Week 10

After spending the entire weekend glued not only to my phone but to a radio station that is not my preferred choice of listening material, and, I might add, not winning the Bee Gees 6 CD box set, I feel a certain obligation to share this information with anyone who benignly asks how my weekend was.

Monday. Sailor spies wheat germ on the table at breakfast. “I want yergit,” he requests. Yogurt with “crunchy nuts” as we call them (wheat germ just doesn’t sound all that mouth watering) is one of Sailor’s favorite late night snacks. Mine too. “I say yergit,” says Sailor, “because I don’t know what is called.”
From his adjacent bedroom Mac pipes up, “It’s yogurt.”
“Yo,” Sailor begins. “Yo-gurt.” He gets words easily as long as you say them clearly and distinctly for him.
“Mom,” he looks at me seriously. “It’s yogurt.” Thanks for letting me know.
Pointing to the yogurt he then asks me, “What I use’ call dis?”

Right before we leave for gym Sailor complains that he doesn’t want to go. This is somewhat unusual for him. He likes gym and Mac goes with him. So there should be no problem. “My hands hurt,” he tells me. Red flag. I pop the thermometer in his ear. He has a fever.

We drop Mac at the gym’s front door and Sailor is adamantly asking, “Why we leaving Mac?” we park, recycle and join Mac. Sailor vacillates between wanting to join the class and not and eventually he joins. He must be feeling better.

He falls asleep on the drive back to Mac’s talking doctor. I manage to carry him all the way in and up to the 2nd floor, all the while cursing myself for not having at the very least our umbrella stroller stowed in the trunk of the car. I lay him gently on the bench in the waiting room, cover him with my coat and he sleeps through half of Mac’s appointment.

Mac complains he doesn’t feel well during the 15 minutes in the bathroom that it takes for him to remove a t-shirt, a long sleeve shirt, shoes, socks and running pants and redress in clean socks, pants, long sleeve shirt and button up shirt. I decide he is not sick and should go to school. But by the time we get there he is apparently delirious with fever because he is acting like some kind of out of control nutcase. He doesn’t have a fever, really, but I threaten to take him home if he is unable to keep his hands to himself while waiting in line to go in.

Standing next to the German mom, I point to the token African-American child in the class (we had one when I was in kindergarten here, too). “We were invited to that one’s birthday party on Saturday,” I tell her. My voice is not raised but I am not whispering either. “His mom emailed last week to invite Mac to the party but then she never emailed me or called me back to give me the details. Good thing I didn’t change any plans for this on Saturday!” I am dishing. I don’t know why I feel compelled to share this info with this particular mom. I think I am still just very surprised by this really weird breach of etiquette.
I turn my head slightly and catch a glimpse of the little boy’s mom. She is sitting in her minivan, window down, not 8 feet from where I stand. Oh, shit!

I warn Miss Ho, Mac is really hyper today. I tell her she can call me to come get him if he is too crazy.

Sailor and I drive to the grocery store and pick out the few foods on the shelves that don’t contain partially hydrogenated oils, artificial colors or flavors, or high fructose corn syrup. I absolutely marvel at the vast number of foods on the shelves that people buy because they believe these things will nourish their bodies and the bodies of their growing children, when in fact these things are poisoning us. It’s getting harder and harder to shop the regular grocery stores.

I check email while Sailor plays. The kindergarten room mother has sent us all a reminder that Wednesday is P.E. day and that the little girls should wear shorts under their pretty dresses on this day. I shoot a quick email back. It would have been nice, I suggest, to have been informed back in September (by someone other than my kindergartener) that the p.m. kindergarten goes to gym on Wednesdays in the first place. Not “reminded” of it in an email in November.

Sailor doesn’t want to walk with me to retrieve Mac from school. But he doesn’t want to stay home with Nana either. I think what he is trying to say is that he wants me to himself a little longer. Nana walks with us to the big school and I wonder if she feels the same as she did when she made this walk back in the 1970s.

It’s ever so slightly warm out and on a whim I take the boys for ice cream on the way home. It’s a fun diversion. Mac orders chocolate marshmallow but regrettably it’s only a flavor. There are no actual marshmallows in the soft serve. Sailor says he’ll share mine and has a bite or two, actually saving me some money for a change.

