and we sit down to watch tv. But I get a phone call and then it’s time to go.
Mac has had trouble sitting still and not goofing around in FTK this afternoon too. I ask him if he thinks he needs to take break. It’s too disappointing when he can’t behave, and too much money is wasted.
I pour a glass of wine and start dinner. Mac sits at the kitchen table working on his reading workbook. Sailor watches the rest of Peter Pan in the living room.
Mac doesn’t want to try the rice pudding after dinner. Which is probably fine because it smells a little off. “I tried it already,” he tells me. “When?” I ask. “I was one of the cavemen who invented rice pudding,” he tells me.
After dinner the table is a mess and the kids need to be put to bed and for the first time in a long time I wish I were married. I could use a helping hand tonight. Either with the dishes or with getting the kids to bed. It’s only 7:30 but I am sure I have at least 90 to 120 minutes of work to do before I can even conceive of getting into bed or reading or doing anything else myself.
I am taking out my contacts when Sailor calls. “Mommy?”
“What?” I call back.
“I’m not a kid anymore.” Kid? Anymore? Last I checked, my friend, you were barely out of toddlerhood and no where even near actual “kid” status.
“Look how big I’m getting,” he continues.
All I can offer back is a feeble, “Ok. Lie down I’ll be there in a minute.”
For the first time in weeks, no, make that more than a month, my boys are both asleep before 8:30!
“He’s dead, Honey.”
“But we need to buy him a present!”
“But he’s dead. What time is it?” I can’t see the clock without my glasses and neither of my boys have rubbed their fingerprints all over my specs to deliver them to me yet.
“Seven four.” Oddly, he can tell time on an analog clock, but the digital still stumps him.
“Seven oh four? Or seven forty?”
“Seven forty.” Shoot! I put on my glasses. It’s actually 7:50. Shoot. Double shoot. We have to be at Mac’s talking doctor in an hour! I thought that going to bed early last night would entice an early morning. But I was wrong. Perhaps it was the fact that the boys actually didn’t fall asleep until almost 9:00 and then when I went to sleep at 9:30 for the night I didn’t expect to be awakened by a full-blast BeeGees concert in the middle of the night. For reasons I can’t explain, the stereo likes to perform CDs, apparently at will. And sometimes in the middle of the night. So I let the concert play. But when the StarWars music followed, that was it. And it was already 10:45 by then. Sailor woke in the night, came to my room, changed his mind, and wandered the house crying for a couple of minutes. I woke early with no one in my bed but me. But soon enough I woke again sandwiched between two tiny warm bodies. And then it was time to wake up. Or past the time, to be more accurate.
Cereal for breakfast. It never seems like an adequate meal to me. It’s the fall back, the we-don’t-have-for–me-to-cook-something breakfast. The cop-out breakfast. But a popular choice with my boys, nonetheless. Mac dresses quickly. Sailor dresses quickly when “prompted” to do so. I shower and dress and decide that perfect hair, especially on a snowy day, is over-rated. We are out the door on time and at our appointment on time. But we have forgotten Sailor’s Peter Pan DVD. The one I told him he could bring to his best pal’s house today. The one I told him to remind me about, which he did, but never when I was ready to grab a DVD from the living room, a room I rarely occupy.
So he lets me know about his disappointment during the car ride and for the first 30 minutes of Mac’s appointment. I promise him he can watch it when we get home, IF he stops whining about it. Eventually he stops and watches the fish “kiss the wall” of their tank and poke at rocks.
We meet our best friends at the mall and the three boys run all over the place with Mac as the leader. We, the mommies, are none too pleased, but I know it’s hard to stay cooped up in the winter so I am lenient. And the mall is not terribly crowded. In the toy store my boys immediately find swords and the three have a benign sword fight. In another store Mac finds the one and only light saber in the whole place. Amazing. I spend $8.20 in the food court on a turkey and Swiss, a Sprite and 2 juice boxes. I can’t even bring myself to get the boys a sandwich of their own to maul, play with and throw away, so I give them each one quarter of my hearty lunch and Sailor leaves half of what I give him behind claiming to be full. Money well not spent! Good call, Mama!
