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!