Mac doesn’t remember if he learned any new words in French class today. But he does know a new song, which he will sing with his class at the Thanksgiving Festival. “But don’t cry when I sing, ok Mom?!” “Why would I cry?” I ask. “Because you love me.”

Homework. Letter H for Mac (whose real name begins with H)! Hurray! Mac’s favorite letter, at last. Read the poem and circle the Hh’s. By this time I am convinced it should be Mac reading the poems. So I help him along through the tough words. When he is done, I re-read the poem so he can hear it fluently. Except this poem has a glaring error. The hippo, who is the main character of this 10-liner, eventually “laid” down near the end of the poem. Laid down? Laid down?! Doesn’t the poet mean lay down? I take out my pink ball point and cross out the offending word and replace it with “lay” and an asterisk. At the bottom of the paper I explain briefly that the verb “to lay” is not the verb that should be used here, rather that the verb required at this point in the poem is “to lie,” the past tense of which should be “lay.” Miss H is going to hate me for certain. But I am incensed that not only did the poet create this terrible grammatical error, but that it was allowed to be made into a blackline master, which Miss H has distributed to the entire kindergarten class. She didn’t notice. And I hate to admit it, but I would be willing to bet that if I were bold enough to email the kindergarten parents to inquire as to how many had caught the error, only a few would know to what I was referring. The French moms would know, I assume, as they were the ones who agreed with me recently that we Americans, who don’t speak more than our own language, in most cases don’t even do that well.

Despite the fact that tap class is less than two blocks away, we are consistently late. Why? Because I do stupid things like look at my watch, say, “Let’s go,” and then make a phone call, expecting Mac to be ready in a minute so I can terminate the call. No such luck. Mac’s socks are missing and the woman on the other end of the line needs all sorts of information from me and wants to propose another project…. It’s warm enough for Mac to wear his too-small flip flops from summer and we drop Sailor downstairs with Nana and run off to tap.

I read. He taps. I talk to the moms. He goes to the bathroom. I watch as more than one child leaves the building in his or her tap shoes! What a definite no-no. Miss M hands me a slip of paper reminding me of the recital at 6:30 on December 11th. “We have to wear brown,” Mac reminds me, “We’re reindeer.” “How about khaki pants?” I suggest, trying to save myself a buck. “No, that’s not reindeer color.” Sigh. But then a moment later, “Do you hear me? I absolutely do not want to dance in this recital. And that is all I have to say.”

I’ll have to ponder this one. Let him out of this sure-to-be-a-disaster performance and save myself the cost of brown pants and brown shirt. Or insist he follow through with the plan of the class and capture some amusing video footage that could come in handy when Mac is getting married, say. It’s a tough one!

We retreat to Nana and Granddad’s after class so we can get Sailor. But we don’t leave. We stay. There is something innately safe feeling about being at my parents’ house. Even though ours is a carbon copy layout of their flat below us, I definitely get a different sense being down there than I do up here. Security perhaps. Or maybe it’s just the fact that my chores, my chaos, are not down there. Down there I am still a child in some generational sense. And I can sit at the kitchen table and let my mom pour me coffee or serve dinner and only feel slightly guilty that she is still catering to us rather than the roles now being reversed. I am too tired to feel that much guilt however, and mostly I just feel comfort and gratitude.

We eat “hamiches” (as Sailor calls sandwiches) downstairs and when the boys are too pooped to pop, around 7:00, we head up.

I am in bed alone for a change. I finish reading the Anderson Cooper book and wonder if he’d respond if I wrote him a letter suggesting we get married. He is a year older than I am, devilishly handsome, super successful, and never around. My perfect man. Oprah keeps me up until midnight and then a TLC program, which I’ve seen a few times before, about primordial dwarves keeps me up even later. It’s no wonder I am crabby in the morning.

Tuesday. Sailor greets the day with his daily question, “I have go preschool today?” my “yes” turns him into a puddle of tears that won’t let up. I want so badly to give in. To tell him it’s ok, he doesn’t have to go. “I use like it ‘dere, but now I don’t,” he explains. He cries all morning. “I hate preschool!” he yells. I am beginning to, as well. “It’s November,” I pointlessly reason, “you should be over this by now! Enough is enough!”

He loads 8 little knights into my bag to bring to school, along with Curious George. The castle at school is missing its knights. He wants to bring the whole castle but Mac won’t let him. Thank goodness.