When we arrive back at our friends’ house, it is still early in the day. My friend pulls off her son’s hat to reveal some truly crazy hat hair. Mac pulls off his and I am reminded of yesterday, when he pulled off his hat to reveal some serious chicken hair. I tell the story aloud and Mac calls me a chick hair. Loudly. In my ear. I react badly and set the tone for the afternoon. During which time Sailor completely disassembles both of his friend’s precious train tracks in an attempt to simulate the aftermath of a flood. Mac knocks Sailor off a rocking horse and into their friend in an attempt, I can only guess, to see what would happen if he rocks the horse too far forward. Their friend slides down his bunk bed slide slamming Sailor’s head into a book shelf. And the baby (our friend’s) whines and cries and fusses. It is one of those afternoons that makes me tell my boys and their friend in no uncertain terms, that it will be some time before they will be allowed to play together again. These are the only three I know who require constant supervision when playing together. We leave in the snow. Sailor falls asleep right away. Mac falls asleep but wakes while I am pumping gas. He is starving, he says. And can I please stop for a snack?
“What kind of snack?”
“A sweet one.”
“Like what?”
“Like Dunkin’ Donuts.”
Uh, no.
And then we pass McDonalds. “There! Can I have a cheeseburger?”
“But that’s not sweet.”
“I don’t care!”
Well, it is free coffee day.
We stop at the Dollar Store a while later, waking up Sailor in the process. It’s 5:00, though, so not such a bad thing. But the Dollar Store doesn’t have bathtub treads, or whatever you call those things that keep you from falling and cracking your head open while you shower. I pulled all of ours off yesterday when I noticed one peeling to reveal something brown that I had to assume was under each one and not a healthy choice for letting my boys bathe in. Speaking of bathing, Sailor demonstrated his ability to put his whole face underwater over the weekend. I am not certain whether he is able to hold his breath or not or if he just goes under so fast that he doesn’t have to. But he can do it and I am pretty impressed considering another child who lives here (and who shall remain nameless given his extra 2 years of age) won’t even try.
I am not much for routine, yet I know how important it is to kids. So I am thinking a posted bedtime routine that includes cleaning up the playroom might be a good idea. That way, whether they are home with me, their dad, or my parents, they will get their jobs done: Pajamas on, clothes in their hampers, teeth brushed, playroom cleaned up. So we try it tonight. I give them one item to complete at a time. Except I notice Sailor’s room is a disaster, so he and I have to stop to work on that. And then there is the small matter of the offensive stench that seems to emanate from the floor around the toilet in our bathroom. I call the boys in to sniff. I ask them each to pee so that I may observe their technique. I ask outright which is the offender. Mac offers a sheepish, “Not me,” while Sailor points a low set finger at the nether regions of his big brother. Whoever the offender is (I am not offered clues by this evening’s technique display) I am tempted to invest in some old towels to lay around the toilet base each day. Towels that can be changed daily.
While watching Peter Pan, the case of which I have to literally break apart to get the DVD out, I notice that Mac has a particularly hard time sitting still. He fidgets, chews on things (a piece of Easter basket grass that is still on our floor despite the fact that it is January and that I have vacuumed about a million times since spring, and his pajama shirt collar), wiggles, acts as if he has to pee, gets up, wanders from one piece of furniture to another…. It is unsettling and I repeatedly repeat my instructions to please sit still. Sailor on the other hand, sits relatively still (contrary to his constant motion when he sleeps in my bed). Midway through the show he asks, “Mommy, dis is my bone?” He is pulling up the side of his shirt and rubbing his ribs. He seems very interested in bones lately. Also, after the movie I realize that he is a pro at making the sounds of a sword. As he and Mac gallop about the sofa as I try to write.
I tell Sailor he has school tomorrow. His response. “Yeah!” Then, “Right when we wake up?” That is how he expresses his understanding of morning, it’s ‘when we wake up.”
Well, as today is – was – Martin Luther King’s birthday, I think I would be remiss in not reading Mac his new Martin Luther King book to him.
Wednesday morning we sleep in. We make a good grits breakfast and I teach my kids the unfortunate saying, “Kiss my grits.” Why do I teach them this? I don’t know. Just because it comes rolling off my tongue. Because I grew up in the 70’s and watched Alice once in a while. The boys get a bath and I realize that no matter what I do to Mac’s hair he looks like a member of the Beatles. The boy needs a hair cut. Desperately. And even Sailor needs his bangs trimmed. Already. And I can hardly believe that my own short sassy do has grown so much in less than two months that I can no longer style is in the short sassy do style. Everyone in my family is going to have to have long hair from now on.
