Week 25

Sailor will be 3 ½ tomorrow. This is shaping up to be a very big deal and might actually be a very poignant and nice ending to a long and tough week.

Mac has his hair cut on Monday and then we stop by Panera to get him a bite to eat. And bite he does. A whole sandwich, a yogurt tube, a chocolate milk. We take all this to the car along with a chocolate chip muffin top and chocolate milk for Sailor, who has declined his haircut for reasons I have yet to fully comprehend. I buy a bagel for myself and a lemonade that I will make last the entire day. We run over to Payless to see about new Crocs for the kids. Not the real ones but the $12.99 knockoffs like the kids got almost 2 years ago before they were even popular. But the shipment is still on the truck. No funny little rubber shoes for my boys today.

It’s warm out today. Wonderfully springtime warm. Mac and Sailor join Mac’s classmates in the school playground. Sailor runs around wearing a pair of size 11 green rubber frog boots. He has a hard time keeping them on. But he doesn’t care. Mac plays wonderfully with the other children. And I think about how odd it is to me to be a mom in the same playground that I played in as a child. I bring my mind back to the year that I was 12. When my best friend Kelly and I ran around and told secrets and had such fun, wishing recess would last all day long and we’d never have to go back inside the school and sit at desks. When I see that Mac has to pee, I hustle them off the playground and bring him back into school. We walk home and I make my best effort to hose down the sidewalk in front of our house. I want to put a sign on the big tree out there that reads: If you can’t clean up after your dog, let him poop in front of your house, not mine.

Tuesday morning is warm again and after Mac and I drop Sailor at school we go for a walk. The bank. Dropping off some fliers. The zoo. Mac wants to see snakes but the snakehouse is inexplicably closed. Perhaps the snakes have overslept today. We see lions and giraffes and babies. I haven’t been to the zoo with just Mac in a very long time. It’s nice. And I see so many tiny children that I realize Mac is not a baby or even a really little kid anymore. He is almost 6. But to me he will always be the tiny red-haired baby. We are truly enjoying the warm day and the sunshine. I see some children wearing shorts, sandals and t-shirts and wonder at the sanity of some parents. We walk. We talk. We hold hands. I have a lot of energy today. I have an appointment at 1:30. We get home and Mac has lunch and we head to preschool. Sailor is a happy baby when we pick him up. Or as Sailor says, “I’m not a baby, I’m a preschooler.”

We bring Mac to school. And then head home. I leave my baby with my dad and run upstairs to put on grownup clothes. I fetch my mom and we drive downtown.

Two and a half hours later I am standing in a crowded Starbucks. I do not make eye contact with any of the handsome men in suits who order their half caf whatevers. I don’t take off my sunglasses.

I board a bus and cry all the way home.

I have gained sole custody of my two very precious little boys. I have fulfilled my promise to them, which I made to Mac the night of 9/11, to always keep them near. I can now in all honesty say I can keep my children forever.

My dad and I take my children to the playground.

Their dad visits Tuesday night, per usual.

Wednesday morning I know I should feel jubilant. I don’t. I feel anxious. There is still the issue of visitation and I am not thrilled about all that happened with the lawyers yesterday. I get out of bed and get the kids ready to go play in the big indoor play place so I can get out of the house and keep my mind on other things. We run into one of Sailor’s little buddies from school. His little brother is celebrating his 2nd birthday and we are invited to join them for snacks. But I think I offend the mom by reading labels and declining some of her offerings. Are they allergic? She wants to know. No. She wants to know what ingredients offend me. Partially hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup, I tell her. She looks at me with a face that is somewhere between the blank stare of incomprehension and, “Bitch!”

By the time we leave it is getting colder outside. We have been promised winter weather again by the end of the week.

It’s a usual Wednesday. My mom makes our dinner and the kids eat like no tomorrow. Well, Mac does anyway. Sailor and GrandDad have a veggie eating contest and Sailor wins and then slurps down the rest of his spaghetti without chewing. But by late night I am starving and down a bowl of cereal and an English muffin with jelly and butter. And I am lying in bed when I realize that I am scheduled to be the parent volunteer for Mac’s class the next afternoon but I don’t think I have arranged for someone to care for Sailor.

The kids sleep late, so when I wake it is 8:30. EEK! Sailor has to be at preschool in half an hour! And he makes it just about 9 minutes late. He is dressed in a green St. Patrick’s Day t-shirt from last year and a huge leprechaun hat. Almost every child in his class is dressed in green in celebration of the Irish holiday coming up on Saturday. They look like a room full of leprechauns. So cute. Sailor hands out stickers shyly to his teachers.