Brody’s mom stops me outside preschool to tell me that every day she asks Brody who he is going to play with at school and he says, “Sailor! Sailor!” Always Sailor, she says. I just don’t have it in me to tell her that Sailor complains that Brody isn’t nice to him almost every day. I smile. Jack’s mom invites us for an overdue play date on Friday afternoon. S says it’s ok for Mac to come to school with Sailor on Thursday. I think I’ll go back home and sleep for three hours! Or get my hair cut.

Mac accompanies Nana, GrandDad and me to the nearest exclusive overpriced private school so we can vote for the governor of Illinois and other guys and gals who we need to help make this place a bit safer and more fair. When we are done it’s 11:30 and Mac hasn’t had lunch. I suggest he ask GrandDad to help him satisfy his pancake craving while I pick up Sailor. Sailor is asleep in the stroller by the time I get back to pick up Mac. We walk to school at a good clip but I walk home more slowly. I have no where to be.

Sailor wakes when I lay him on the sofa. He wants to watch tv. I am too tired (too drugged from allergy medicine that is making me feel like crap) to care so he watches. When it’s over he asks about his light saber. The one I told him, in no uncertain terms during a tantrum about it yesterday, that he would never get back. I repeat my no, calmly, several times. He moves on to the x-wing fighter. I don’t really know what this is but it’s a Star Wars thing that Mac has promised to buy Sailor for Christmas, which is still somewhere around 6 weeks away. “I going be Batman for Christmas,” Sailor tells me. I explain that we don’t wear costumes for Christmas. “What we wear?” he wants to know. “You’ll be pajama boy,” I tell him. “No, cuz ‘den you laugh at me and say I’m cute. And I’m not.” Not right now you’re not.

“I can’t wait for Christmas,” my little cutie wails. Over and over and over, along with, "I want my x-wing fighter now.” Over the phone my sister suggests I threaten to withdraw all StarWars guys from the playroom if he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t stop. I drop him off with Nana and GrandDad and walk through the mist to get Mac from school. It’s getting chilly out again and until I pick up my pace I regret leaving my jacket at home.

I sit with my dad and Sailor at the kitchen table. A catalog catches Sailor’s eye. “These elfes?” he asks, pointing to three children dressed as elves on the cover and pronouncing the word as if it indeed has two syllables.
“Elvis?” I joke.
“No,” Sailor says seriously. Then, turning to face me directly, “Say with me. T-t-t ELF!”

My dad nearly falls off his seat with laughter.

No one feels like eating or making dinner since I just finished the pancakes downstairs and the boys just polished off the remains of a box of Honey Bunches of Oats. So when Mac suggests a peanut butter sandwich I think he is a brilliant child. We eat pbj’s, carrots, and apples for dinner and Halloween candy for dessert. This time I remember to have them brush their teeth before bed. During dinner, Mac says, out of no where in particular, “I don’t like when you wear your hair in a ponytail, Mom.” He says he likes my hair long and since I am considering quite seriously the idea of lopping off a few inches to decrease my morning blow-dry routine time, I ask how he’d like my hair shorter. “No, that won’t work at all. I like long hair,” he gestures as if his hair flowed down the front of his chest. “But what about your short hair?” I am curious. “Oh, I don’t care about my hair,” he replies.

I chat with my college best friend on the phone about the foot-in-my-mouth incident at school yesterday regarding the mom who reneged on the party invitation. We decide that if anyone should be embarrassed it should be the other mom, not me. I’m good with that.

Earlier, I checked Mac’s folder for homework. There is a sheet of H’s and h’s to trace and practice, but curiously the hippo poem with the Hh’s to circle, and my note about proper use of the verb “to lie” versus the verb “to lay,” is not there. Interesting. Not so surprising. But very interesting. I wonder if I’ll see this homework tomorrow.

Tomorrow is a day off again. Apparently someone thought my original 4-day-week idea was a good one. It’s report card pick up day. Miss H has already sent home a copy of the report card so we’ll know what we are looking at and not waste her time looking for explanations. I look over the Xerox copy and realize I don’t need Miss H to check the little boxes beside the kindergarten skills lists. I know my little boy can’t tie his own shoes yet but plays well in groups. In fact, as the mom, I probably have a much better grasp on whether or not Mac can zip his own coat or knows all the letters in the alphabet. After all, I have known him for 2 weeks short of 5 ½ years at this point. She has known him for 2 ½ hours 4-5 days a week for 9 weeks. Makes me wonder who should really be filling out this progress report.