Mac works on his reading workbook. He reads about a cat named Kitty. What an unfortunate name for a cat, I tell him. Sailor attempts a page and while he is capable of completing the matching activity he prefers to scribble and dig holes in the paper with his pencil. Mac, I notice, is having trouble remembering words even if he has just worked them out earlier on the same page. I try not to show my frustration. He is not as good at concealing his. He is also having a very hard time sitting still, or, for that matter, remaining in his seat at all. I write a note to his teacher. On Curious George paper. I apologize for the paper.
I email all my friends who have kids asking them whether my kids are out of control and can’t play properly or is my friend whose little boy likes to play trains is just too uptight about things. I get a few responses. I feel as if my kids are not good enough to play at my friend’s house. It really isn’t fair to yell at them constantly just for being boys. I have been reprimanding Mac for not following the rules of perfection at my friend’s house for 5 years. I think it’s time to give my kids a break. I don’t think I need to give the friendship a break, but I think it’s too hard on all of us to play together anymore.
Breakfast runs so late that by lunch time no one is hungry. I pack up some snacks and we head to the car. And it won’t start. It is that cold out. This has never happened before. We haven’t left ourselves enough time to walk to school, nor have we quite bundled for walking. I coax the car and it eventually starts and we are on time for kindergarten.
I don’t let Sailor out of the car and he doesn’t get to kiss Mac good-bye. I do, but only by doing a weird stumbling act over one of the triplets and her backpack-on-wheels. Sailor cries through the drive-through bank, down the street and all the way to the dollar store. He only calms down when I offer him one of the cookies I am eating. He shyly accepts.
We tour the dollar store in search of things they either don’t carry or seem to be out of. We fill our cart but before we check out I put half the stuff back. Drain un-clogger, a shower curtain, Pringles…. It’s great what you can find at the dollar store. We hit the grocery store and then sit outside the big school waiting for Mac to come out. We wait for nearly 40 minutes but the car is warm and we have a good parking spot. I offer Sailor a snack while we wait. “Mommy, something about you is funny,” Sailor says. “What?” I ask. “You said shrimp!” Indeed I did. We read Harold and the Purple Crayon and Sailor wants to be "Harold," as he wants to be the hero of any and every story we ever read, ever. “Mommy, I’m him!”
Mac eats shrimp and Clementines in the car on the way to FTK. I feel bad, as I do every Wednesday, dropping him off there a mere 30 minutes after he gets out of school. I miss him. Sailor and I drive home and play catch in the kitchen with a weird squishy thing from the dollar store. I am trying to distract him from wanting to watch tv. I let him “help” me unclog the tub and bathroom sink drains. And then I realize I am tired and we sit down to watch tv. But I get a phone call and then it’s time to go.
Mac has had trouble sitting still and not goofing around in FTK this afternoon too. I ask him if he thinks he needs to take break. It’s too disappointing when he can’t behave, and too much money is wasted.
I pour a glass of wine and start dinner. Mac sits at the kitchen table working on his reading workbook. Sailor watches the rest of Peter Pan in the living room.
Mac doesn’t want to try the rice pudding after dinner. Which is probably fine because it smells a little off. “I tried it already,” he tells me. “When?” I ask. “I was one of the cavemen who invented rice pudding,” he tells me.
After dinner the table is a mess and the kids need to be put to bed and for the first time in a long time I wish I were married. I could use a helping hand tonight. Either with the dishes or with getting the kids to bed. It’s only 7:30 but I am sure I have at least 90 to 120 minutes of work to do before I can even conceive of getting into bed or reading or doing anything else myself.
I am taking out my contacts when Sailor calls. “Mommy?”
“What?” I call back.
“I’m not a kid anymore.” Kid? Anymore? Last I checked, my friend, you were barely out of toddlerhood and no where even near actual “kid” status.
“Look how big I’m getting,” he continues.
All I can offer back is a feeble, “Ok. Lie down I’ll be there in a minute.”
For the first time in weeks, no, make that more than a month, my boys are both asleep before 8:30!
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