I run thru the day. Home. Phone calls. Clean up. Bath for Mac – “Honey, if your hair smells that means your butt probably smells and if your butt smells your feet probably smell and that means it is time for a bath!” Lunch at Cosi. Free coffee at Starbucks (it’s free 12 oz coffee day, and the Barista looks at me like I have spoken Russian when I order two decaf. I guess Mac is her first customer under 5 feet tall today). Back home to get Sailor’s lunch and the car and then to school for Sailor and then to pick up Aunt Minny. Aunt Minny drops Mac and me at school where we find one of Mac’s classmates without a coat. “Where is your coat?” I ask him. “My dad didn’t mention it,” he tells me. “Did you walk to school today?” The boy’s nose is running. He is wearing a long sleeved shirt over another long sleeved shirt. Nothing else. And yes, he walked to school. A good 7 or 8 blocks from his house. It is 33 degrees outside. I ask Miss H if I can call his dad. She tells me to please call him but that she can’t give me the phone number. Of course, if I happen to stumble upon it… she says as she lets her class list book fall open on her desk. I call the boy’s dad and leave a polite message. Then I spend the afternoon in Mac’s class and realize just how much the children do get done in their 2 hours and 40 minutes.

While I am pulling snowflake cutouts off the windows (which Miss H wants me to put in the children’s cubbies but I put in the trash more appropriately) the kindergarten teacher comes to tell me a funny story. Apparently the day before she overheard Mac and one of the triplets talking. “You can be my school girlfriend,” Mac told the girl, “Does that make you feel better?” The little brunette ponders and then tells Mac she might consider a boyfriend from 1st or 2nd grade because she wants someone for all the time, not just school.

We run out and meet Aunt Minny and a sleeping Sailor. Aunt Minny tells us all about the very busy afternoon she and Sailor have just had. She remarks how quickly the time went by. One of their activities was playing with squishy mushy a.k.a. play-do. She told Sailor they could play with it and turn it into something. After a few minutes Sailor asks, “When is it going turn into something?” We drop off Aunt M at work and then take Mac to his talking doctor. I load a sleeping Sailor into our umbrella stroller, which is a faded and dirty light blue, and which I keep in my car trunk for these times. We take the elevator up at which point Sailor wakes up. So that everyone can see that I too have a crappy umbrella stroller.

Sailor is 3 ½. He told me so when he woke up this morning. “Wake up, Mommy! Am 3
½!” Then he runs out and informs Mac of the same news. Then, “No more sippy cups!” Then back to my room, “Nothing is hanging!” I grumble, “We don’t decorate for half-birthdays. We’ll make your half cake later.” He runs out to play, satisfied with my answer. He is in a good mood and I get up in a good mood a short time later. I pop waffles into the toaster and make lunches for later. We are going back to the indoor play place to play, per Sailor’s request. Which came as a surprise because when we went to play on Wednesday Sailor said he didn’t want to. So I had asked him to choose what he wanted to do on Friday, his half-birthday. I said we could do whatever he wanted to do, confident he would not choose anything too extreme. And he said he wanted to come back and play. As usual I sent out an email inviting whoever wanted to come to join us. And this morning as we play one of his friends from school and two of his friends from his old PlayGroup show up and give him quite the fun surprise! He is so proud to tell everyone that he is 3 ½. A big boy!

Sailor has chosen the new Superman for tonight’s video. We are sitting in the dark watching. The kids ask me questions about what is going on. There is a mad chase scene and Sailor comments, “She is not a very good driver.” But I am not watching. I am writing. And I have taken the time to answer an email from an old college guy friend who seems to want to be a fab pen-pal, which I just don’t have time to be.

"Yo, To,
Listen, I am a single mom, which means all the things that you do in your day plus all the things your wife does in a day are ALL MINE to do. I make all the food and fix all the booboos and take everyone where they need to go and carry all the groceries and sleeping babies and bake the half-birthday cakes and pick up the toys and return the biz phone calls and still manage to never leave the house without make-up on. Sometimes there is just not enuf time left at the end of the day to write my blog, do any work that I have neglected all day, read a little, watch some Oprah and unwind before midnight. It's been a long and crazy week. I have volunteered in Mac's classroom, and I went to the 4-way meeting to try to settle the divorce before going to trial, all in a day's work and a long week. By 7 at night I am usually too tired to MOVE these days. And there is always so much more to do, so please do not take it personally that I am not such a good email penpal.

The dining room is almost done. I have to do some quick touch ups. But then I need my mom to sew some drapes and I need to scrape, sand, varnish and seal the floor. And figure out what to do with the extra file cabinet and see if I can find a rug I can afford and find a place to put the little book shelf that didn't match and find a place to re-put all the things it still holds.
Sailor turned 3 1/2 today and as I feel it's a long time between birthdays for little kids we celebrate. Sailor got to play with some friends at the indoor play place this morning and pick out a video at Blockbuster this afternoon and have a play date with a girl from Mac's class and her sister and then have dinner and a half cake and now watch Superman. I am soooooooo tired and I really should be working on the yearbook stuff that is due next Monday and I have not started it yet. But I don't feel like getting up and finding the paper with the directions on what to do. It just never ends.... but I guess that is good cuz if it ended we'd be dead.
Have a great weekend.
M"