My dilemma of the week (ok, this may not last the entire week, but as I seem to have a couple other problems under control I have to have something to contemplate now) is whether or not to trade in my double jogger for a single. I’ve found a mom who has a single she is willing to trade. Thing is, Mac just begged me to get the double because his “feet hurt” and his “legs hurt” (ailments that seem to have been passed down directly to his brother, hence a weeding out of his shoe pile over the weekend) and he just couldn’t walk. But I just can’t push it anymore. But maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s the air in the tires. Maybe it’s just low. Mac walks everywhere now anyway. But when asked he says no, we can’t get rid of our stroller because (and here it is again) “my feet and my legs hurt whenever I walk.” What to do… what to do… Yes, these are the kinds of things I make time to worry about when I am not obsessing about North Korean missiles, terrorist attacks in downtown Chicago, age-defining wrinkles around my mouth and eyes, unhealthy food additives, sole custody versus joint custody, how to pay off my student loans and still feed my children, rectal cancer, and whether or not my favorite French mom thinks I am an American pain in the ass.

Wednesday is report card pick up day. No school for the kids. I plan to sleep in a little. Sailor wakes me up asking me for his StarWars guys that he found on top of the fridge last night. I tell him he can have them when I get up and he walks away crying. Good morning, Mommy! If I never hear of StarWars again it won’t be too soon. And I tell the kids this. It’s to be a No StarWars Day. Right.

Oatmeal, milk, bananas and real organic maple syrup. I have this breakfast thing down. Mac complains that the oatmeal is not blue, the color he always asks me to dye it. I read him a quick blurb I’ve taped to the side of the fridge about the damage artificial colors can do. He is sad but he eats. Both boys are dressed and ready to watch Curious George at 8:00 a.m.

With no place to go until 12:30 we head out at 9:30. The tree in front of our house is shedding its leaves as rapidly as a snowstorm. Yellow leaves completely cover the sidewalk. It’s beautiful. We drive off to Whole Foods in search of organic, natural food coloring. And we find it. A pack of three small bottles of pure vegetable food coloring for the low, low price of … $16.99! No joke! We buy a tiny box of organic sprinkles for $1.49 instead.

We pick up the new Cars DVD at Best Buy. I tell the boys they have to wait til Christmas for it. “We can watch it when it’s Christmas?” Sailor asks.

Back at home we find parking in front of the house and because the boys complain that the car stinks (I haven’t noticed) every time they get in, I propose a little family project. I haul up the big garbage can and we get to work emptying the car of months and months of debris. Clothes, books, a lost mitten, lots of food, half full juice boxes and Starbucks chocolate milk cups, string cheese, toys… This, I tell them, is why it stinks in here. They do a bang up job helping me out.
We stop by the currency exchange so I can buy my overpriced city sticker for my car before my current one expires. I am too late to mail in the application and fee and am thus subject to a $6 surcharge. As if the $78 weren’t financial burden enough. The woman behind the plexiglass window compliments my boys for being so well-behaved. She really makes my day.

After lunch we drive over to see our friend who has three-month-old twin boys. Shortly after we arrive she leaves to get her 3-year-old, Sailor’s friend, from preschool. One twin sleeps in his swing while the other lies under a baby gym atop the dining room table. My boys are fascinated with this baby boy. Mac is still not as gentle as I wish he were. But Sailor is charming. “Sometimes it ok a baby gets kisses?” he asks. I tell him he can kiss the baby’s foot. “Sometimes it ok a baby gets hugs?”

Mac touches the baby’s tiny hand. “He’s not an Indian, Mom.” “Why do you say that?” I ask. “His skin is the same color as mine.” Indeed it is. This baby’s mother is from India and his dad is of Polish descent.

“Which one is Ravi?” Mac asks. He is confused. Ravi is the child of another Indian/American couple we know. “This is Ronav,” I tell them. “I can say ‘dat,” Sailor says, “Ronah.”
“Ronav,” I correct.
“Rona- VVVV,” he says, emphasizing the V.
At some point later Mac calls the baby Rivet, the name of one of Rescue Heroes robots. Poor child. His mother threatened us all for nine months that she was going to name her twins Rohan and Reyhan. Everyone, including her three-year-old, still calls them these names despite the fact that she chose Ronav over Rohan. Still, it’s doubtful anyone will remember his real name.

Sailor strokes the side of the baby’s face. He has baby eczema so his skin is rough. “He itchy?” Sailor asks, making the connection between the baby’s skin and the skin of the itchy boy at preschool. “His skin is rough,” he tells me, “I don’t like touch it.”

I suggest the boys go back to the basement to play but they prefer to “take care of the baby” popping his pacifier into his mouth, tickling him lightly, making him laugh. “Let’s sing to him,” Mac suggest and begins a few rounds of Twinkle Twinkle. Sailor chooses his favorite song, and as Mac sings the traditional, Sailor begins, “You should be dancin’ YEA!”

A part time babysitter stops by at 3:00 and we three adults take the five boys to the nearby playground. When I have to leave to take Mac to FTK a short time later I ask Sailor if he wants to stay with his friend and his friend’s mom, fully expecting him to say, “I want be with you!” but he doesn’t. I remind my friend, who is as paranoid and overprotective as I am, that I have never left Sailor at a playground with anyone before. I am really proud of Sailor!

Walking back to the car with Mac he suddenly says, “I feel like a dorf.” “Why?”
“Because I am so little and you are so big,” he says. Makes sense. But I think he’s watching too much little people, Big World on TLC!
When I leave him at FTK, I say, “I love you!” Mac smiles and three other little faces look up at me. The other red headed boy in the class, one of the radio celeb’s twins, has a particularly charming grin, missing a tooth or two already. I can’t help myself, they are so beseeching. “I love you all!” I say.

Report card pickup. I wait in the hallway with some other parents and Sailor promptly puts his head in my lap and passes out cold. I tease Miss H when she calls me in, “This is what happens when you keep me waiting for three hours.”

She tells me Mac is doing well with his letters and his writing. She says he still has some trouble keeping his hands to himself, but on some days he has no trouble at all. Nothing I don’t already know. He’s a crazy red head, I remind her. I love my crazy red head so much and I am pleased that Miss H seems fond of him. I know he is not always easy, but he is a truly great kid and I can tell that she sees that in him.

We talk about this class’s first assembly coming up in two weeks and I randomly tell Miss H that I still remember my lines from my own kindergarten class play. Thank G-d I didn’t start reciting them (because not only would I have made a fool of myself for this, I would also have realized in front of the teacher that in fact I no longer remember my lines verbatim. Forgive me, it’s been 33 years!). I also remember, I tell her, the milk list from 1st grade. I don’t recite that either (tho that I still can: Melanie, Maria, Lamar, Sean, Lars, Jennifer, Jim, Dawn G., Nancy, Susan, Jay, Paul, Kim, Carla, Kristin, Ann, Chris, Laura, Masami, Wa) nor do I realize she probably has no idea what a milk list is. (It was the list of children who were to come up and get their milk at snack time. I was asked to read it so often I had it memorized after awhile. And I always read my own name, because I was too embarrassed not to. So now you know.)

Miss H says she is really lucky to have such a great group of kids this year. I agree.

I ask her about the Hh poem with the incorrect verb. She tells me she has sent it to the principal’s office and that she plans to email the publisher. This is encouraging.

Sailor sleeps through it all. I haul him back out to the car and pull out the report card. W, for well developed, as in a skill, is the highest mark. Mac has mostly W’s, a few P’s for partially developed. I don’t recall any B’s for beginning to develop, though there may have been one or two. And only two check marks. I remember those checks. They are for the things you need to work on. According to the report card Mac has had 42 days of school.

This report card is pretty straight forward. There are really no surprises. I don’t know how well I will do when he gets the real report card in a year or so, the one with the A, B, C grading scale. I think I will become a more diligent parent with the homework then. Meanwhile, I am really proud of Mac. He is doing well and he is well-liked.

Next I pull out his class photo. I have chosen the dorky kindergartener pose. He looks adorable. The full class photo is actually hilarious. Mac is down front between one of the French boys and the only Hispanic boy in the class. He has this ridiculous grin on his face. It’s hysterically funny to look at these kids and I can’t help wonder hat the photographer said to them before he snapped the photo. Only one or two of the children look completely normal, and one of the triplets has her eyes closed! I can’t wait to get this one up on the playroom wall. Later, when Sailor wants me to stay in his room while he falls asleep, I study the tiny faces carefully. In my mind’s eye I see my own kindergarten class photo. I know I will be watching so many of these little faces for years and years to come, the way I watched my own class grow up beside me. The way my mother can look into my photo and see me at 5, my friend Jennifer, who lives in St. Louis, at 5, and other children who are now adults, parents with their own children, who still live in the neighborhood. You can take this photo. Preserve the memory. But life will move on. So much will change. And too soon we will be watching these tiny people, no longer so tiny, walking down the 8th grade graduation aisle, the high school graduation aisle, the wedding aisle. They are our life.

Thursday. Mac and Sailor decide it’d be a fabulous idea for Mac to attend preschool with Sailor for the morning. So with S’s blessing that is exactly what happens. It’s a 3-hour break for me. I shop, come home, make some phone calls, and before I know it I am running out the door to pick up my little boys. Mac says he was a little bored, but I am not surprised. He is almost 5 ½ and way too old for preschool. Sailor wants to know if Mac can come again next week.

The afternoon is relatively uneventful. One of the moms from Mac’s class comes over to look at my dirt. Literally. She is here to evaluate the condition of my home and decide how much cleaning is necessary to, in her words, whip the place into shape. This was a brainstorm of mine: she owns a cleaning service, I own a children’s art studio… trade time! Brilliant, I know!

The boys’ dad is over tonight. He was out of town on Tuesday, his regular night. I order a pizza. He pays. I am content. I wish we could be the family we appear to be when we are together. But we are not. We can never be.

Friday. We have no morning plans. Mac told me last night he plans to sleep in. Sailor wakes me at 6:45. He is hungry. I suggest he go to the kitchen and find himself a snack. (I am remembering Mac waking up hungry around 2 ½ years of age. He goes to the kitchen and comes back with something in his mouth. “What did you find?” I ask, still half asleep. “Chicken,” he replies.) Sailor should be able to do this himself by now. But he doesn’t want a snack he wants, he informs me, a perfectly enunciated breakfast. I haul my butt out of bed and make a complete breakfast of yogurt with bananas and wheat germ, a carrot muffin and scrambled eggs before he dawdles in.

The boys get a bath and I inexplicably decide to dress them in matching cable knit sweaters, white turtlenecks, blue corduroys and saddle shoes. They are precious. I try to snap a couple of potential holiday card photos while they play but they strike combat poses and I give up.

A whole morning of no plans and we are late for school.

Sailor has a play date with Jack in the afternoon. He falls asleep in the car on the way over. He and Jack are too shy to interact for the first 45 minutes of playtime. Jack’s mom and I joke: “Hey come on over to my house and play by yourself near me.”

At 2:30 I say it’s time to leave. At 2:55 we leave. Not enough time to get home, park and get the stroller. But I can’t drive to school because Mac is bringing one of the French girls home after school and I can‘t put three children in my car. Sailor about has an in-car tantrum when he finds out he has to go to GrandDad’s for a few minutes. He tries everything he can think of to get me to keep him in the car with me. “I hate GrandDad!” No you don’t. “I’m ‘fraid of GrandDad!” Why? “I’m ‘fraid of his beard.” Oh, yeah, since when? His beard is older than you are. “I’m ‘fraid of Nana.” Enough! I drop him off screaming and rush through a very bizarre rain storm that is making 3:30 look like 7:30 p.m. I find a miraculous illegal but available parking space half a block away. I am not late. The kids come out and I hustle the two to the car in the rain. The little girl is displeased with the condition of my car. “I don’t want my feet on all these pretzels,” she says about the food debris on the floor of the car. She should have seen our car two days ago.

We run out of gas and can barely get the car started so we drive through traffic to a gas station a few blocks away. They are out of the two cheaper gasses and I pump 2 gallons of premium for $5.
On the way back the kids discuss their beds.
Mac: I have the top of the bunk bed. Sailor is supposed to have the bottom bunk but we haven’t set it up yet. Blah blah blah… (I’m listening to the radio as they announce this weekend’s contest: DVDs and tickets to see Ellen Degeneres. I love Ellen Degeneres! Here we go again!) mom’s bed… blah blah…

The French Girl: What about your Dad’s bed?

H: My dad doesn’t sleep at our house.
TFG: Why not?
H: He doesn’t live with us. See, he’s gay, so. I don’t have a dad. He just visits on Thursdays and Tuesdays.
TFG: Well, my dad just went to China and he works all the time and I am never going to see him again.

Oh, boy! I can’t help snickering and smiling at Mac’s remorseful tone of voice and his candor. I also can’t help noticing that his friend doesn’t know enough to comment on the word gay. But I will make a point to share this conversation with her mom later just in case she does realize she has heard a word she does not understand.

At home the three children turn into 10 kids and trash the house from Mac’s room all the way through to Sailor’s room. Underpants are everywhere, costumes are out, there are no muffins left on the snack plate. The house is a disaster. I divert the children’s attention to an at-the-table project. I overhear the following conversation:
TFG: What’s this?
H: Oh, it’s the sponge.
TFG: What’s a sponge?
H: Have you ever seen your mom wash dishes?
TFG: No.
H: Have you ever seen that thing she holds in her hand? That’s the sponge.

The girl’s mom arrives and we drink tea. It gets late and dark and dinnertime passes. We are standing in the play room discussing horrible accidents that befall children and how careful, we, as moms, must be with our children. Mac spider walks up the doorway. His head touches the top threshold, the ceiling. He is about 8 feet up at his highest point. Sailor throws cups at him. I watch Mac carefully, knowing he is going to fall and get hurt. But also knowing that even if I say anything, tell him to get down, my words will fall on deaf ears as they have this whole afternoon/evening. No one listened when I reminded them of our no door slamming rule. No one listened when I reminded them not to run through the house. No one listened when I said no screaming. No one even listened when I sent Mac and Sailor to their respective rooms and had TFG sit on a kitchen chair. No one listened for the past 2 1/2 hours so I am sure no one will listen now. So I keep my eye on my little wall climber and carry on with the grown up conversation. The noise level would leave you thinking I have a classroom full of children here. The cup throwing is ridiculous. The girl reaches up and grabs Mac by the back of the sweater and he falls straight down. Lands on his butt. And lets out a shriek of a scream. Throws his hands to his mouth. I don’t react. I stand still. I look at him. My look says, “See?” “And now he won’t climb the wall again,” I say aloud. And then I see the blood. There is a LOT of it. And I can’t tell where it is coming from. And Mac won’t stop screaming. The blood is pouring out of somewhere. But where? His tongue. He has bitten right through it. Straight through to the underside, where a small flap of skin hangs down. Water. Wet paper towel. Ice. Screams. I still know the phone number to the ER by heart from when I worked at the children’s hospital. The other mom calls and begins, “My son just bit his tongue…” but they tell her they can’t say what to do. Call your pediatrician. My pediatrician (whose number I also know by heart) has a frustratingly slow answering message and I think Mac may bleed to death before I get to the part where I get to leave a voice message for the physician on call. He calls back moments later and directs us to the ER. Except Sailor is not dressed. Well, actually he is dressed. As a pirate. And neither boys’ shoes and socks can be found among the mess. I pull Sailor’s sweater from the laundry pile and find clean socks. My parents’ phone rings and rings and rings and rings….Why do people have call waiting when they think it’s rude to USE IT?! I get the kids into coats and hats and we are out in the dark in the rain. Sailor falls asleep in the car during the 45-second ride to the hospital. Mac is crying. He is in pain and he also heard the word stitches. He is afraid. He’s also easily distracted. There is so much water in the parking lot I have to carry Mac over a puddle while pushing a sleeping Sailor in the umbrella stroller one handed through said puddle. This is not quite my idea of fun things to do at 7:00 on a Friday night. No there is definitely something else I’d rather be doing. One idea I had for the evening involves bed, tv, pizza, and two cute and snuggly little boys. The other, more risqué idea, was, well, more risqué!

The ER nurse sends us straight to urgent care. A nurse and three docs look at Mac’s bloody face and mouth and I nearly puke when they open up the tongue wound to take a closer look. Sailor sleeps through it all. Mac gets an orange popsicle and no stitches and he wants to know why Dora the Explorer and her animal sidekick Boots are Spanish. I start to answer something about, “because they are from Spain or Mexico,” but stop myself and say, “So you can learn to speak Spanish.” Which he is doing around the blood soaked gauze in his mouth: repeating quietly the Spanish words thrown out from the television set in the exam room for his knowledge. It’s freezing out and still pouring rain when we leave at 8:15. I am starving. Sailor is still sleeping. Mac is exhausted but wants soup when we get home. There are enormous puddles of standing water on every corner and we are forced to walk in the street. How much more dangerous can you get? A short mom, with a sleeping toddler and an injured child walking in the street at night in the rain?! For G-d’s sake! Get us home! Sailor wakes up and is freezing and hungry. I make soup. I wolf down a leftover salad and heat up the last piece of last night’s spinach pizza. Mac asks me to save him a piece but I decline, saying we can get more pizza when he is better. I tell him he can’t have a fork until Sunday. He explains his injury and his restrictions to Sailor. Sailor tries the pizza. “I am eating the spinach and it tastes good,” he says, “Look!” and he shows us by taking a bite.

Mac, exhausted, is in his room getting ready for bed. He is talking about me having twins and one of them being another Mac. I think it’d be funny if I had male twins some day and one looked just like Mac and the other just like Sailor. It’s been known to happen, but I am not thinking about the fact that it would not happen because they’d have a different father…. Sailor is talking about having a baby in his tummy. “No, Sailor, the girl has the baby in her tummy. The boy just makes the baby.”
“How he makes the baby?” Sailor asks. I am thinking about how to begin when Mac jumps right in with, “well the daddy and the mommy snuggle up really close like this,” and he climbs his little underpants-clad self atop me. “Then they put heir penises together and they make a baby.”
“Mommy doesn’t have a penis,” I remind him. “Do you remember what Mommy has?”
“A seed,” he offers.
I give him the correct terminology and he takes it in. Then he whips out his little penis and stretches it up. “And right under here,” he continues, without any hint of self-consciousness, “I have a sack. Two sacks, actually. And the baby is inside here. I can feel its teeny tiny hands. They are so small!”
I’m dying! “No, Sweety, there is no baby in there. Just little tiny sperm, like tadpoles, in semen.”
"What are sea men?”
“A thick liquid, like glue with water in it. A traveling vessel for the sperm.”
“One or two?”
“Millions and millions of sperm.”
“No, one or two sacks? Oh, two.”
Welcome to sex ed for preschoolers and kindergarteners!

Mac is lying in bed. Just for a few minutes, I tell him, so I can get Sailor in his pj’s and put sheets on my bed. Better for him to sleep with me tonight, I think. I wipe the blood from his chin and cheeks. There is blood on his top teeth and when I pull back his upper lip I find that little stretch of gums that runs down toward the two front teeth, called the frenulum, is torn completely away from his gums. I want to gag. I stumble back into the kitchen and go for the phone. Sailor is whimpering with exhaustion. He wants uppie and he is cold. I get the doc on the phone and explain what I just found. She is upset that she didn’t see it. I am too, but more so that I just don’t want to haul two sleeping children back out in to the rain to the ER again. We speak for several minutes, which impresses me to no end. We discuss options for what to do if the bleeding doesn’t stop by this time or this time. I ask her if she wants to come over and look at this. She says she will when her shift is over! Really! But that’s midnight, I already know. She is a mom. She understands. She cares. She makes Mac an appointment tomorrow night in urgent care in case he is still bleeding after 24 hours. She says she will call me tomorrow and I give her my cell phone because of all badly timed events it is my Saturday to work at the CF clinic. She says she will call me at midnight and come over if Mac is still bleeding. I thank her profusely and wonder if I should try to stay up til midnight.

The house is a mess. The kids are passed out. I have had a rough week, personally, I realize. I just haven’t felt well. I have parental fear that a shortness of breath is lung cancer and not some other benign illness such as bronchitis, allergies, exhaustion, or pneumonia. I am worried, tired, scared of the future or potential lack thereof. And my child has just had his mouth ripped open by a play date that should have been a great ending to a long week. I tear through the remains of the Halloween candy.

Song quote of the week (re-written for grammatical correctness): If I lie here…. If I just lie here, would you lie with me and just forget the world?